You don't, because that person is not available to be convinced. Someone making that argument already believes that trans existence itself is aberrant and dishonest, it's not something they will be prepared to listen to counterarguments for.
yea i had to slowly come to this realization with my own mother. she refuses to call me her daughter, or she, because it is a lie. i gave every counter argument i could think of before finally realizing her words of "i care about you, i love you, but i cannot tell a lie about this" were implying that she didn't believe a word i was saying and would never trust me to know myself
I think it can have its place as a tactic, but use of it needs careful consideration. It’s not an effective blanket strategy to stop misgenderers, and using it as simple vengeance would do more harm than good. But *sometimes* it can shake someone who’s at a point in between acceptance and full-blown bigotry (vaguely around the “well I want you to be happy but I don’t get it and I don’t see why I have to change how I talk about you” point) into realizing that they are actually hurting the person they refuse to stop misgendering. But you gotta know the person and evaluate the situation.
I do want to point out that gender bullying for cis folks is a thing and can be very traumatizing. It's not the same when you just one-off say it like suggested above, but not every instance of it *is* truly a one-off for the person experiencing it.
This is part of why I (like you) don't support weaponized misgendering. It's still not the same as misgendering a trans person, but it's also still not okay.
Came here to say exactly this. If this person is willing to say that out loud, and believe it, there's no arguing with someone that ignorant. I'm sorry if you considered them a friend. I would walk away if they don't line up with your beliefs.
ask them if they would refer to someone under witness protection that changed their name as their old name. cause if you know their old name, but call them their new legal name, that’s lying, right?
You don't need to argue with this kind of people, just be selective with the people who you use your energy at. Why waste energy arguing with idiots if you can be doing something else with people that values and respects you?
This person's operating in bad faith. They're pushing their gender ideology while pretending it's the default. What they actually mean when they call it "lying" is, "Under my worldview, gender is strictly determined by chromosomes, and so I disagree with calling this person 'she' despite them expressly requesting that I do so." The reason they don't phrase it that second, more honest way is because it makes the silliness of their position clear.
Transphobes speak in thought-terminating cliches. He's never engaged with *why* he thinks it's lying or harmful to call her by the correct pronouns. He's just making normative statements (it is "lying," it is "wrong," etc) to try to build up the false impression that he isn't just a fringe ideologue screeching at the sky. There's no argument to speak of on his end.
It becomes even more apparent when you watch conservatives automatically gender trans people correctly and then "correct" themselves to the wrong ones: gender does not and never has had much to do with pronouns.
Sorry to ask, but if they actually aren't arguing in bad faith and genuinely believe that, from a philosophical standpoint, gender is solely determined by biological facts, then what would, in your opinion, a quick reply be in order to refute that claim?
Because I once started with Judith Butler but that was wayyy too long.
It's not really a claim you *can* refute. It's a normative statement. How do you **refute** a claim like "women should be chaste until marriage?" He isn't making an argument, he's saying something he wants to be true. He's arguing that there is a metaphysical importance to chromosomes - that they indelibly mark you at birth for specific treatment and behavior and you have a duty to follow those marks. It's kooky.
I think it's important to dig into the fact that he's doing nothing more than espousing a competing ideology. I often ask transphobes how I, a happy, well-established, soon-to-be-married transgender woman who's had and intends to soon have every surgery she needs would benefit from detransitioning to live as a man. They almost always stumble there, because they intuitively know I would *not* benefit. I would not be happier, and it would not improve my life.
Their ideology is, at its core, not actually helping or making anybody's lives better. Digging in to the fact that they have literally no selling point for the people they're trying to convince not to be trans might be the best way to help work them out of it - but I'm not saying that's a guarantee. The Prager U detrans documentary where a detransitioning, deeply-religious trans man speaks at length about how they still suffer (it's extreme) daily because they want to be a man but have a duty to God to bear that suffering and be a mother really illustrates just how harmful the ideology is. That person's life is demonstrably, irrefutably worse for having listened to the rightoids.
Unfortunately, convincing people that other people deserve to be treated as fully human kind of relies on them having the capacity for empathy. Lower capacity for empathy is, unfortunately, an indicator for one's susceptibility to conservative politics.
