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No, I would never make any extra effort to intentionally 'misgender' or otherwise antagonize someone by repeatedly getting their pronouns wrong. Because as I have noted twice now, individually I have no problem with the concept of referring to someone as they prefer to be referred. Nicknames, initials, whatever. There's ample precedent for letting some pick their own name and having it be accepted socially.
The game I don't play is "EVERYONE must now make their pronouns explicit and everyone must accept those at face value."
And using the 'wrong' pronouns intentionally would also be caring waaaaaaaaaay to much about this game too.
But by the same token, if you get viscerally upset and attempt to shame or otherwise directly influence my behavior because I slipped up once or twice, I'm also less inclined to think you're acting in good faith, and using it more as a bid for status or control.
Like, there are people who still mispronounce my actual birth name even after knowing me for a while. I may or may not correct them but it just never even occurs to me to take offense or pretend to take offense.
So it's not clear to me why the pronoun thing is even worth stressing over.
Right, but I wouldn't accommodate someone who said "GOD HIMSELF told me that you have to give me $20" either. Because no matter how emphatically they believe it, there's no external signal I can use to verify it, and I'm not buying into this game when there's a personal cost attached.
Likewise, I won't exchange pronouns with every single person I meet or police my own language merely because someone may be within earshot and care about this stuff.
If I'm dealing with someone at a professional level who wants to be called 'he' or 'she' and makes a point of stating this I might do it just to grease the wheels of the interaction, since its not worth interrogating someone's mental state when you're just trying to have a professional conversation and complete a transaction.
But again, the game is "everyone must accept every other person's pronouns."
Right. And I've got my social environment arranged such that I am vanishingly unlikely to encounter someone who would make a big deal out of this particular issue.
And hell, I know some trans people who I have some rapport with and I refer to them as their preferred gender because that's easy. But I'm also reasonably sure they wouldn't have a conniption or try to publicly condemn me if I got it wrong, if I thought they'd do that, I'd minimize contact with them.
The reason I care on a meta-level is that the world seems to be shifting towards the situation where you will be made to care about this stuff and punished for not doing so.
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