How would you deal with T in a friendship group?

[FourSevenTwo]

How would you deal with T people around you? In general and in my situation?

The main question:
A male in a friendship group decided to go full TW, starting hormones and so on, changing name to the women's form and coming out with pronouns.

Unfortunately, our language is heavily gendered*. For example, instead of Hi Alex, you would say Hi Alexi for a man and Hi Alexo for a woman. If you want to say anything in past tense, like Where were you yesterday, you have to use men's or women's form for were.
This means it is not really possible to ignore it in direct interaction.

I'm not willing to pretend through language that I see him as a woman. I don't and won't. But I don't insist on calling him him. There are some not great alternatives (it, plural - with it's own verb forms, switching to English), but they are all very noticeable.

I'd like to find a solution for our coexistence in this friendship group. I'm not asking about a language solution here, more about an approach.

I'm considering

1. reaching him with a message, saying I've heard the news, and I can't affirm, but, I'd like to keep things civil, so is there some alternative we can agree on?

2. ingoring the issue and limiting communication on grammatically neutral constructions (which will be limiting and obvious after a time)

3. some other option?

To answer possible questions.

• I'm GC woman - in the adult human female sense, in the gender identity terminology I'd claim agender. I absolutely understand people are unhappy with gendered roles, I just don't believe that trying to become/pretend to be/claiming to be the other one is the solution. And I'm sure one can't change sex.

• It seems that majority of our shared friends are willing to be kind, some believe it, some just don't care, men with no skin in the game.

• *I'm elsewhere in EU, not a self-ID country. I don't ask about legal aspects, just personal approach. Discussing in my country's forums would be hard, as we are a small population.

• The group is about games, meeting at someone's home, so no issue with single sex spaces, and generally gender doesn't play a role in the group's activities.

• Yes, I'd like to try to keep the group if possible. I see it as a political topic and I don't need to discuss politics all the time.

• Edit to add : I've name changed for this one. Sorry it is long. And yay, I've managed to force the formatting to behave!

It is tied to something in your head though.

By your own account, you weren't a happy little boy/young teen who was seized and cruelly turned into a woman through forced surgery (though god knows that horrid little fantasy is surprisingly common in men). You were already unhappy and you sought medical intervention.

And that means that something in your head came first. Something caused you to look at other men and think "nope, not like them".

That is why you think you are a woman. Not what you later did to your body to justify it, but a conclusion your subconscious for whatever reason had already come to.

It doesn't have to be as trite as clothes, but somehow your subconscious has overloaded the simple fact of sex with other social or personal meanings such that you have been able to conclude your sex is sonehow wrong for your mind.

"A woman is an adult human someone who aligns with female sex characteristics, a man is an adult human who aligns with male sex characteristics."

See... the ONLY sex characteristic that is taken into account to categorise which humans are female is whether that human has a body formed around the production of large gametes, regardless of whether those gametes are ever produced.

Any human born with a body formed around the production of small gametes, even if that body doesn't produce those gametes, is male. Those are material facts that cannot change.

Born a male with the body formed around the production of small gametes, and this is coded into a person's cells, and they will die a male person. All records in the future will show that that person was born a male person as will the bones of that male person if they were to be found in the future. Material reality will abide.

All the other sex characteristics are actually irrelevant despite what now seems to be a desperate need for some male people to believe otherwise.

A reminder. Any of these males who claim to be women could easily decide to take part in some type of medical trial or donate blood without declaring their sex. If they've decided they are biologically female and HCP professionals can't check this on paper this has safeguarding implications for women and data integrity implications for women.

We have seen examples of this.

Because we know this is happening additional tests to assess sex will have to be done. This is a cost that takes budget away from other areas at a time where this matters.

This self centered nonsense that's this inward gazing really does have negative impacts everywhere on other people.

It's really not cool.

I was a toddler going "Why am I not a girl". There hasn't been a moment in my life when I didn't have sex dysphoria. I didn't have some magical moment, I've always been like this.

It was another answer that was very illustrative to the thread though.

"I was a toddler going "Why am I not a girl"."

This is a purely male experience. Yet... you denied having experience living as a male.

There is lack of coherency to these arguments and I think you understand this.