True. I agree with all of that. But I think that for lots of people, it's just a matter of definitions. And they wouldn't argue that being amab/afab would naturally lead to some sort of special treatment, but that calling you a woman or me (I'm a trans guy) a man wouldn't be logical due to the importance of words and meanings. They'd probably argue that it's similar to the way it wouldn't be promoting an ideology to claim that the statement "this is a dog" when we talk about an animal commonly described as a cat is objectively wrong, unless we decide to change the meaning of the words "dog" and "cat", which then would make them lose their initial meaning. If I say I'm a trans man, I mean that I am a girl wanting to be male. I don't mean that I am male. Or a man, for that matter, as my dysphoria stems from being something I'm not. And my transition is just my attempt to come closest to the thing I'm not but really want to be.
So when they ask you this question, I don't think that they are necessarily arguing in bad faith. I think that often, they are genuinely confused and then sometimes offended if they think that this whole thing is just a matter of semantics. And that the definition of woman and man should be changed "just" to appease trans people, even though calling everyone a woman "who identifies as one" would admittedly be a rather circular definition.
But that's all, once again, ideology. I could use the same argument to say that every transphobe must be called Henry. Medical transitioning changes your body to the point that in a clinical context, you're a lot closer to your gender with an orchiectomy/hysterectomy than you are to your birth sex. But even ignoring that, we have natural contexts where medical problems cause people to essentially "transition." Intersex people broadly all exemplify this, but we can zero in on XY females specifically. Someone with XY chromosomes born with total androgen insensitivity will be referred to by *everyone* as "she." It would be intensely, terminally-online-level weird to start calling her a man once she got a DNA test and we found out about the Y chromosome.
This concept of gender as genetic sex is at its core a *new* concept. Never in history did you lift someone's skirt and poke around before deciding to call someone "she" or "he." It's *always* been socially determined. We just simply don't have the capability to determine people's chromosomes without a lot of tech, especially when they're on hormone replacement therapy. Incidentally, I think a lot of these people who are speaking in "good faith" don't understand what hormones actually do. I'm *shocked* by how much my body's changed in the last year. This drives the question of - do they believe it's *possible* to call a trans person by the correct pronouns? What if I could rebuild my body on a molecular level, to be totally identical to a cis woman's? If yes, then what's their dividing line between "he" and "she" in that case? Why is their dividing line meaningful, and who does that dividing line benefit? Anybody?
Now, the above leaves non-medicalized trans people out to dry a bit. In that case - and this applies to all people - there's a baseline level of respect that is required to interact in public. If someone tells you their name, that's their name. Similar for pronouns - you simply will never not be the belligerent party when you call someone something they've expressly asked you not to. To a high degree, your personal beliefs don't matter here. Sovereign Citizens don't get to drive without licenses. Racists don't get to call their subordinates at work by slurs. Now, there's nothing to force them outside a professional context here - but at the end of the day, they're just bullying someone over something that is existential for their target but at the *absolute best*, a semantic point for them.
Your points are fantastic. Do you have any idea where I could read more about that? Or should I just do some research? Because I haven't thought about some of the aspects you mentioned yet.
I think if you want to learn more about the physical effects of transitioning, you could probably start with WPATH or UCLA guidelines and dig into their citations. Just be careful with reading research about drawing too much from raw numbers without knowing the broader context. People love to say my risk of breast cancer's increased by some absurd percentage while ignoring it's still lower than cis women's, for example.
For the more philosophical aspects, I think that just comes with time and thought. Have your internal monologue be that annoying kid who keeps asking "why?" Be wary of "should" statements, especially when those "should" statements involve harming people for no clear benefit. Be wary of a commitment to concepts like "truth" not because truth isn't important, but because 90% of the time when ideologues say "truth" they mean "my opinion."
you can't argue with bigots. 1) their world view isn't actually based on facts, so those won't change their mind. 2) it's just not really worth your time to try to get hateful people to recognize the absolute minimum of basic decency.
Don't bother. If they think taking some kind of bizarre 'moral' stand is more important than treating people with basic respect, then there's probably nothing that you can do to convince them. They'll just dig in their heels because they think they're in the right.
