I hope he doesn't think I'm weird or something.

Without intention of negative judgement ... dude, you were born female and these guys know you as female and now you want them to relate to you as male. You ARE weird, but your geeky anime-loving friends are probably pretty weird too ... so go ahead and ask them if there's something you want to know. Their reaction to you is not gonna change based on asking "hey, how's it going?" If they react negatively to such a query, they're not going to be your friend no matter how delicately you try to interact with them.

So, I guess my short answer is "yeah, we talk. Go for it."

Well, first off, the term 'straight male' covers a pretty huge swath of people, so I'd hard pressed to say that very much is true of all of them. I'll assume that your friend is talking about 'traditional' straight masculine guys, and venture a few thoughts, which I emphatically do not present as gospel truth, just spit balling.

Yes, straight guys do indeed try to get to know their friends, and keep in touch with them, and we're not even shy about expressing love between eachother. It's just done in a weird kind of way. There's an old cliche that it's ok for a straight guy to spend hours on his appearance, as long as it dosen't look like he did. Something similar applies to expression of emotion. Keeping and easy, casual front on things is a key thing. In this sense a straight guy saying "You're alright, dude," is the equivalent of anyone else's teary declaration of undying love. A lot of male bonding consists of playful insults and ribbing and verbal combat, and getting over sensitive is considered whiny and bad form.

The word 'whiny' brings up something else: stoicism. Yes, we guys bitch about our jobs, our kids, our wives, what have you, but a certain amount of stoicism is expected.

again, this is just spitballing, and I imagine a lot of it is probably true of gay guys, too, with some obvious differences.

I just... wonder about them. I want to understand them better. So my question is... Can I just like... talk to them? Ask them stuff? Like about themselves?

I'm sort of confused about this. What exactly do you want to know, that you couldn't find out as their friend before? I would think you could keep talking to them the way you always had; and the sex change may or may not freak them out.

It sounds like you weren't very close to them before, and they may not have any interest in renewing a friendship (I have little interest in renewing friendships with people I haven't talked to since high school); just keep in mind that that's a valid response on their part and try to respect the signs.

Do biological straight guys try to get to know their friends?

Guys I know tend to be sensitive about trying. We definitely talk, and help one another solve problems like anyone else does. We learn everything we know about one another without asking, though: listen, observe, help analyze a situation, help come to a decision. If something comes up, a moment of crisis and a guy wants to spill his guts, for example, I may know exactly what he's talking about, but he'll tell the whole story, and if pressed I'll say something like, "Oh, I think you mentioned some of that a couple times, but I hadn't really thought about it."

It's a way of protecting one another, this "forgetting" (and it really is forgetting, just putting stuff in the back of your mind and leaving it there). You can't gossip if you don't really remember what other guys tell you about themselves. You're unlikely to fling old wounds in other guys' faces if those wounds are buried.

To people who air everything about themselves to their friends and expect their friends to do the same, and remember everything their friends say because that's how you care about one another, this reticence and forgetfulness appears insensitive. It's not, though; it's just a sensitivity aimed at protecting a different part of our lives, or our dignities.

What I've said here doesn't go for all men, obviously. And it doesn't carry with it any disdain for any other way of carrying on. Behaving differently isn't womanish, and not all reticent men are behaving with this sort of sensitivity.

But I, as do guys I trust, comport myself in this sensitive way, not avoiding personal conversations at all, but not gouging details out of one another, either. We just sit back and let it all be, we observe with couth, and we offer real support and real friendship in a way that preserves our dignity, individually and collectively.

It comes without trying.

And on preview, more specific to your friend's situation, danostuporstar's prolly right.

Can I just like... talk to them? Ask them stuff? Like about themselves? Do biological straight guys try to get to know their friends?

Yes, of course. But "getting to know a friend" is a pretty broad spectrum. Some guys aren't comfortable talking about how they feel about things (well, when alcohol isn't involved, anyway; that's a great equalizer), and your friend might be the kind to be pretty closed off. But it's worth a shot, since in the worst case you end up right back where you started and not keeping in contact with him.

Do be aware that high school friends are very rarely the type that you keep for life, and you might find that you've both gone in different, incompatible directions after the nostalgia wears off.

Oh, and I emailed the link to this thread to him. I don't know if he's going to get an account so he can respond, but you never know.

cmonkey: Don't I know it! There were three gals I was pretty close to in high school and I thought of us as being like the Three Musketeers. Then, I fell out of friendship with one of them my junior year and actually hated for a while, the other moved first to San Francisco, then to New York and has disappeared, and the third... well, she and I remained friends up until our high school relationships started to crumble. I think she may have taken my ex's view while I took her ex's view, and the friendship eventually withered and died when she moved away from Southern California. I find it very odd that I'm still good friends with her ex, and that he's basically the only friend I have who I've known since high school.

And no... no one from my graduating class is on MySpace. I checked. (Which is the only reason why I'd probably ever get a MySpace page.)

Oh, wow! I could write volumes on this since my exwife (now Josh) is making the transition also. I put it to her like this (I just can't think of the mother of our son as "he" but that's just me (and her)):

Imagine you went into a coma when you were 8 years old or so, back before gender issues became important. Now you have awoke to realize the last 30 years were just a dream, and now you have no clue what being a man is all about because you had no role models. That is what you need now, role models.

