Of course I can see that perspective! I don’t fear punishment, it’s just that I do care about the people around me and their feelings. I don’t necessarily think that pronouns are the same as calling someone an actual male or female, personally. I can understand folks who use pronouns as if it’s like a “nickname”. I’ll call you by your nickname if it’s preferred but that doesn’t make you any less of your real name, you know? That’s how I think about it I suppose. 

If I don’t know any better though, I’m going by what I see with my eyes. 🤷🏽‍♀️if I can avoid using pronouns I usually just end up using their names instead. If that name is feminine I’m using it even if they’re male. I’m coming at this in the angle that we’re all human and that no language or name will ever suffice to encapsulate the human experience, so stuff like this doesn’t bother me. It’s more about the biological truth of the matter, and an XY can never be an XX, and can never truly have or share womanhood or live as a woman. Do I actually think that a man can REALLY be a “she”,or a woman? of course not. 

My hope for the future is that “she” and “he” are used correlating with birth sex and that people feel no need to stick within rigid gender norms while maintaining their sex pronouns. Men being effeminate, women being masculine, with no need for transition or pronoun change because those expressions of sex are normal parts of being human. But we aren’t there yet (in fact I think trans ideology is reductive in this area, and is making it worse) but I’m not gonna make too much of a fuss about it. 

 Would you still use preferred pronouns if you didn't risk losing your job and social circle? 

 But people don't have narcissistic rage bouts, meltdowns and don't call you a nazi if you do not call them by their nickname. They do not demand that you in your head only think about them using their nickname, they don't demand you to truly believe that their nickname is their birth name and their real name never existed even if you knew them for years under that name. There are no laws defining usage of real names as discrimination or hatred. It is compelled speech. Therefore for people who are subjected to it, it's a matter of obedience or disobedience under the threat of social and legal punishment, not of politeness or entertaining someone's harmless idea. I mean that's just something to think about. It's good that you made it this far with your own wits. 

 Very true. Not defaulting to most of these people’s preferred pronouns makes you immediately a bad person, even if the person is very clearly male. I’ll never understand how accidentally not knowing what pronoun people use and assuming it based on appearance is bad. Some are chill about it and correct you, but others react like you’re the literal devil for assuming correctly about what you see. It’s like when I apply for jobs with my legal name and someone calls me by it. I don’t get upset when people use my name, because well, it’s my name. It’s not “wrong” it’s just not what I want to be called. That doesn’t give me a green card to violence, and that doesn’t make the other person incorrect . Much to think about. Thank you for this perspective! 

 You can't assume someone's pronoun based on their appearance if a person just made it up in their head, but also you should totally assume someone's pronoun based on their appearance if it's a man in badly done makeup. One of their recurrent stories is how people still call them a guy/sir when they wear their woman costume. I mean, makeup, spinny skirt, isn't it obvious that I'm a woman? That is to say, it's not about logic, there's no way to behave that will allow you to be right in every situation. Frankly it's just an abusive dynamic where you can never win and the contradictory rules only exist for the abuser to always have an excuse to punish you.