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?

The murder rate for transgender people in the UK is extremely low, around one every two or three years. However, the murder rate for women in England and Wales, is around one every three days

This ^^ None of us have any reason to care about what someone thinks they are. Their biological sex remains their biological sex. Don't get caught up in their chaos

It’s far crueler to say to a transwoman that they can be a ‘real’ woman in these circumstances but not in another.

You can use the ladies loos but if you commit a crime you cannot go to a women’s prison.

You can be in the women’s darts team but you cannot be in the women’s football team.

You are welcome in the women’s dorm in a hostel but you cannot be serviced in the women’s DV shelter.

Society cannot treat TW as women in all circumstances so much better to treat them just a the gender non confirming men that they are in reality. They can use services and facilties set up for men if they wish and if they don’t want to they can use unisex facilities or stay at home.

A mix n match approach is a head fuck quite frankly.

Quite.

She’s entitled to draw any conclusion from your posts that she likes, mate.

They aren’t murdered by men at an alarming rate. Maybe read sources other than TRA propaganda.

Yes indeed. Nobody ever recognises this.

Exactly!

The murder rate for transgender people in the UK is extremely low, around one every two or three years.

There are many more transgender murderers than are murdered transgender people.

I'm not even sure they care.

This is now an ego trip, and everyone who responds is just feeding it.

Not just insulting to this OP, but so many threads now are hijacked, and I think in part to undermine what FWR was known for.

A safe and supportive space for women who know that women are biological females, to discuss and share.

Its a sort of back handed compliment that anyone thinks this forum is that important.

But sadly, as ever, those in need of support and information lose out.

Indeed.

@womendeserveequalhumanrights

I posted a link to this article on another thread, but one of the reasons for doing it was this section:

THE CLASS DIMENSION THAT NEVER GETS NAMED

There is something that the gender ideology debate almost never confronts, something that Labour Heartlands has consistently placed at the centre of its analysis: this is a class question.

The women most affected by the erosion of single-sex spaces are not the women with platforms, not the women who can afford private healthcare, not the women who work in organisations progressive enough to offer multiple facility options and enough staff to enforce them. They are the women who use public changing rooms because they cannot afford a gym with private cubicles. They are the women who depend on NHS wards because they have no private health insurance. They are the women in prisons. They are the women in refuges. They are the women at the bottom of the income distribution, who cannot opt out of shared spaces because they have no alternative.

For those women, the principle is not abstract. The changing room, the hospital ward, the refuge room: these are not theoretical rights. They are the material conditions of ordinary life. And when institutions strip those spaces of their single-sex character in the name of inclusion, the cost is not distributed equally. It falls on the women who can least afford to bear it.

https://labourheartlands.com/womens-rights-ehrc-code/

I am sorry that OP has had her thread hijacked, and as discussed before there are times when maybe we should (and I include myself) just not take the bait.

For anyone to start posting on a thread where someone has explained a situation is a problem to then have someone relentless post saying I wouldn't find it a problem is not just completely self involved but does nothing for OP.

Anymore that if say I started a thread about being a lesbian and someone kept posting on the thread that they couldn't see what the issue would be in having sex with a man!

Also, interesting contradiction that when I logged in today saw that one of my posts had got a lot agrees. So I thought I wonder which one that was. But I will never know as it has been deleted!

So to whoever you are, thanks for agree, but take note not to post something similar because apparently MNHQ thinks that opinion has no place on FWR!

This

I agree with ScribblingPixie

"I'd definitely not have a conversation about it that could be turned against you - and don't imagine that couldn't happen. I'd just let the project drift and think about a way you might do it without him in the future."

Well that's an awful lot of ifs and possiblies about things that might cause this or that problem if they happen at some unspecified time in the future.

The OP doesn't have control over this man's gender identity or what he does about it. She can only control what she can control, and there's nothing stopping her from going ahead and completing the project, if that's what she wants. The man's ideas about gender don't need to make any more difference to that than what colour underwear he wears.

And there's no rule saying you can't just avoid using pronouns.

OP

What a tricky situation. I hope that you and he find a way through, either together or going separate ways.

Like others, I find it very hard to lie about these types of issues. No man is not in any way female and to me language is based on sex and never gender. I would be using names and avoiding she / he type pronouns too.

My views on prisons are more nuanced as I explained upthread. But let's not pretend a certain kind of man wouldn't very much want to target any person who presents themselves in a feminine way, and that prison isn't the perfect place for that. Let's not kid ourselves.

OP , you may run into problems if you start to work with this man, he contributes a small amount but then he becomes so involved with his trans identity that he doesn't bother with your project . If you then finish off the project and do 90% of the work , he'll still be entitled to 50% of the profits .

I think number 3 is fair and not far from my view, actually. But I don't think it's fair to call my concerns are hysterical. afaik the instances of violence against women in toilets remains more or less unchanged regardless of whether or not they allow trans women in, but I've been very careful to avoid calling anyone hysterical for feeling otherwise. We all have our reasons, after all.

Indeed, but I remember my history and it's common sense not to ignore the homophobia and misogyny that some men have, and how that affects their treatment of trans women. It's disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

I agree, in an ideal world it wouldn't be mix & match, but I'm a big believer in practicality. We have to do our very best in the world we are in while we work to improve it, especially since said unisex facilities are not always available yet. Hopefully one day they will be and we can all move on.

Wish you the best as well! I've been called some nasty things on this thread just for disagreeing, so I appreciate a healthy attitude to debate :)