Comment by miningape
5 days ago
There's a difference between respect and compel. And it's not a fine line neither. Most people are fine with respecting people's pronouns, especially when it is someone they already respect.
The issue comes when you are compelled by your company/social circle/etc. to put your own pronouns in your bio (signalling fake political allegiance), being fired for accidentally misgendering a (badly passing) trans-woman, and so on.
It doesn't help your point at all that your two examples are things that don't actually happen outside the imagination of reactionaries.
Have you ever worked at a large organization that markets themselves as progressive? If you have and don't have any experience with being pressured or outright told to comply with performative measures like email signature changes, your experience would appear to be an anomaly.
And whether you agree with it or not, there are numerous documented cases online where people were fired for misgendering someone.
Fired for accidentally misgendering someone, or fired for intentionally misgendering someone repeatedly, often for extended periods of time? The first is the situation being discussed, the second is the situation that actually happens.
> And whether you agree with it or not, there are numerous documented cases online where people were fired for misgendering someone.
Easy enough to link some then, I take it?
I have worked at multiple, and it's getting really tiring to read these hyperboles spouted constantly by people with some weird grievance.
This distinction seems to be an untraversable chasm for the prigs PG is talking about.
Anyone (whether I already respect them or not) comes to me and asks me to refer to them by a specific name or term, I'll gladly do it.
Someone comes and accuses me of being an -ist or -phobe because I didn't put my pronouns or link to the latest iteration of a corporate-speak diversity policy in my email signature or just tells me to do it without explanation or discussion, and I'll tell them to pound sand.
If that person cared to ask why I don't put them in my email signature, I'd gladly tell them that I might have if anyone bothered to ask nicely and/or explain the merit of their request but ultimately I don't care one whit what pronouns someone uses to describe me and am well aware the corporation I work for doesn't actually stand for anything in the aforementioned statement. But the prigs won't ask.