Oh gee, this thread exists, huh.
I could go on forever because I'm way into the range of too many people I know or knew trooning out, but really I just need advice on strategy.
I know a guy. We were never friends- I would never hang out with him alone, or see him outside of a shared routine hangout (think Church-esque) We talked fairly often when he was still married, and previously had a little arc where he sought to talk to me because he's autistic and I catered to that by being very quiet and mellow, and abruptly stopped and got loud again as soon as I realized that was the dynamic.
Since then, he's come out as trans and divorced the mother of his child. He makes no visual effort yet. Because I've been down this train before I reacted immediately. The first day I knew what was going on he approached me to come out directly, I broke eye contact and went one-word-answer mode so he never did and I avoided having to come up with something nice to say.
In the months since I've set about establishing a brain trust. I picked out the other women in the group and, to put it bluntly, TERFed them. I walked them through the things he was about to do, how his behavior fits into disturbing known patterns (he waited for his wife to give birth, he was clearly attempting to become certain women in the group, etc.) how reactive and crazy he had become since COVID and how, most importantly, there is no need for women to carry the burden of a crazy man they barely know. It worked better than expected. I shouldn't have bothered trying it on the guys, none of them got upset with me but they all went "well, why be skeptical? Let's just be nice." I probably should have expected that but god forbid I expect male feminists to listen to women.
Phase two was just- phrasing- stonewalling him. No eye contact. The only time he has managed to talk to me was when I asked someone a question and they called him for an answer. And then I just said "thanks." The other women aren't willing to go that far but they end up having super patronizing conversations with him because how his autistic behavior seems to be worsening. I think he can tell very clearly that he is not getting any traction in this group and it's pushing him to have more emotional outbursts which worsen his traction further.
Phase three, I don't know yet. I can't kick him out or anything but I think I've tanned his hide enough that he has quit coming with rare exceptions. I suppose if I'm setting goals that should be goal met, right? I'm just worried that quashing him like this means he's hiding at home until he can grow his hair out, buy a dress and snip his dick off and then he's going to come roaring back like a horrible nightmare we thought we had all outgrown.
edit: I guess and since I should probably self-reflect- how I feel about all this is I hate it. I hate how a man with a fetish can jeopardize such a nice social event. I hate how I know exactly where this goes, and how we're all sitting on the stupid ride waiting for it to go there. I hate that you can have so many women saying no and then men in the group go "mmmmmm, boundaries? sounds fake." I hate how even if I acted like a nice TRA about all this he would still be pushing us towards disaster some other way. A nice social group shouldn't have walking bombs in it.