MHR said:
I think equal rights are great.
Being called by the pronouns and gendered nouns you identify yourself as is a right you as a cis person enjoy, MHR. I think if you refuse to treat trans people with the same courtesy, then your claim of supporting equal rights is dubious.
IOwnTheSpire said:
I hear stories that make it hard for me to get on board with this pronoun thing, like when someone says 'I'm a woman, but I identify as a man, yet I still dress like a woman and you have to use male pronouns' and it's like come on, you're not making this easy for us!
In that story, the person explicitly told you what pronouns he wants you to use. What specifically is so hard about that?
Politrukk said:
If you look like a woman and you snap at the sound of someone even considering that you are indeed a woman?
Politrukk, I think you are making the mistake of assuming everything going on in the trans person's life is about you. Live a lifetime of people calling you the wrong name, as well as a lifetime of a shrinking but aggressively assholish percentage of the population insisting that they have a greater right to tell you who you are than you have to declare who you are, and see if you don't get a little touchy about it.
Sucks that someone snaps at you for the bad day (or bad life) they've had up to this point, but my suggestion would be to be at least as tough as you want the trans person to be; to accept that they made a mistake and to forgive them for it.
9tailedflame said:
They don't have a right to get mad at you for that.
Anyone has a right to feel anything they want to feel. You do not get to dictate the contents of someone's heart and mind to them, 9tailedflame.
Politrukk said:
The only thing that bothers me about they/them is that it also implies plurality.
Words do not have inherent meanings. They only mean what we as a culture agree to let them mean. It seems reasonably clear from context that no one in that instance could have heard you call that person "they" and think you were talking about multiple individuals, so what's the problem here?
Qizx said:
If that person gets pissed off at me and says "Excuse my I'm a tri-gendered pyrofox," I will laugh and walk away and never speak to them again.
That will teach that imaginary person not to submit to your dominant right to decide what gender they are. Depriving them of your presence will be a pain they'll regret for the rest of their lives.
Jack Action said:
...so, uh, should I be offended people still call me young lady on occasion?
Up to you. I'm a bit confused by the question, honestly. Do you want to be offended, or are you asking if there's some overarching global authority that dictates what your emotional responses are required to be, or what?
GalanDun said:
Someone wants to be known as non-binary? No thanks, I'm not putting up with that.
Can you please explain what exactly us such a burden about referring to a person the way they ask you to refer to them? What specific effort does it cost you?
fenrizz said:
Do we really need a special designation for not being transgender?
Who's "we?" I don't see why there's anything wrong with having a word to describe a condition of being.