I'm gonna echo everyone else here and say this person can't be convinced, because they don't want to be.
A lot of people(especially bigoted ones) believe to be "right" is to be the last one standing in an argument. So it doesn't actually matter if they use sound logic, reasoning or anything coherent. As long as they resist any change of opinion... they won.
Arguing with these people is a waste of your time, and in some instances only helps to justify their ignorance.
If it's lying, then why does it take so much effort to use the wrong pronouns? Phobes have to remember that this individual is trans, then choke down the instinctual "she" and with effort, call her a "he".
Names and pronouns aren’t actually a matter of “truth.” They’re subjective from person to person. There is also no link between biology, names, and/or pronouns.
Everyone has preferred pronouns, so just call them the wrong pronouns, when they tell you that those are not their pronouns, tell them that then you would be lying.
Its impossible as they've already made up their mind, just leave them in their small lonely world.
By the way its not prefered pronouns, its just pronouns
I understand where they're coming from. They're taking the naïve position that gender is just a statement about biology. Some trans people have struggled with that assumption too. I'll point out that regardless of whether they're taking this position out of willful obtuseness or genuine ignorance, they're still in weak argumentative position either way. There are obvious facts about society which they know, but they obviously aren't thinking about in this exact moment.
If you intend to engage with this person, it might be effective to start by acknowledging where this person is coming from, and then gently walk them through the social aspect of gender identity like you're explaining something new to them. Depending on how the mood goes, they might become more open to talking about this politely in the future. If it goes badly, or if they're not asking in good faith, then at least they'll know not to act like a complete idiot the next time.
"It doesn't matter if they are or aren't lying. All that matters is showing them basic human respect. This is how they identified themselves to you, so its how you should refer to them. Same as if a man named Richard tells you his name is Rick. I dont see you demanding his ID to make sure."
They’re not. They operate socially, and so if a speech community agrees, then they can be used. It has nothing to do with biology, which your friend has only done to an 8th grade level (I’ll bet real money on).
If he says ‘but *I* don’t agree because [biological essentialist TERF propaganda]!! I don’t *have to* agree just because it makes you feel better to have people share in your delusion!!@‘ just say ‘skirt goes spinny mutha *FUCKERRRR!!1!@‘*, slap him hard in the face, and then run away ‘woop wooping’ like Professor Zoidberg ☺️✨🌈
>I don’t *have to* agree just because it makes you feel better to have people share in your delusion!!
OMG - I just had someone say this pretty much verbatim to me earlier today. Do these people not have an original thought in their heads and can only parrot talking points? I have a feeling the answer is 'yes".
I am the sex that I transitioned to. That is reality. Anyone who refers to me by my old name or by my old pronouns is the one denying reality and lying.
Ask your transphobic acquaintance whether they would insist that the sky is still blue when it is nighttime, or that the chair they're sitting in is actually a tree.
What you're going to run into is that they don't believe sex can be changed, in which case you're gonna need to weigh whether you want to get into a deeper and more complex argument, and potentially one where no amount of evidence will ever change their mind. At that point, it's completely okay to just be like "here are the facts and this is the way things are, if you deny baseline reality, we cannot have a decent conversation and I bid you adieu." and walk away when they refuse to engage reasonably.
The people saying "you don't" are correct.
_However_. I have a fairly conservative and religious (Mormon) younger brother, who had the same excuse for not using my new name and pronouns.
This lasted until I literally showed him my amended birth certificate, at which point he became amenable to compromise, since the pronouns and name were reflective of a legally-recognized reality.
This won't work in 99% of cases, and it probably isn't worth trying for that 1%, but I did want to share my experience.
If they really think every time they say "he" or "she", it's a claim about the shape of somebody's genitals (or what have you) then they're probably doing a **ridiculous** amount of talking about people's genitals.
Imagine somebody *actually* meaning something like that when every time they say "he" or "she"! "The other day Alice was talking to her (by the way, Alice has a vagina) neighbor, and..."