So, the best way to learn about how men behave is to hang out with men. Go to the gym and lift weights. Go to sports bars for major games. You want to catch men at their most open? Talk to them after they have watched their favorite team, win or lose.

No, men don't really talk to each other much about themselves directly, and when they do, it is often in the third person. As in, "Hey, you remember when Jack's wife died?" "Yeah, he got real broke up for months. I guess you can't blame him." Men learn about each other more through observation than conversation, particularly reactions; we want to know that we can trust the guy in a bad situation. "Has he got my back?"

Anyway, you can talk to guys who have been friends with you all along. They probably already see you more often as just another person with some common interests. Get them to brag about themselves; men love nothing more than stroking their own egos. For human males, the 'gaudy plumage' is crowing about their successes and conveniently forgetting their mistakes.

... and take a six of Bud.

in cans.

Quite a large number of my FL high school peeps have moved to NYC (performance arts high school; makes sense, I suppose). A lot of them still cleave to each other (live together, work together, hang out all the time,etc.), which kind of gives the creeps- I'm somewhat suspicious of anyone who doesn't grow past the social circle of their youth. I still keep in touch with/keep tabs on a number of people (internet makes that easy!), but they aren't my main social network anymore.

I have several RL friends who I only see in person at irregular intervals. Most of them are from my home town but don't live there so we'll see each other on holidays/long weekends and then not again until the next time were both in the same city. We don't spend much if anytime updating each other in between times.

Men are variable. Some will share their feelings with you if you so much as look in their direction on the bus. Others don't give a damn. Most of us bounce around in between, saving the heavy stuff for special occasions. The stereotype is that we're stoic, and perhaps that's more true than not, but on the other hand, some of the biggest gossips I've ever met were "manly" men.

I think the more important question here is one of familiarity. These aren't people with whom your friend has kept in touch, so expecting them to suddenly open up seems like the worst form of presumptuous level-jumping to me. If they ever want to share their innermost thoughts, it will not likely be anytime soon after re-establishing contact. And that's assuming they have any interest in renewing old friendships.

I love you all. So there.

This is fascinating to me. I've heard of ftm folks getting the "biological male" walk right and so forth, but not how to pass for biological male in interaction with friends of that stripe. I never even thought of it.

That said, I currently have no friends and interacted weirdly with those I did in the day, so I have nothing practical to add.

Helen Boyd has written two books about living with a transgendered partner--this is her website, which might provide some answers.

It's different from guy to guy. Most of the really close friends that I have made have had a lot of the same general characteristics: geeky, creative, funny, and mentally arrested around 6th or 7th grade. When we get together, we inevitably just play, although the nature of 'play' has changed from the 6th grade "hey! Let's ride bikes!" to other things.

With others, we've had long conversations about deeper things - very often about relationships and differences in interpretations of events in relationships. This is fairly rare as far as I know as it. Talking at this level is an inherent exposure of weakness/doubt which is socially taboo in the US, for the most part.

A lot of conversations have to do with common interest. If you have a common interest, you just plain talk about it.

Hugh Janus, I just realized I'm very guy-ish, especially as regards the "forgetting" thing, which I always assumed was basic courtesy, but it turns out lots of people are rather offended by it. Anyway, weird revelation.

mischief said exactly what I was thinking (apart from the ftm ex-wife thing). Maybe it depends on your particular circle, but I really don't know any males who would talk much about personal issues with any other male. The third-party thing is a way of saying "this is how I feel" without the risk of exposure.

I am having trouble putting myself in these particular shoes but the best advice I can come up with is that, if these guys were friends before (as opposed to pretending to be friends to try and get into her pants), they won't be too fazed by the change. If they react badly, then brush them off because they are not true friends anyway.

I think a lot of guys learn to relate successfully with other guys, through contact sports. I know I really enjoyed playing football in high school and the first couple years of college, as well as high school wrestling, basketball, Little League and high school level baseball and college intramural boxing. A lot of guys keep that up into their 30's and even 40's, if they hold up. I played in men's basketball leagues through my 30's, and taught a little Golden Gloves. I think girls can learn sportsmanship and team work through contact sports, too, but fewer, by far, do.

Learning to restrain and redirect aggression is important for young men, and helps us deal with our adolescent hormone rush. Guys who were in the varsity sports programs in my high school inevitably had better grades, fewer discipline problems, and made better friends, by far, than those who weren't.

You learn to hurt your opponent in those sports, but to do it fairly, by the book. You learn to channel your aggression and control your anger, and make them serve goals in other moments than the first flush of red you see when you thing you're wronged. You learn to take a hit, and not complain. You learn to play with pain. You learn to man up, and taken a lickin', a play at a time, if you have to because the other guy is better than you, without giving up. And you learn teamwork, and the pleasure of winning as team, and how to spread the disappointment of losing together, and still be a team. You learn something about honor, and honors earned with sweat and sacrifice.

Those are important lessons, that you carry, as a man, all your life, if you play contact sports. And I really think that those who don't play those sports, don't ever make the physical connection with those values, that those who do, do. And still, every fall, I stop by as many football fields as I can, and watch a while, listening for the pop of pads, and the whoosh of air forced out of a kid's body in a grunt, and I feel it, again, in my own memory and body, and wish, afresh, I had one more season in me, to hit a good lick, and trade some paint.

those who do, do.

*hits primo lick, passes doodoo on the left*