If Jane has short hair and wears a 3 piece suit to work, then you should still call her a woman (assuming that’s how she identifies).
If you call Jane a man because of her hair and clothes, repeatedly, after being corrected, that’s the sort of harassment that should get you fired.
Sounds like they are just hateful people who want to hate, and will work to find something to hate. It used to be that this was an acceptable group of people to hate, and now that it’s not acceptable to hate these people anymore, they claim that their hatred is at the core of their society.
They aren’t being harmed by other people’s choice in gender identity. They are only harmed due to their hatred no longer being acceptable.
But you’re already on our side. If your coworker John is pregnant, but still asks to be called he/him and John instead of their birth name Jane, you’re going to call them John and he/him, right?
If so, welcome to the woke! That’s all we’re asking from you. If you’re with us already, then all you need to tell them is whatever got you here with us.
Did you see my post about spectrums?
That has been answered already, that they want to have biological children, and that’s the only way they can. If that’s not a good enough answer, then the only other answer is, “None of their business.”
Give it a few decades, and we may have the medical technology to allow men to carry a baby to term. If we had that technology, and one of your co-workers decided to have a child in this fashion, would you think it fair to insist on calling him a woman, since only women bear children?
Progressives aren’t asking everyone to understand everything. We’re just asking people to be decent and compassionate. That doesn’t require perfect understanding - if just requires decency, tolerance, and goodwill.
Having been around various pregnant people, I struggle to understand how a person who identifies as a woman would ever want to carry a child.
People want all kinds of things that I don’t want, and that I don’t understand wanting.
I don’t need to understand. Again: I don’t need to understand. What I need to do is to respect.
@UltraVires do you come across a lot of pregnant men? Do you work with any? Do you have transmen co-workers who are thinking of becoming pregnant? You make it seem like your thoughts on this topic have some immediate basis in reality that is really causing you trouble to live your life unbothered from the fear of getting fired.
It’s such a niche thing to get upset about. Such a small percentage of people are trans. Only half of them (I presume) will be transmen. A smaller percentage will have the ability to bear children (not all of us with the parts can get pregnant), and a smaller percentage will want to go through the process of stopping their hormone treatment to get pregnant. And after all that, it’ll only be a reality for 9 months.
Imagine you had a co-worker John. You like John, you like his husband. They’re a gay couple but you’re cool with that. They’re super nice and super in love. They really want a baby, but there’s no way they can afford surrogacy or adoption. You find out John is a transman (you didn’t even know!) John decides to make the sacrifice of stopping hormone treatment to get pregnant. He does. He doesn’t tell the office right away but when he begins to show, he lets everyone know. You’re kind of disgusted seeing this guy with a pregnant belly. But you really do like John, you’ve known him for years at this point. He’s an amazing co-worker, great at his job and treats everyone well. And he’s only showing heavily for a couple months, but half the time he’s working remote anyway. Boy, his face looks puffy on video. Yikes! It’s awkward to see his pregnant belly when he pops in to the office. It’s awkward for a couple months. He goes away for another couple months for maternity leave (I know - a couple months for maternity leave! Suspend your disbelief). You work through your feeling of disgust while he’s gone. You find yourself missing John as a co-worker - geez, you really valued his work! He finally comes back, you see pictures of John and his husband and their baby, smiling happily. Lots of happy baby talk. Now John is a co-worker with a baby and a spouse, just like many of your other co-workers. Despite the tiredness and the extra doctor trips, John is still a good co-worker. You’re definitely relieved to have him back full-time. But everything is back to normal, your co-worker is back, he’s happy, his family is happy, the office is happy. You are no worse for the wear.
In the grand scheme of things, in the minute possibility that you will have a transman co-worker who decides to and successfully becomes pregnant, you were made to feel awkward and had some feelings of disgust or confusion for a couple months. In the end, the co-worker was respectful as possible to the work situation, and you were respectful in return. Your work didn’t suffer any more than it would have if it was a female co-worker going through a pregnancy. You don’t give any more thought to the sex life or reproductive systems of John than you do for any of your other co-workers, because you realize that’s a creepy way to be. The only thing you really had to worry about through this whole thing is getting your work accomplished, with or without the help of your pregnant co-worker - who just happens to be a man.