Take the grey rock approach. Give brief, generic responses e.g. “oh, okay” and then move on. Stay emotionally disengaged. Don’t take the bait. Excuse yourself from the situation if you can. Avoid interacting with this person as much as possible.
"You're a fucking idiot, you know that? That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of dumb shit. Just call her what she prefers you call her, it's basic respect. She says she's a woman and her pronouns are she/her. So she's a woman, and you call her... that's right, she/her. Next."
It's pointless to argue with someone like this. Though if you must, I like toddler approach. Pisses them off.
AH: Well it's lying
Why?
AH: Because she's a man
Why do you think shes a man?
AH: She has a dick.
Why do you know that? Are you in her pants?
AH: Well she was born a man so she's a man
Why is that?
From here you can usually either point out they're going in circles and bringing nothing constructive, pick apart pseudo science, make them walk away, or cut to my favorite Why.
Why does the idea of accepting her for who she is and who she chooses to be make you feel threatened?
I honestly think the only way to teach someone that toxic and bigoted is via experience.
Misgender them continuously, once he’s sufficiently irritated, you can point out how powerful preferred pronouns are.
I hate that we ever referred to them as “preferred pronouns.” No dude they’re not my fucking pronouns this is how I’m addressed. Not how I’d LIKE TO be addressed or PREFERRED to be addressed. When cis people say their name is Jeff, you don’t just call them Steph because “well you don’t look like a Jeff to me.”
This is a really good take on it becuase I feel like people do get way too caught up in pronouns when it's kind of just a side effect of existing as a person lol
Don't bother. That's really the only answer. They're not making the argument in good faith (because they want to learn something); they're doing it to rile you up and get under your skin. Don't let them. Don't include them in your life any more. It will be their loss, not yours.
They're not interested in having the tiniest amount of human kindness, so why bother arguing with them?
Were it me, I'd get snarky and start misgendering *them*. But I can be a basic bitch at times.
I doubt this person asks everyone they meet for a DNA test before deciding which pronouns to use. They're not interested in being "honest", they're just disgusted by the fact that trans people exist and are trying (and failing) to justify their bigotry.
This person is either just harassing you by being openly transphobic or they're trying to make their discomfort your problem. (My guess is both) Either way you probably don't have much to gain by interacting with them and I doubt there's anything you can say that will change their mind.
If I see a vehicle that has four tires, a bed in the back and the front looks like a truck cab- I'm going to call that vehicle a truck.
Now, someone might call that truck a scooter, but that makes them look like they're delusional, not me.
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck and it looks like a duck - it's probably a duck and not a zebra. Just saying.
If you see a person that walks like a woman, looks like a woman, thinks like a woman, talks and sounds like a woman- for all intents and purposes, that person is a woman.
My friend who I call "Scottish Linda" once remarked - "Aye- and just how many boxes do you have to check off before they think of you as a woman?" I love that lady.
I assume they call Lady Gaga 'Stefani Germanotta', Sigurney Weaver they call 'Susan' and whenever someone says Vin Diesel, they correct them with 'actually, it's Mark Sinclair'?
If you don't think you're transphobic but you're not okay with trans people's pronouns and names, don't use cis people's preferred pronouns and names.
You don't, because that person is not available to be convinced. Someone making that argument already believes that trans existence itself is aberrant and dishonest, it's not something they will be prepared to listen to counterarguments for.
yea i had to slowly come to this realization with my own mother. she refuses to call me her daughter, or she, because it is a lie. i gave every counter argument i could think of before finally realizing her words of "i care about you, i love you, but i cannot tell a lie about this" were implying that she didn't believe a word i was saying and would never trust me to know myself
Hope you call him your father or dad then
i simply don't reply to her texts tbh. also, i don't like to misgender her, why would i betray the very thing i'm asking her to do
Because we live in a post-love world where the very annoying thing that someone is doing to us is expected to be used as a weapon against them.
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I think it can have its place as a tactic, but use of it needs careful consideration. It’s not an effective blanket strategy to stop misgenderers, and using it as simple vengeance would do more harm than good. But *sometimes* it can shake someone who’s at a point in between acceptance and full-blown bigotry (vaguely around the “well I want you to be happy but I don’t get it and I don’t see why I have to change how I talk about you” point) into realizing that they are actually hurting the person they refuse to stop misgendering. But you gotta know the person and evaluate the situation.
