
trans people are under a lot of pressure to assimilate into cis society and to challenge cis norms as little as possible, i.e. a transmasculine person who is known to be trans and/or may not perfectly pass will feel expected to leave room for cis people to treat them like a gender they aren’t. if you know this person is FTM then what’s stopping you from defaulting to “he”?
btw, “he or she” does not automatically include “they”, so let’s also stop referring to him in particular with pronouns he explicitly did not sign off on idk man the way you talk about him conveys very clearly that you don’t do a lot of thinking about trans issues. no wonder he shrugs you off when you ask him for elaboration, he can most likely tell that you have a lot more learning to do before he would wanna attempt those conversations with you