If you need to get worked up about a very rare hypothetical situation, maybe try the above. I think, in realistic terms, it’s not something you ever need to be thinking about because it’s not going to happen. But if you must toil over it, think of how it would REALLY go down. Could you stop yourself from commenting on someone’s gender for a max of 9 months, or a year? I bet you could. I bet if faced with this reality, you would be ok. If this actually happened “to you” it wouldn’t be as bad as you think.
This is only a problem if you think every word has a single meaning. But that is not the case. ‘Dog’ can mean both a domesticated canine as well as a metal device used for gripping. If you were on a dock, you’d have no problem calling metal hooks that ships use to tie their ropes to ‘dogs’. Context tells you which definition is appropriate. Both humans and ships are referred to as ‘women’ even though they are different in just about every way. Saying ‘only women can get pregnant’ is using the definition of women as ‘the genetic sex typically associated with bearing young’. That doesn’t mean that the word women only has that one singular definition. Woman can also mean a person who identifies as a woman. Context allows you to switch between definitions to understand what concept is being conveyed.
And they are IMO being unfair to you (and you to yoursef) by expecting you to have an answer. ( And they’re being more than just unfair if they think they’re laying a “gotcha-huh?” on you. )
You are 90% there. That works for you. Doesn’t have to work for them and you do not have a duty to make it.
You can tell them, “look, I don’t have an answer for that, but that doesn’t mean that therefore I can’t support anything about it. It’s their business, not mine, and it does not hurt me to go along with them to be kind and polite” and agree to disagree.
I’ve posted this fairly often by now, but it still seems important:
A study by scientists at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles, found differences in how self-described liberal and conservative research participants responded to changes in patterns. Participants were asked to tap a keyboard when the letter “M” appeared on a computer monitor and to refrain from tapping when they saw a “W.” The letter “M” appeared four times more frequently than “W,” conditioning participants to press the keyboard on almost every trial. Liberal participants made fewer mistakes than conservatives when they saw the rare “W,” indicating to the researchers that these participants were better able to accept changes or conflicts in established patterns. The participants were also wired to an electroencephalograph that recorded activity in their anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that detects conflicts between a habitual tendency and a more appropriate response. Liberals were significantly more likely than conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts during the experiment, and this correlated with their greater accuracy in the test."
A good life’s lesson I learned later than I wish I had is what Stephen Covey called thinking win-win (or “the habit of mutual benefit”):
To go for win-win, you not only have to be empathic, but you also have to be confident. You not only have to be considerate and sensitive, but you also have to be brave. That balance between courage and consideration is the essence of real maturity and is fundamental to win-win.
For so many of these societal issues, the only ‘loss’ that the social conservatives can sincerely claim is the cognitive dissonance captured above.
But if they could understand that this is truly their burden to bear, and not society’s burden to accommodate ad infinitum, then the win-win solution in cases like this one is simple.
But social conservatives have a long and ignominious history (dating back to about 1776 in the US) of insisting on the imposition of win-lose situations – often in order to maintain their power, dominance, and hegemony, but often just to maintain a certain level of cognitive comfort.
Which just isn’t a good enough reason to shit on other human beings who’ve done nothing to the collective ‘you.’
It really is – all too often – a case of “when you’re accustomed to privilege, then equality feels like oppression.”
A guy is pregnant ? Mazel tov.
It really wasn’t that difficult 
Simply put, your definition of “man” is different than their definition of “man”. The fact that their definition is different than yours does not in any way impinge on your use of the term for yourself.
A lot of good answers to your post have already been given, so I don’t need to rehash them. But I’ll add one observation about what you said.
It isn’t hard to document how trans people have been, and continued to be, victimized. At the very least their sanity is often questioned, they are at high risk of being rejected by family and friends, they are discriminated against in medical insurance and medical practice. Sometimes they face physical violence and even death because of who they are.
Your post, on the other hand, tries to co-opt victimhood for the poor, poor cis-gendered straight person who might face blowback for picking on trans people. What a travesty that bigotry doesn’t get protected status in the workplace! My heart bleeds for all those people.