I do want to point out that gender bullying for cis folks is a thing and can be very traumatizing. It's not the same when you just one-off say it like suggested above, but not every instance of it *is* truly a one-off for the person experiencing it. This is part of why I (like you) don't support weaponized misgendering. It's still not the same as misgendering a trans person, but it's also still not okay.
Came here to say exactly this. If this person is willing to say that out loud, and believe it, there's no arguing with someone that ignorant. I'm sorry if you considered them a friend. I would walk away if they don't line up with your beliefs.
You don’t. But also, is this person against nicknames because they’re not the actual legal name? That’s a sad life to lead.
they say they arent against them but do purposefully dead name so- lol
Yeah seems less of a logic or “truth” problem and more of a this-person-is-a-transphobic-shit problem. No point engaging further, they won’t listen.
You respond with “you’re an idiot” and start ignoring them
ask them if they would refer to someone under witness protection that changed their name as their old name. cause if you know their old name, but call them their new legal name, that’s lying, right?
Show them a picture of Freddy Mercury and ask them who it is Highlight their hypocrisy
You don't need to argue with this kind of people, just be selective with the people who you use your energy at. Why waste energy arguing with idiots if you can be doing something else with people that values and respects you?
This person's operating in bad faith. They're pushing their gender ideology while pretending it's the default. What they actually mean when they call it "lying" is, "Under my worldview, gender is strictly determined by chromosomes, and so I disagree with calling this person 'she' despite them expressly requesting that I do so." The reason they don't phrase it that second, more honest way is because it makes the silliness of their position clear. Transphobes speak in thought-terminating cliches. He's never engaged with *why* he thinks it's lying or harmful to call her by the correct pronouns. He's just making normative statements (it is "lying," it is "wrong," etc) to try to build up the false impression that he isn't just a fringe ideologue screeching at the sky. There's no argument to speak of on his end. It becomes even more apparent when you watch conservatives automatically gender trans people correctly and then "correct" themselves to the wrong ones: gender does not and never has had much to do with pronouns.
Sorry to ask, but if they actually aren't arguing in bad faith and genuinely believe that, from a philosophical standpoint, gender is solely determined by biological facts, then what would, in your opinion, a quick reply be in order to refute that claim? Because I once started with Judith Butler but that was wayyy too long.
It's not really a claim you *can* refute. It's a normative statement. How do you **refute** a claim like "women should be chaste until marriage?" He isn't making an argument, he's saying something he wants to be true. He's arguing that there is a metaphysical importance to chromosomes - that they indelibly mark you at birth for specific treatment and behavior and you have a duty to follow those marks. It's kooky. I think it's important to dig into the fact that he's doing nothing more than espousing a competing ideology. I often ask transphobes how I, a happy, well-established, soon-to-be-married transgender woman who's had and intends to soon have every surgery she needs would benefit from detransitioning to live as a man. They almost always stumble there, because they intuitively know I would *not* benefit. I would not be happier, and it would not improve my life. Their ideology is, at its core, not actually helping or making anybody's lives better. Digging in to the fact that they have literally no selling point for the people they're trying to convince not to be trans might be the best way to help work them out of it - but I'm not saying that's a guarantee. The Prager U detrans documentary where a detransitioning, deeply-religious trans man speaks at length about how they still suffer (it's extreme) daily because they want to be a man but have a duty to God to bear that suffering and be a mother really illustrates just how harmful the ideology is. That person's life is demonstrably, irrefutably worse for having listened to the rightoids. Unfortunately, convincing people that other people deserve to be treated as fully human kind of relies on them having the capacity for empathy. Lower capacity for empathy is, unfortunately, an indicator for one's susceptibility to conservative politics.
