Friend shocks me by suddenly saying he's female. How to handle this?

[MiffedatMP]

A month ago a male co-researcher and friend I have known for 10 years, "came out as trans" by posting a couple of pics of himself on FB wearing eyeliner and studs in his newly pierced ears, and by changing his pronouns to he/she and saying he is a "trans female".

Just four weeks previously we spent the whole afternoon together and he did not breathe a word about this. He is 45, tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped and has angular, very masculine facial features. He looked and acted exactly the same as I have always known him: completely male in looks, speech, mannerisms, dress, etc. Therefore his announcement has come as a complete shock and, to be honest, at first I thought he was playing a prank.

Later this year we are supposed to begin a joint project which entails working closely together for months and I just don't know how to handle the situation. I've been wondering how long I can avoid ever referring to him by any pronoun - easy when it's just the two of us but the moment I have to refer to him as "he" or "her" to another person I am going to have to make a choice. I'm already worrying about this eventuality because it is bound to happen. Also on the project itself... there may be some wording which refers to him by a pronoun and again, I have to make a choice. I don't see how I can get out of this awkward situation. If I refer to him as "she" then I am sort of announcing that I am going along with this nonsense, and if I call him "he" then obviously this is going to cause massive fall out between us. He might storm out and the project abandoned, possibly after many weeks of work.

Even if I can manage to avoid the pronoun thing, how can I stay silent or dodge the subject if he looks me right in the eye and tells me he's now female? He hasn't yet changed his name but if he does I just don't think I can bring myself to call him by a female name.

I thought the easiest thing would be to just cancel the project, but that would make it look like I cancelled "just because he's trans", making me look like the baddie, losing his friendship forever and risking him smearing my good name around our small town, among our many mutual acquaintances, with goodness knows what social/business/friendship repercussions. Ditto if I replace him with someone else - I'd have to give him a reason, which, again, will get me into some kind of trouble, name-called, cancelled, hated because there are quite a few punitive activists where I live.

I understand now why people go along with it - because the alternative is life-changing, possibly life-ruining.

I just really, really wish he hadn't done this because it's made things so awkward.

What would you do?

Like many “but why do you carrrree” posters on Mumsnet in fact. With their fringe views that men should be able to use women’s spaces just because they claim they are women.

Great post @Theeyeballsinthesky

I have never been able to understand how the existence of trans women could possibly "invalidate" my existence as a woman. Nor how it might infringe on my rights.

There's just been a Supreme Court judgement in the UK that clarified women's rights to single-sex spaces and a word of their own. A parallel case in Oz is likely to go all the way to the top of their justice system. The news is full of reports about women impacted by this issue. Opinion and commentary attest to some public anxiety about this.

In that context, do you know what I don't understand? Why so many replies along the lines of your own, above, seem unable to acknowledge and address these realities.

I was thinking about what you could have posted, from your perspective. What I'd write, if I were arguing your point of view, would be something like:

"I acknowledge that a minority of women are sufficiently concerned about this to have taken the issue to court. However, I don't see this as evidence of women's rights being affected because..." Or how about: "I recognise that there have been issues in which individual women's rights have been affected, but I don't give these particular weight, as..."

My post might then go on to analyse why this evidence of at least some impact on women's rights isn't sufficient to convince me that there's a wider issue. It might then explore different interpretations of the concept of "invalidation", to emphasise why, in my view, the necessity of a court case to establish what women actually are in law doesn't fit this definition.

Why do we, instead of honest acknowledgement of what evidence there is, and careful exploration of the issue, instead just get blanket denial and hyperbole? Emphatic generalisations like, "Never... the existence... my existence... cannot fathom"?

The only explanation I've ever been able to come up with is that the evidence for there being an issue is just too strong to convincingly counter. That the poster in question is running scared.

Acknowledging incontrovertible facts and details, and engaging with associated arguments, can help one to understand other perspectives better. You could do this to test your beliefs that this is a "culture war", and that posters like me are (you intimate above) unthinking puppets manipulated by "the powers that be". Maybe doing so would strengthen your convictions. Maybe it would change your mind! Whichever, though, it would certainly lead to deeper understanding - and more respect from posters here.

As it is, all I can see is myself and other posters diving headfirst into the nuances of a complex issue, exploring it in detail, often acknowledging alternative perspectives...

...And, in response to all this, being told we're "distracted [by] the powers that be [from things of more significance]" - that we are, in as many words, not thinking things through carefully enough.

And this we're told by posters who seem unable to face up even to existence of any opposing evidence and arguments (let alone to convince us of their supposed lack of significance).

There's an irony here.

I've said this earlier . But it's got lost in the Labyrinthine arguments . I think this fella fancies his chances with lesbian OP if he too becomes a lesbian

Is this better?

Lots of women find it insulting and dehumanising to be expected to pretend a man has become a woman.

It doesn’t matter whether you personally can see why, what matters is that is how we feel.

Oh yes. Or, as if in my ex, he senses a vulnerability he can exploit. My ex took advantage of me as I was in a dark place and used me as a validation tool. I’d say step back, breathe and make any decisions on whether to keep the friendship from a place of reflection. It’s better to be more cynical and relax boundaries slowly than jump in and find yourself floundering.

Exactly. She can pontificate about what she thinks is ok to her heart’s content, it doesn’t change that other women feel differently. As she acknowledged, at first.

Not RTFT sorry but OP just don’t work with him. Bin the project as gradually/subtly or as blatantly as you like. You don’t owe him anything.

It’s certainly quite possible.

