Please see the disclaimer.
It should be well known in the tech world about the recent problems regarding a new Code of Conduct at Stack Overflow.
After this fiasco, I am feeling vindicated about my policy of not having a Code of Conduct for Yzena.
I think it’s past time for me to make comments about “misgendering” and its clash with free speech.
Trigger Warning: This post is blunt and strong in defense of truth, which means that it will be considered “transphobic” by those who have motivations to suppress the truth and free speech.
As I have said before, there is no “freedom from offense.” The most important thing this means is that people cannot be compelled to show respect to others.
Transgender people, if you demand that others use your preferred pronoun, you are compelling them to show you respect. In that case, you are not the victim; you are an authoritarian, and you are attempting to remove their freedom of speech and their agency.
But that is not all: if you pretend that there are more than than two genders, and then demand that others memorize your particular pronoun that isn’t even in the English language, you are presenting them with a Kafka trap because expecting the average person to know any more pronouns than they were taught in grade school is expecting them to read your mind. And even once you tell them, you are expecting them to learn it just for you. That’s a tall order.
To all authoritarian trans people who demand people use specific pronouns and try to legislate their compliance with your demands, I believe that someday, you will find that you will lose your own liberties, and they will probably be taken away by those who you put in power in order to force others to use your preferred pronouns.
You reap what you sow.
For me, if I were to meet such a person, interacting with them would be too much work; I would just walk away.
I know one non-binary person (as far as I know). That person prefers to go by “they/them”. I was told once, and I have done it ever since, out of respect. They did not need to ask for it because I could respect them.
However, if they had demanded that I memorize the forms of a pronoun I did not know and then expect me to get it right, they would have lost my respect. I can handle “they” and “them” because it is a pronoun form I recognize. (Likewise, I can also handle “it” and its forms.) But expecting more beyond that would have told me that they do not respect me and were demanding more from me than they were willing to give.
At that point, why should I give them respect?