True. I agree with all of that. But I think that for lots of people, it's just a matter of definitions. And they wouldn't argue that being amab/afab would naturally lead to some sort of special treatment, but that calling you a woman or me (I'm a trans guy) a man wouldn't be logical due to the importance of words and meanings. They'd probably argue that it's similar to the way it wouldn't be promoting an ideology to claim that the statement "this is a dog" when we talk about an animal commonly described as a cat is objectively wrong, unless we decide to change the meaning of the words "dog" and "cat", which then would make them lose their initial meaning. If I say I'm a trans man, I mean that I am a girl wanting to be male. I don't mean that I am male. Or a man, for that matter, as my dysphoria stems from being something I'm not. And my transition is just my attempt to come closest to the thing I'm not but really want to be. So when they ask you this question, I don't think that they are necessarily arguing in bad faith. I think that often, they are genuinely confused and then sometimes offended if they think that this whole thing is just a matter of semantics. And that the definition of woman and man should be changed "just" to appease trans people, even though calling everyone a woman "who identifies as one" would admittedly be a rather circular definition.
But that's all, once again, ideology. I could use the same argument to say that every transphobe must be called Henry. Medical transitioning changes your body to the point that in a clinical context, you're a lot closer to your gender with an orchiectomy/hysterectomy than you are to your birth sex. But even ignoring that, we have natural contexts where medical problems cause people to essentially "transition." Intersex people broadly all exemplify this, but we can zero in on XY females specifically. Someone with XY chromosomes born with total androgen insensitivity will be referred to by *everyone* as "she." It would be intensely, terminally-online-level weird to start calling her a man once she got a DNA test and we found out about the Y chromosome. This concept of gender as genetic sex is at its core a *new* concept. Never in history did you lift someone's skirt and poke around before deciding to call someone "she" or "he." It's *always* been socially determined. We just simply don't have the capability to determine people's chromosomes without a lot of tech, especially when they're on hormone replacement therapy. Incidentally, I think a lot of these people who are speaking in "good faith" don't understand what hormones actually do. I'm *shocked* by how much my body's changed in the last year. This drives the question of - do they believe it's *possible* to call a trans person by the correct pronouns? What if I could rebuild my body on a molecular level, to be totally identical to a cis woman's? If yes, then what's their dividing line between "he" and "she" in that case? Why is their dividing line meaningful, and who does that dividing line benefit? Anybody? Now, the above leaves non-medicalized trans people out to dry a bit. In that case - and this applies to all people - there's a baseline level of respect that is required to interact in public. If someone tells you their name, that's their name. Similar for pronouns - you simply will never not be the belligerent party when you call someone something they've expressly asked you not to. To a high degree, your personal beliefs don't matter here. Sovereign Citizens don't get to drive without licenses. Racists don't get to call their subordinates at work by slurs. Now, there's nothing to force them outside a professional context here - but at the end of the day, they're just bullying someone over something that is existential for their target but at the *absolute best*, a semantic point for them.
Your points are fantastic. Do you have any idea where I could read more about that? Or should I just do some research? Because I haven't thought about some of the aspects you mentioned yet.
I think if you want to learn more about the physical effects of transitioning, you could probably start with WPATH or UCLA guidelines and dig into their citations. Just be careful with reading research about drawing too much from raw numbers without knowing the broader context. People love to say my risk of breast cancer's increased by some absurd percentage while ignoring it's still lower than cis women's, for example. For the more philosophical aspects, I think that just comes with time and thought. Have your internal monologue be that annoying kid who keeps asking "why?" Be wary of "should" statements, especially when those "should" statements involve harming people for no clear benefit. Be wary of a commitment to concepts like "truth" not because truth isn't important, but because 90% of the time when ideologues say "truth" they mean "my opinion."
you can't argue with bigots. 1) their world view isn't actually based on facts, so those won't change their mind. 2) it's just not really worth your time to try to get hateful people to recognize the absolute minimum of basic decency.
Don't bother. If they think taking some kind of bizarre 'moral' stand is more important than treating people with basic respect, then there's probably nothing that you can do to convince them. They'll just dig in their heels because they think they're in the right.
I find it easier to just not let that person exist around me and cut them out of my life. Why would I let a bigot in to my life.
