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Precisely. I'm personally against this now, because I think the current transgender movement is, at best, not improving the state of society, and I don't want any of my future children to be transgender.
However I don't really have a problem with this on the meta-level: when I used to agree with the trans movement, I happily and sincerely endorsed this unwritten rule, as I (and it would seem, most progressives) don't really care about free speech.
I think you're half right. I think that progressives believe this is the case (but obviously they can't say this the way you have, it sounds awfully 1984) - and see this as a good thing, because this "conquest" will bring about a more equitable and tolerant society.
But I'm not sure this will work out - I think that the progressive movement is going to keep pushing the boundary, until more and more people are directly affected (e.g. their child decides to become trans), and then they will end up losing a lot of objectives they considered set it stone (gay marriage, civil rights legislation, etc)
There is a limit to the amount of ruin that the public can be made to ignore by social pressure and catchy slogans.
What does "acceptable" mean? I would weakly prefer the current arrangement where I get to say I'm an atheist and take the Lord's name in vain to the hypothetical. But on a list of things that I want to change about the world, it would be pretty low down.
If someone asked me, in confidence, how I felt about the new theocracy - I'd say it's not ideal, but it's acceptable.
I disagree. Being "polite" just means conducting yourself in a manner to avoid causing conflict or offence, which in particular means obeying the societal consensus on issue X.
Further - politeness is a descriptor of personal interactions. When you meet a trans person, and you are implicitly compelled to refer to them by their preferred pronouns, they aren't doing any of the things you said - all of this was done by hundreds of activists/professors/politicians/etc over the course of about a decade preceding the interaction.
If you or someone else manages to organise some kind of grass roots activism campaign that ends up garnering enough support to revert back to the old social norms of calling trans people by their sex (unless you just want to be really "nice") - then that will become the new polite, and the trans person who "politely" insists on being called "ma'am" will become impolite.
As I said elsewhere, I was just describing a typical usage of the "not a big deal" argument (my bad for making it sound like I endorse it)
But yes, obviously the trans movement (like every other movement) asks for far more than just not literally being killed.
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