(NB - one mention of suicide in post)

Anyway, I've known this person (male) from work for about 10 years. Over time we went regularly go to the pub, chat, go to football matches etc.

He was shocked by my coming out - and yes, I did break it to him personally. Interestingly, perhaps, his first question is whether I was gay. By which he meant - attracted to males. He said he would be supportive.

Well over about the last 9-10 months I couldn't help but notice that he had come up with a surfeit of excuses for why he couldn't go to the match that week, and going to the pub stopped too. I wanted to raise these issues with him, but the opportunities never quite arose somehow. He seemed to be taking a deadly serious interest in work above all else. Ie: avoidance tactics.

Now just last week - with brilliant timing (a complainant's mother had just phoned me to say her son had suicided - I don't think he heard this) - he felt he needed to "tell" me how he had worked it all out. He said he!d come to realise he really was "sexist" and that he didn't like going to the pub or football with women because he felt "uncomfortable" and was worried about a need to protect them. Now, on the plus side (!), he said this now showed how much he viewed me as a woman!?!

So, in short, his "logical explanation" is he doesn't do things socially outside of work with women - ie: not you any more, sunshine.

I think he's viewed the whole thing ( including me) as a "problem to be solved" and where he does not admit to his own weakness in not being able to support me as a friend. Maybe it's an attempt on his part to re-write the rules and take back the "power" he may have felt he had prior to my transition.

Well, he may be surprised to know that I will not be accepting his offer of "second class 'friendship'".

I'm not surprised.

Many males are uncomfortable being friends with females, and vice versa.

That's something I sort of expected when I transitioned. Some male friends who saw me as unquestionably male pre-transition have distanced themselves from me because I'm no longer male. Some people have an acute awareness of the differences between men and women and see the opposite sex as different from them. It's not even a logical thing - sometimes it's just emotional.

Gender is powerful. Gender identities are powerful drivers of association (or why would we need to transition, right?)

Hugs, rosinstraya. One of the hardest parts of transition is the havoc it wreaks on our social connections.

QuoteHe said he!d come to realise he really was "sexist" and that he didn't like going to the pub or football with women because he felt "uncomfortable" and was worried about a need to protect them. Now, on the plus side (!), he said this now showed how much he viewed me as a woman!?!

Yep, I think this can be a hard aspect for the male friends in our life prior to transition to fully come to terms with. And it is a common pattern with male/female social circles. Several close male friends of mine have now become less so, but the flip side is that I have become closer to my female friends (old and new).

I haven't actually had any male friends for the past 10 years. The closest I've come were spouses of my female friends and they weren't people I would have befriended on their own. (Wow! The signs were there all along.) Some old friends from my college days I keep in touch with but I haven't seen any of them personally in at least that long. For the newbies who don't know me I've only come out to people, or realized myself that I'm trans for the last two years.

I was certainly expecting there to be "difficulties" with men that I knew. I think I had expected a better response from someone who I thought knew "me" and would work through the differences. He would probably say he's worked through it - for him - and I just don't like the answer.

Of course, you can't just expect people to change just because that's what you're doing. And you can't force change on them.

And yes, I'm much freer and easier in my relationships with a number of women, as I'm no longer constrained by "maleness".

Quote from: suzifrommd on October 04, 2015, 04:55:38 AM
I'm not surprised.

Many males are uncomfortable being friends with females, and vice versa.

That's something I sort of expected when I transitioned. Some male friends who saw me as unquestionably male pre-transition have distanced themselves from me because I'm no longer male. Some people have an acute awareness of the differences between men and women and see the opposite sex as different from them. It's not even a logical thing - sometimes it's just emotional.

Gender is powerful. Gender identities are powerful drivers of association (or why would we need to transition, right?)

Hugs, rosinstraya. One of the hardest parts of transition is the havoc it wreaks on our social connections.

Thanks Suzi.

Quote from: rosinstraya on October 04, 2015, 03:07:29 PM
Of course, you can't just expect people to change just because that's what you're doing. And you can't force change on them.

This is very true.

Thing is, he (like a good male friend from work) saw you as a mate (in the true Aussie meaning of the word) to do blokey stuff with and he doesn't relate to you like that any more.

I went through a similar thing with a friend; he was supportive when I came out, absent when I went full time. I think the grim truth of it was not that he was uncomfortable being around women (although this is obviously an element of it), but that he was uncomfortable being around a trans woman in public, especially when just the two of us. He was obviously worried about what people would think. By the time I had moved past the awkward stage and had FFS, he wasn't my friend anymore.

Some people have years of ingrained transphobia that wouldn't ever manifest itself in anything so obvious as abuse but still causes them to treat us like 'others'.

Yes, I have wondered whether there's more than a touch of the "wouldn't want people to think I'm in a relationship with a trans woman" about the whole thing. Hmm......my interest in males is limited, but it's all about perception. But obviously I look totally shagtastic at all times, so well, um, er..........

What would the neighbours think!?!

Probably just a transphobe. Walk away.