Your mother has a lot to answer for.

Same as my mother has a lot to answer for, for her sexism which I found had a very significant impact on my self worth and self identity. And my brother's.

I'm the one who remembers her clearly telling us we were 'born the wrong way round' in a way that has stuck with me, never mind my brother. She did it repeatedly.

It had a really big impact on me when I was in my late teens and early twenties.

Yep....

But we have also seen that those same male people don't seem to be able to recognise the risks they create for others. I think it shows very insular thinking.

Also there are moments my brother 'recalls' from his childhood which relate to sex which simply did not happen or happened in a completely different way to the way he recalls.

I KNOW he rewrote his memories to fit his adult narrative. My mum has relectuantly agreed with my recollection of events.

A reminder that toddlers don’t have any understanding of sex and think it is related to external factors such as hair length and clothing norms.

I like Mr Menno, can understand why you don't (a shame: he's very funny!), but agree you are not necessarily homophobic. You have an involuntary sexual preference, which is not the same thing as disliking a particular group of people as people.

You are a gay man with a sexual attraction to straight men, but not gay men. April Ashley described a similar experience.

Yes I never lived my life as a male or had male experiences.

Ironically, it is the binary nature of sex that leads a boy who does not want to grow up male into thinking that therefore he must be female.

Wow blaming my mum? Could my dad have not done anything or is it common for anti-trans people to immediately blame women?

Again, this is why I say anti-trans and anti-woman are the same thing.

This male never peed through his willy. Ever.

We are supposed to believe this, go along with this and not question or challenge this.

And yet, I still thought I should've been a girl. Funny that.

I'm not a gay guy, I'm a straight women. You don't get to decide others sexualities.

Do you often talk about strangers genitals on the internet?

Nice try at the gotcha to try and undermine me.

The issue is it's mothers (women generally) who are used to support and affirm. It's not men who carry out this role.

Your mother and your father should have corrected you. Chances are your mother was your primary carer as a toddler especially given the age you claim to be.

Im GC but I wouldn’t mind if someone else in a social group wanted to stay in a group after change in sexual orientation, as long as it wasn’t a woman only group. I’d speak with them the same as before and not be critical for no reason. I respect all aspects of the ruling, which advocates understanding, if I remember right.

To repeat a male poster up thread

"This is your belief."

Just to add, it has no impact on material reality. No male person was ever a 'girl' unless all male people were also 'girls'. Destabilising language around sex categories doesn't change the change the materially real sex categories that will continue to abide as distinct categories. All it does is change the description from being able to accurately describe the category to being meaningless.

However, the outcome of one male person stating he is a 'girl' or a 'woman' is that all male people can then be described that way. That male person has rendered those words meaningless whenever he then tries to apply them in communicating.

No one can trust that they understand a person's message when they have shown that they use words that now lack accuracy.

You are a gay man with a sexual attraction to straight men, but not gay men.

That is a very lonely place, I imagine. I genuinely feel sympathy for any man in that position. There are no straight men that will be attracted to them, by definition.

Do you mean change in sexual orientation, or change in gender identity?

Yes I do when it's on a thread about women's rights and women health and language use by men to control women.

Sadly it's far too common an occurrence that we are not allowed to asert the fact that we never had willies and that females can't have willies and have never had willies.

I think it's important we do talk about strangers who claim to have never had a male experience but also claim they are transwomen and are telling us what a woman is. Because it exposes the complete liars that they are.

Why? Because it actually matters to us as women. It's relevant.

If it wasn't relevant you might have an objection. But unfortunately it just shows you are in complete denial of the truth so it's tough really.

If the only come back you have to me pointing out your lie is to try and smear me as some kind of perv you really are all out of arguments aren't you?

We understand perfectly that you deny material reality through misuse of commonly used language to describe your experience.

However, the material reality is that you were never a 'girl' and you have never experienced a female experience. If you want to reject that you experience life as a male person, that really is up to you to believe.

But, by making statements about how you are a woman / girl / female, as explained to you patiently up thread, you are attempting to change the language female people need as unique to any male person. If you just keep repeating these sentences, you won't be changing material reality. Neither will you convince anyone reading along that you are materially female in any way.