@MiffedatMP

I've been thinking about your situation in the context of conversations I've had over the years, some with gay men, some with (much younger) trans-identifying males. IMO there is a level of need? aggression? when it comes to sex that I see as very male. A level of determination to have what they want and not think about the impact of it on other people, other than eg in one case I can think of, to feel guilty years later, when it was too late; and in another case to laugh about how the girl would have felt when she found out her boyfriend decided he was trans.

And then I thought of Maeve Halligan and the lesbian girl who stood up at the Cambridge Union and said the most obvious, sensible, realistic and thoughtful things and the people around them still didn't seem to be able to hear or understand what they were saying.

I think what I'm trying to say is don't underestimate the drive of your friend if he becomes subsumed by this new identity of his, or the refusal or inability of your other friends/business colleagues to look at any fallout with accuracy. I would be concerned that you might get yourself into a situation that destroys what you have already – friendships, professional status – and not gain anything.

I don't think anyone truly believes that mixed sex prisons are appropriate.

But if they want to give 'Woman of the Year' award to a man, they have to pretend that they think mixed sex prisons are a good idea.

You can't have one without the other without looking like a huge hypocrite.

having them being single sex offers no protection anyway

Seriously?!

How do you reconcile the 160% additional punch power of males and their committing 98%+ of sexual assaults with the argument that single sex spaces offer "no" protection? How can anyone say this, in all seriousness?

Are women going to be proportionately more, or less, safe in a small, enclosed space which is open, or closed, to a demographic which is one hundredfold stronger and more sexually aggressive?

Why do so many charities campaign for single-sex toilet access in developing countries? Are you saying that we're more civilised over here? That "our" men are less likely to take advantage of mixed sex, enclosed spaces?! (I really hope not).

This is what I mean by my post above. It's hard to believe someone's arguing in good faith when they make claims like this that are just a blanket denial of overwhelming evidence.

Talk to us about the evidence!

It is interesting when it happens to a man you’ve known for a while. Many people seem to have this idea of “a woman trapped in a man’s body”. I imagine they think such a person would stand out but I think many might reassess if it happened to someone that just came across as an average man to them.

What’s gender?

genuinely, what is gender because I have no idea?

This is such a ridiculous thing to say that being too rigid in our definition could harm women.

No one cares what the trans woman looks like, they only care that he is male.
They care that he is male because men pose a risk towards women and in enclosed spaces where women undress, it is safer to separate by sex.

Just to be super clear this is not about looks it is about sex.

Because it's only enforceable if we police women's bodies. How else could you check? How would you decide who "looks" like a woman? The only ways I can think of are degrading and invasive.

Oh don't be ridiculous. You know full well by looking at people what sex they are.

Forget the pronoun issue, it’s a red herring.

Op, your friend/potential project partner is expressing a belief that being ‘female’ is entirely a state of mind independent of the physical body.

(We’ll overlook for the moment the fact that anything his ‘mind’ comes up with entirely a product of the male brain cells in his male body and has no independent existence, so any ideas about itself it comes up with are by definition male. We’ll also overlook the fact that there is absolutely nothing he can now do as a female person that he couldn’t also have done as a male one.)

For this belief to be consistent and for ‘female” to mean anything at all, he must also believe that you, unless you also have a female-gendered mind, are not female.

Because ‘female’ is in the mind, not the body, remember.

if you believe, as I do, that you are female solely due to the fact that you have a biologically female body, and this fact is independent of any feelings or beliefs you may have about yourself, then by his belief system (that being male or female is something your mind tells you that you are, independent of what body you have) you are not a female person, whereas he is.

So don’t ask your friend why he believes he is female, ask him why he now believes you are not. And when he says, as he undoubtedly will, that of course this isn’t the case and he does you believe you to be female, ask him how, in the absence of a ‘gendered mind’, this can be true.

And watch him try to come up with answer that doesn’t reference your physical form.

Then how would you check? Who looks enough like a woman? Do we need to submit our bodies for inspection? Do we give away our freedoms to the patriarchy for the "safety" of a self-imposed segregation because we've given up on actually stopping violence? afaik assault in bathrooms and changing rooms is extremely rare compared to other spaces. Should we all be put away in a harem to "protect" us? Do we need to perform extreme femininity to ensure it's never questioned? I just find the whole thing depressing.

LittleMyLabyrinth · Today 12:06
I answered that up thread. Feminism is about equal rights. I've yet to be given an example of a right taken away from us by trans women, but I'm open to further information.

Response:
The right not to be subject to mixed-sex imprisonment, which is enshrined in the Geneva Convention. (Cruel and unusual punishment.)

@LittleMyLabyrinth
Perhaps you missed this.
Could you explain if this "further information" changes your view?

How? How closely do you have to look? Not all women's bodies are the same.

let me guess, you’re gonna bring up “genital inspections”? Yawn. Done redone and debunked.
i mean, we could expect TIM to abide by the law and not use women’s spaces, in which case women could be confident everyone in there was female, or we could use our fucking eyes, hearing and common sense. Is this seriously the best argument you’ve got? You can’t come up with one material benefit to women for letting males in their spaces? So it’s a one way transaction?

Are you telling me that people can't tell a person's sex by looking at them 😂

Ummm… calm down dude. You seem quite excited by that idea. So how have people known who is a woman for centuries before all this stupidity? You claimed TIM were being murdered in bathrooms at an alarming rate.. how did the men know they were TIM and not women?

Maybe this poster is doing a subtle campaign for specsavers…. Or, you know what they say, some activities do make you go blind 😂😂😂😂