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!

You went to school as a male who never had The Talk about periods. Who never had to worry about blood stains on PE kit. Who never had to leave an exam due to menstrual cramps. You have never had to worry about contraception. You have never requested the morning after pill, wondering if you're being judged. You have never had a smear test. I could go on.

Your male life has been totally different. You're so male you don't even see it.

Funnily I never asked ‘why am I not a girl?’

I wouldn't have to talk about males willies on a feminist section of the internet if it didn't keep getting invaded by males claiming they were women, that they are biologically female, never had a male experience and never lived as a male in any way.

But here we are.

It always astounds me how people are so blind to the level of social conditioning we experience at the subconscious level.

As a gender critical Feminist I'm acutely aware not just of gender in society but of how my own understanding of myself was shaped for good or bad by growing up within how my sex is constructed into gender by my culture. I don't think I'm some objective unbiased privileged observer. I know I'm complicit even as I try to rise above it. I'm constantly questioning myself and digging out assumptions. It's the work of a lifetime.

Such arrogance to assume one is exempt from society's influence from the day one is born into it! To forget that humans evolved as a social species and we had ways of interacting and bonding group norms before we could even talk, and think ones conscious mind can stand alone and uninfluenced!

How many women have had their penis surgically removed?

Sorry but no you don't just get to sit here and blame women. THAT is misogyny.

I see. This is a reverse.

Shame the women discussing genitalia when the male people on this thread have been discussing their genitalia very freely.

To be fair, we haven't had a "taking female hormones means I'm now literally and actually female" delulu for a while.

There's a lot of reversing suddenly going on when there's no where else for the conversation to go because the point is so obviously untrue.

Lots of boys love long hair and every toddler boy I know has loved dressing up in sparkly dresses. It is not surprising that pink, long hair, bows, sparkles, heels, makeup have all been male fashions at times.

The thing is, these male posters really don't understand that the very experiences they categorise as being female are being very male.

No female person has to have their penis removed.

I transitioned at school. My experiences were a lot but they sure weren't male ones.

Yet you are the one who inserted yours into the discussion.

I think this post should stand, and be seen for what it is...

I don’t think you can change your actual identity.

I think it is pretty clear now that some people cannot accept material reality and will try all the defences that they think might work.

But it is just the same script. Most of us have seen this all before and already had these discussions. The tactics roll through and still female people, we who are women, say 'no'. This infuriates the male people who demand to use our language for themselves.

And yet... we are then told that it is not 'a demand', it is not 'a philosophical belief' and it is not 'forced teaming'. I found it surprising to see someone try the 'I don't have a gender identity' approach. Haven't seen it for a while.

At no time can material reality be acknowledged though. But it has been framed as being 'gender critical ideology' so that some people can feel justified in rejecting material reality.

This really has been a wild thread.

'Observing misogyny' only counts when it benefits your argument.

You are my hero defending me from misogyny and the role mothers have as primary carers to toddlers.

Toddlers do attach to their primary carer in a different to their other parent or carer btw. It's up to that primary carer to carefully point out when this is problematic...

They sure as hell weren't female ones.

What with having to pee with a willy and all that.

As is telling female people who we are and what should matter to us.

I am a Feminist. I support female people's social and political struggle to not be restricted in our lives physically, economically or socially simply because of our sex.

I literally only care about trans people beyond a general goodwill to all humans because in redefining the words that previously referred clearly and unequivocally to sex based on your own inner beliefs about a mismatch between minds and bodies, you are taking what female people need to explain our position and define our rights and needs.

That is literally it.

If you take female peple pointing out that we also exist, and exist in ways that sre both meaningful and consequential to us and can never be true of a male person no matter how much surgery he has, as "anti trans" then that is on you. If your identity cannot handle our reality, there is something incomplete in your understanding of womanhood.

All you need to do, all you have ever needed to do to defuse and resolve this, is pick new words to define this thing that you are instead of trying to repurpose our words and redefine us to justify it.

They were male experiences. They could only have been male experiences.

Accurately you could say they were not 'stereotypical' male experiences but they were most certainly male.

Attempting to describe your experiences as being female is you attempting to rewrite what the female experience is. That is an act of misogyny.

This really has been a wild thread.

It has certainly shown the benefits to cognitive functions of going through puberty and the detriments of not having done so.
Wish Wes Streeting was reading it

"If you take female peple pointing out that we also exist, and exist in ways that sre both meaningful and consequential to us and can never be true of a male person no matter how much surgery he has, as "anti trans" then that is on you. If your identity cannot handle our reality, there is something incomplete in your understanding of womanhood."

"All you need to do, all you have ever needed to do to defuse and resolve this, is pick new words to define this thing that you are instead of trying to repurpose our words and redefine us to justify it."

Always good to pull this out and repeat it.

It doesn't sink into the perception of the male people who are attempting to redefine female people, but it does get read and taken on board by others.

Very true.

There is at least one paper that discusses the cognitive impairment of blocking puberty that doesn't seem to recover.

I genuinely don't think that those who make the arguments about how male people can be female such as on this thread quite realise what their cognitive disruption indicates.