"What is being asked of people in the gendering debate is to go against this correlation sometimes."
Yes. Exactly. That's what's being asked of them. To follow someone's request out of courtesy. Again: why is this difficult?
Yes. Exactly. That's what's being asked of them. To follow someone's request out of courtesy. Again: why is this difficult?
Let me put it another way. Person X asks person Y to take person Z's feelings into account. Sounds reasonable, right? But what if, in doing so, person X doesn't take person Y's feelings into account?
I'd say that'd make person X a hypocrite. There are different goods that need to be weighed against each other here, and person X pretends that this isn't the case.
This is what's happening here. Z = (some) transgender people, Y = (some of) the people expressing concern about pronoun enforcement, X = people taking your current position in this discussion.
In the weighing of different goods against each other, you can reasonably come to the conclusion that person Y should just suck it up because person Z's feelings are simply more important in this case. That's fine, stuff like that happens all the time in society, though you'd be wise to use more reconciliatory language when talking to an actual person Y.
You need to be honest about what you're doing. What isn't fine is to essentially "erase" Y's feelings by pretending that you aren't overriding them for Z's benefit. Because that is what you're doing. (Or maybe you aren't even aware of person Y's feelings. I'm not sure what to consider worse...)
(And yes, the hypocrisy is genuinely what I find most grating about the position you're taking here: the position is often taken by people who claim to champion diversity, inclusiveness, and the equal validity of people's subjective experiences -- but then turn around and selectively decide to not take into account others' subjective experiences when they happen to be inconvenient, and in doing so essentially exclude those others.)
(1) Bob suffers cognitive dissonance when he calls Angela, a transgender woman, "she".
(2) Angela, who has suffered the cognitive dissonance of gender dysphoria for years, has that revisited on her by Bob's insistence on calling her "he".
So, yeah. I'm privileging Angela over Bob here, because it is his mild discomfort versus her lived-in experience.
Bluntly, nobody has been driven into lifelong therapy and suicidal depression by having to refer to someone by a different set of pronouns. If you want to insist I'm a jerk for denying that these two experiences of "cognitive dissonance" are equivalent, you know, so be it.
I'd also point out that your example is rather uncharitable. I personally do think Alice is quite justified in asking Bob not to use "he" as a pronoun, but I also think it's acceptable for Bob to prefer using a gender-neutral pronoun such as singular "they". If that had been the example (which it might well have been, especially given the context of this thread overall), your point would be quite a bit weaker, and you ought to feel quite a bit less righteous indignation. After all, if somebody has a problem because of non-neutral pronouns, it'd be rather reasonable to expect them to accept it when people contribute to reducing their use overall -- especially when that also helps to reduce the discomfort of those other people.
Anyway, thank you for acknowledging that other people's feelings exist. Maybe next time you can even use that reconciliatory language I've mentioned.
this isnt a case about a specific person wanting a different pronoun. its about changing ALL language in the site to be gender neutral. that part is dumb. we dont need to worry about using she and he to talk about alice and bob because "they might be trans"