I don’t understand what’s difficult about this concept. Humans have lots of competing needs, and have the ability to delay one long term need temporarily to advance another need. A trans man wants to be seen and treated as a man by society, but sometimes he has to temporarily sacrifice that need to complete some other, more immediate need - continuing to identify as female at work, for example, because he won’t have job security if his boss knows he’s trans. Or wanting to attend a beloved relative’s funeral, but having to go in “girl mode” because certain less-beloved relatives insist that he dress “proper” for it. Or, in rare cases, putting up with what is likely the most extreme body dysphoria he’ll experience during his life, because he wants to be a dad.
It’s probably also worth pointing out, here, that a lot of trans men who make this choice are doing so because its harder to get an adoption agency to place you with a kid if you’re queer. A lot of agencies won’t adopt out at all, and the ones that do often favor “normal” looking same-sex couples over couples where one or the other partner is visibly gender non-conforming in some way.
I think it is worth noting that you’re talking about a completely different thing in this part. Whether or not “we” need to give people reasons for things is a whole separate question (and one that gets ugly real quick) compared to the question of “what’s up with trans men?” There is a major debate to be had about that that starts after about two words.
As for the “what’s up with trans men” question, I really don’t think you’re giving enough room in your head for the actual experience of what it must be like to actually be a trans man. As in from birth, every day, as the only experience you have ever had. Like, of course you don’t understand why a man would want to be pregnant. You ever try being a man and having a period and having a vagina and having ovaries? Me neither. And I don’t mean that in a sort of hand-waving “you should be compassionate” way, I mean literally from minute to minute, consider what the real experience would be. Instead of thinking about it in metaphysical terms, think about it practically. Maybe they would love to get somebody else pregnant. Maybe, like me, they would also love a log cabin on 100 private acres, but we’re all out of luck on all fronts.
It seems to me like if I was living the every day experience of, like, this is what my body is, I would probably still want to do things like feel good and have sex. Getting pregnant, I have heard, sometimes results. So isn’t “why would a man want to get pregnant” really the same question as “what is being trans,” when you get right down to it? Just looking at it practically, it is a fact that a trans man could be pregnant, and I couldn’t. And that probably explains a lot of it all by itself.
I wanted to say
This. Because when you say, “Janice, your are crazy to keep chickens in your backyard”, no one thinks you are accusing her of literally being insane. She doesn’t feel threatened by your comments.
A close ground of mine came out about being trans. Or at least, questioning his gender, and hating being male, and considering transitioning, and about how his therapist told him it was like going through puberty again.
And i blurted out, “you’re crazy!” What i meant was not that he was literally insane, but that choosing to go through female puberty, and all the misery that entails, was crazy like keeping chickens is crazy.
We are still close friends. I suffered no adverse consequences. He decided, with the help of his therapist, to identify as a non-gender-confirming man. He wears cute skirts and carries a purse. Even before he came out, i knew he was very feminine. Really, from my perspective, there’s been very little change.
But, and this is an important “but”, the reason i got away with calling him crazy is because we were close friends, and he trusted me, and he knew that my exclamation didn’t threaten any adverse consequences for him. Not even, “PuzzleGal will be looking at me strangely going forward”. And i think that’s the major difference between calling someone crazy for supporting a sports team and calling someone crazy for choosing to carry a baby.
At what point did this society include as a more or folkway “Men cannot get pregnant.” I’d be stunned if this was addressed until a few decades ago at most. I am willing to concede there were likley beliefs about sex and gender roles. But, that’s it. Nor do I believe these beliefs were at the core of the society. Since, until fairly recently, most cultures had men as the head of household and decision makers while a woman’s place was at home.
That “isn’t on any other issue” isn’t exactly true, is it? This is just the first example I can think of, I’m sure there are more - but I have only once seen someone say that an individual’s preference regarding their name shouldn’t be respected in most circumstances. I’m not even talking about transpeople - I’m talking about not calling someone “Bill” if they’ve made it clear they prefer “William” or vice-versa or calling them “Victor” if they prefer to go by “Tony” ( for their middle name “Antonio”)
Can you tell her she’s a fugly bitch? Can you tell her that the holy text of her religion is nothing more than a poorly written fanfic? Can you tell her in explicit detail what you and your SO did this weekend in bed? Or would any one of those “forbidden” topics get you ostracized by the community?
If you’re fine with our culture placing limits on all of those other things you might want to say to her, why is opining on her gender so critical to you?
Says who? You? Why should I take you any more seriously than the pregnant person who says “I am a man”?