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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 8, 2024

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The progressive believes that if you don't respect trans people's pronouns, it will be traumatic to them, as you reject a fundamental part of their identity, and hence invalidate them as an individual - it's a form of violence (this manifests through, amongst other things, trans people actually killing themselves).

Where I resent this framing is that it expects of people in terms of execution, while encouraging people to view every mistake as offensive.

My father occasionally calls me by the following names, especially if under pressure/upset: the first name of his handyman/carpenter, the first name of an employee he fired in 2013, the name of our dog that died in 2008. This does not reflect either that he doesn't know who I am or does not approve of the first name he gave me, just that his brain misfires.

Before we get into any conversation about misgendering, what does the naive error rate in use of gendered language look like? Do people use he instead of she, his instead of hers, on a purely mistaken basis at a 1% rate? A 5% rate? It isn't zero. Now ask them to execute a lie, against their basic instinct, 5,000+ times a day, that error rate will swell.

If trans people are "actually killing themselves" the blood is probably as much on the hands of people who tell them misgendering is offensive, as it is on the hands of those who misgender. Trans people are going to live a hard life one way or another, if they are to be helped the first thing they are going to need to learn is resilience.