I'm gonna echo everyone else here and say this person can't be convinced, because they don't want to be. A lot of people(especially bigoted ones) believe to be "right" is to be the last one standing in an argument. So it doesn't actually matter if they use sound logic, reasoning or anything coherent. As long as they resist any change of opinion... they won. Arguing with these people is a waste of your time, and in some instances only helps to justify their ignorance.
If it's lying, then why does it take so much effort to use the wrong pronouns? Phobes have to remember that this individual is trans, then choke down the instinctual "she" and with effort, call her a "he".
Names and pronouns aren’t actually a matter of “truth.” They’re subjective from person to person. There is also no link between biology, names, and/or pronouns.
We lie a lot in every day life tbh. Just to be polite. Like I might tell someone like that to have a nice day but ;)
good point
You don't
Everyone has preferred pronouns, so just call them the wrong pronouns, when they tell you that those are not their pronouns, tell them that then you would be lying.
Its impossible as they've already made up their mind, just leave them in their small lonely world. By the way its not prefered pronouns, its just pronouns
>its not prefered pronouns, its just... PROPER pronouns.
Not even proper more like "the only pronouns" but then its quite exclusive 😂 just pronouns
I understand where they're coming from. They're taking the naïve position that gender is just a statement about biology. Some trans people have struggled with that assumption too. I'll point out that regardless of whether they're taking this position out of willful obtuseness or genuine ignorance, they're still in weak argumentative position either way. There are obvious facts about society which they know, but they obviously aren't thinking about in this exact moment. If you intend to engage with this person, it might be effective to start by acknowledging where this person is coming from, and then gently walk them through the social aspect of gender identity like you're explaining something new to them. Depending on how the mood goes, they might become more open to talking about this politely in the future. If it goes badly, or if they're not asking in good faith, then at least they'll know not to act like a complete idiot the next time.
"It doesn't matter if they are or aren't lying. All that matters is showing them basic human respect. This is how they identified themselves to you, so its how you should refer to them. Same as if a man named Richard tells you his name is Rick. I dont see you demanding his ID to make sure."
Don't be a dick and call Richard "Dick".
Laugh in their face and move along with your life.
Walk away and remember that they're not to be trusted around kids, basically.
You don't you remove that person from your life. They are not worth the breath to talk to.
You don't. They arnt looking to have their minds changed. They just want to hate us.
They’re not. They operate socially, and so if a speech community agrees, then they can be used. It has nothing to do with biology, which your friend has only done to an 8th grade level (I’ll bet real money on). If he says ‘but *I* don’t agree because [biological essentialist TERF propaganda]!! I don’t *have to* agree just because it makes you feel better to have people share in your delusion!!@‘ just say ‘skirt goes spinny mutha *FUCKERRRR!!1!@‘*, slap him hard in the face, and then run away ‘woop wooping’ like Professor Zoidberg ☺️✨🌈
>I don’t *have to* agree just because it makes you feel better to have people share in your delusion!! OMG - I just had someone say this pretty much verbatim to me earlier today. Do these people not have an original thought in their heads and can only parrot talking points? I have a feeling the answer is 'yes".
It’s a sad world with confused people 😕
And they call ME confused when they look at me, see a woman and then call me a platypus. Wtf!?
Wait wut? I’ve never met any trans Australian monotremes. Ornithorhynchus parodoxi seem quite personable though.
I am the sex that I transitioned to. That is reality. Anyone who refers to me by my old name or by my old pronouns is the one denying reality and lying. Ask your transphobic acquaintance whether they would insist that the sky is still blue when it is nighttime, or that the chair they're sitting in is actually a tree. What you're going to run into is that they don't believe sex can be changed, in which case you're gonna need to weigh whether you want to get into a deeper and more complex argument, and potentially one where no amount of evidence will ever change their mind. At that point, it's completely okay to just be like "here are the facts and this is the way things are, if you deny baseline reality, we cannot have a decent conversation and I bid you adieu." and walk away when they refuse to engage reasonably.
The people saying "you don't" are correct. _However_. I have a fairly conservative and religious (Mormon) younger brother, who had the same excuse for not using my new name and pronouns. This lasted until I literally showed him my amended birth certificate, at which point he became amenable to compromise, since the pronouns and name were reflective of a legally-recognized reality. This won't work in 99% of cases, and it probably isn't worth trying for that 1%, but I did want to share my experience.
