I probably misunderstood you! this makes me irritated and and little on edge, I shouldn't have been short with you, I apologize. :D
Most of the time people using pronouns are engaging in a polite...oh, it's not a lie, exactly.
It's like if someone who has a PhD in - I don't know, philosophy - wants to be called "doctor"? That isn't a big deal most of the time, right, it's technically true and generally harmless, but everyone understands that if you're on a plane and the flight attendant asks "is there a doctor on board" it would be wrong for the PhD in philosophy to say yes. That's not an offer to play logical games, that's a serious situation where everyone needs to be a grownup.
(I might be torturing this metaphor, but most people are not maliciously lying about pronouns nor do they really believe that trans women are the same as - I am sorry to be blunt and mean - actual women, in my experience.)
"Most of the time people using pronouns are engaging in a polite."
I think many, many people (even on the Left) use pronouns because (1) it signals that you're part of a tribe, and/or (2) they're scared of triggering a trantrum (and if it's a woman in direct communication with a trans-identifying, they are aware the otther person is male and they're afraid of a physical confrontation.
Just to be clear, I'm a born again-TERF, and anti-trans talk doesn't offend me until it starts trespassing on human dignity, which isn't happening here.
My point is that the reason anyone calls a trans woman she should not be affected by whether or not the trans woman is a good person or not. The logic doesn't follow. If you don't think a trans woman is actually a woman, then you think a trans woman is a man. We call men "he." If a person calls a he a she, that's a lie. Why would you stop lying to a person if they do something you don't like? It's all such childish behavior.
It's about more than doing 'something you don't like' - it's about doing something that amounts to an abuse of power that's afforded to you by the aspect of your being that you're asking others to deny
I'm willing to extend the courtesy of using their preferred language when I judge that they are worthy of that courtesy.
It's like I'm open to calling someone Sir, depending on the context but I'm not going to call a rapist Sir or Mr. X. I'm going to call him you Rapist Mother Fucker.
And sure, all courtesies are lies, in a sense. Yet they are part of what makes society run. In fact it's often children who struggle with when lying is appropriate (for politeness) and when it is wrong - so I would say it's the opposite of childish.
In this type of case It's actually important to help children for example realize that when someone calls a trans woman "she" that doesn't mean the same thing as when they call a woman "she". It's two different uses of the same word and only one of them is literally true.
Because pronouns are used in the third person, often one is talking about someone who is not present. This is why I use whatever makes the most sense in context, where “she” is the person who sounds/appears to be a woman. The vast majority of the time I use the pronoun for their natal sex because it’s obvious that’s what they are (and when they are a rapist or an aggressive male-voiced person, or a criminal who has been charged with violence usually not attributed to women I know they’re a man). I don’t believe that “nobody passes” because I have at times been surprised. If I think someone’s a woman, and I find out they’re a man, I’m not going to switch pronouns from ‘she to ‘he’ when referring to them because it would be confusing (even to me, where I’d have to think about it first). Even if that person were a criminal on drug deal charges, theft and child neglect, I would still refer to them as “she”. It’s not a moral judgement, it’s a logical one. The day that a fully passing trans person who I thought was a woman turns out to be a rapist, I will have a quandary as to how to refer to them, but so far every single raping, kidnapping, torturing trans “woman” has been an obvious man pretending to be a woman; referring to them as he/him is obvious—anything else is jarring and clearly false.
I probably misunderstood you! this makes me irritated and and little on edge, I shouldn't have been short with you, I apologize. :D
Most of the time people using pronouns are engaging in a polite...oh, it's not a lie, exactly.
It's like if someone who has a PhD in - I don't know, philosophy - wants to be called "doctor"? That isn't a big deal most of the time, right, it's technically true and generally harmless, but everyone understands that if you're on a plane and the flight attendant asks "is there a doctor on board" it would be wrong for the PhD in philosophy to say yes. That's not an offer to play logical games, that's a serious situation where everyone needs to be a grownup.
(I might be torturing this metaphor, but most people are not maliciously lying about pronouns nor do they really believe that trans women are the same as - I am sorry to be blunt and mean - actual women, in my experience.)
You're not wrong.
"Most of the time people using pronouns are engaging in a polite."
I think many, many people (even on the Left) use pronouns because (1) it signals that you're part of a tribe, and/or (2) they're scared of triggering a trantrum (and if it's a woman in direct communication with a trans-identifying, they are aware the otther person is male and they're afraid of a physical confrontation.
Just to be clear, I'm a born again-TERF, and anti-trans talk doesn't offend me until it starts trespassing on human dignity, which isn't happening here.
My point is that the reason anyone calls a trans woman she should not be affected by whether or not the trans woman is a good person or not. The logic doesn't follow. If you don't think a trans woman is actually a woman, then you think a trans woman is a man. We call men "he." If a person calls a he a she, that's a lie. Why would you stop lying to a person if they do something you don't like? It's all such childish behavior.
It's about more than doing 'something you don't like' - it's about doing something that amounts to an abuse of power that's afforded to you by the aspect of your being that you're asking others to deny
I'm willing to extend the courtesy of using their preferred language when I judge that they are worthy of that courtesy.
It's like I'm open to calling someone Sir, depending on the context but I'm not going to call a rapist Sir or Mr. X. I'm going to call him you Rapist Mother Fucker.
And sure, all courtesies are lies, in a sense. Yet they are part of what makes society run. In fact it's often children who struggle with when lying is appropriate (for politeness) and when it is wrong - so I would say it's the opposite of childish.
In this type of case It's actually important to help children for example realize that when someone calls a trans woman "she" that doesn't mean the same thing as when they call a woman "she". It's two different uses of the same word and only one of them is literally true.
Because pronouns are used in the third person, often one is talking about someone who is not present. This is why I use whatever makes the most sense in context, where “she” is the person who sounds/appears to be a woman. The vast majority of the time I use the pronoun for their natal sex because it’s obvious that’s what they are (and when they are a rapist or an aggressive male-voiced person, or a criminal who has been charged with violence usually not attributed to women I know they’re a man). I don’t believe that “nobody passes” because I have at times been surprised. If I think someone’s a woman, and I find out they’re a man, I’m not going to switch pronouns from ‘she to ‘he’ when referring to them because it would be confusing (even to me, where I’d have to think about it first). Even if that person were a criminal on drug deal charges, theft and child neglect, I would still refer to them as “she”. It’s not a moral judgement, it’s a logical one. The day that a fully passing trans person who I thought was a woman turns out to be a rapist, I will have a quandary as to how to refer to them, but so far every single raping, kidnapping, torturing trans “woman” has been an obvious man pretending to be a woman; referring to them as he/him is obvious—anything else is jarring and clearly false.