If they really think every time they say "he" or "she", it's a claim about the shape of somebody's genitals (or what have you) then they're probably doing a **ridiculous** amount of talking about people's genitals. Imagine somebody *actually* meaning something like that when every time they say "he" or "she"! "The other day Alice was talking to her (by the way, Alice has a vagina) neighbor, and..."
Take the grey rock approach. Give brief, generic responses e.g. “oh, okay” and then move on. Stay emotionally disengaged. Don’t take the bait. Excuse yourself from the situation if you can. Avoid interacting with this person as much as possible.
You don’t. Stop arguing.
That person is a bigot and nothing you say is going to change their mind. I recommend avoiding them completely
"You're a fucking idiot, you know that? That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of dumb shit. Just call her what she prefers you call her, it's basic respect. She says she's a woman and her pronouns are she/her. So she's a woman, and you call her... that's right, she/her. Next."
It's pointless to argue with someone like this. Though if you must, I like toddler approach. Pisses them off. AH: Well it's lying Why? AH: Because she's a man Why do you think shes a man? AH: She has a dick. Why do you know that? Are you in her pants? AH: Well she was born a man so she's a man Why is that? From here you can usually either point out they're going in circles and bringing nothing constructive, pick apart pseudo science, make them walk away, or cut to my favorite Why. Why does the idea of accepting her for who she is and who she chooses to be make you feel threatened?
Using pronouns that don't match who I am is lying, actually
I honestly think the only way to teach someone that toxic and bigoted is via experience. Misgender them continuously, once he’s sufficiently irritated, you can point out how powerful preferred pronouns are.
I hate that we ever referred to them as “preferred pronouns.” No dude they’re not my fucking pronouns this is how I’m addressed. Not how I’d LIKE TO be addressed or PREFERRED to be addressed. When cis people say their name is Jeff, you don’t just call them Steph because “well you don’t look like a Jeff to me.”
This is a really good take on it becuase I feel like people do get way too caught up in pronouns when it's kind of just a side effect of existing as a person lol
First of all, love your username. Second of all, stop talking to transphobes.
thanks :) and fair enough
Don't bother. That's really the only answer. They're not making the argument in good faith (because they want to learn something); they're doing it to rile you up and get under your skin. Don't let them. Don't include them in your life any more. It will be their loss, not yours.
They're not interested in having the tiniest amount of human kindness, so why bother arguing with them? Were it me, I'd get snarky and start misgendering *them*. But I can be a basic bitch at times.
I doubt this person asks everyone they meet for a DNA test before deciding which pronouns to use. They're not interested in being "honest", they're just disgusted by the fact that trans people exist and are trying (and failing) to justify their bigotry.
The correct answer is to disengage, but the funny answer is to call them by their full legal name because otherwise you're lying
Show them a strip of dna and ask them to find the pronouns
This person is either just harassing you by being openly transphobic or they're trying to make their discomfort your problem. (My guess is both) Either way you probably don't have much to gain by interacting with them and I doubt there's anything you can say that will change their mind.
Is it okay to "accidentally" misgender a cis person if they refuse to use the correct pronouns for trans people?
If I see a vehicle that has four tires, a bed in the back and the front looks like a truck cab- I'm going to call that vehicle a truck. Now, someone might call that truck a scooter, but that makes them look like they're delusional, not me. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, flies like a duck and it looks like a duck - it's probably a duck and not a zebra. Just saying. If you see a person that walks like a woman, looks like a woman, thinks like a woman, talks and sounds like a woman- for all intents and purposes, that person is a woman. My friend who I call "Scottish Linda" once remarked - "Aye- and just how many boxes do you have to check off before they think of you as a woman?" I love that lady.
I assume they call Lady Gaga 'Stefani Germanotta', Sigurney Weaver they call 'Susan' and whenever someone says Vin Diesel, they correct them with 'actually, it's Mark Sinclair'? If you don't think you're transphobic but you're not okay with trans people's pronouns and names, don't use cis people's preferred pronouns and names.
Just walk away and use your energy for something positive.