Misgendering
What I don't get is this: Why would you even want to "misgender" someone. What harm is there in just doing the polite thing? (online comment in a discussion of Jordan Peterson’s objections to Canadian law,1 which in some contexts makes it illegal to deliberately refer to a MTF transsexual as “he” or an FTM as “she.”)
It was a good question.
What I say is a statement about what I believe. If I refer to someone as "she" I am stating that that person is female. If I believe the person to be male that is a lie. A law requiring me to call a man "she" is requiring me to either believe something I don’t or pretend to. A norm is holding me obliged not to believe something that someone else disapproves of or, if I do, to conceal it. The appropriate way to change my beliefs is by persuading me that they are mistaken, not by telling me that holding them is rude.
When referring to someone whose claimed gender is different from what I perceive I normally try to avoid the use of gendered pronouns, if only to avoid unnecessary arguments. But I do not feel obliged to do so.
My perception of gender is not entirely a matter of biology. I know one FTM who to me comes across as male, who I would assume to be male if I had not known the person before the change, and I refer to him accordingly, one MTF similarly. But I also knew one purported FTM who was very obviously, in physical appearance and behavior, female. I did not, would not, refer to her as "he".
Consider other examples of the same issue. Nelson Rockefeller, a prominent US politician, was a Catholic. He divorced and remarried. Should a Catholic who did not believe in divorce and happened to be saying something about his second wife been obliged to refer to her as "Mrs Rockefeller"? Forbidden from referring to her as “Miss Murphy?” Believing Muslims who refer to Mohammed always follow his name with "Peace and blessings upon him" (PBUH for short). If I am talking with believing Muslims, have a low opinion of Mohammed, and refer to him, am I obliged to say "Peace and blessings upon him"?
Suppose someone has a disputed claim to a throne — say a descendant of the royal line replaced by the Glorious Revolution or, for a real example (although not one who makes the claim) Karl von Habsburg — and he wants to be called "Your Majesty." Am I required to do so by courtesy, should I be by law? What about someone who has a PhD from a diploma mill? If he calls himself “Doctor Jones” am I required to refer to him that way?
The only difference I can see from the gender issue is that failing to use the preferred title in those cases does not positively assert that the person is not a king or doctor, only fails to assert that he is; you could accept the claim but be opposed to the formality. It is equivalent to my avoiding gendered pronouns in referring to an MTF in contexts where I would be expected to use them. In both cases, the “What harm is there in just doing the polite thing” argument implies that I should politely go along with the claim.
Using "he" to refer to an MTF is a stronger assertion, that he is male. That is more nearly equivalent to a Catholic referring to Rockefeller's second wife as "Miss Murphy" instead of "Mrs Rockefeller." It would be rude to make a point of it in speaking to her, just as it would be rude to lecture either of them on their sins, just as it would have been rude to make a point of telling the purported FTM that she was a woman pretending to be a man, but would it still be rude in contexts where the person in question is not present? Is it any ruder than mentioning that Trump and Harris have both told lies in public? Than saying the same thing with regard to someone who was not a politician campaigning for office? Seen in terms of courtesy all these seem equivalent to any situation when someone says something that I believe to be false, for instance that inflation under Biden was the worst in the nation's history. I am not obliged to contradict him, it might be politer not to, but in some contexts I would. I have no obligation to pretend to believe him.
One reason someone might disagree with me on the gender issue but not in the other cases is that they disagree with me not about politeness but about language, believe that what referring to someone as “she” means is that the person identifies as female, just as some people might disagree with me about inflation under Biden because they have some non-standard definition of the inflation rate. In either case it is appropriate to try to persuade me to agree but not to demand, as law or norm, that if I am not persuaded I pretend to be.
I suspect that many who disagree with me disagree for a different reason, disagree not about the meaning of “she” but about the importance of truth in small things. Many people are willing to tell what they regard as polite lies, say that they liked a meal when they did not, tell a woman that her new dress looks good on her when they believe the opposite, pretend to believe in things someone else claims so as to get along with him, agree with a friend’s political opinion, even his opinion about inflation under Biden, when they don’t.
In such situations I often evade but am not willing to lie, just as I evade the gender question by avoiding gendered pronouns. This may be a respect in which I am not fully acculturated to the culture around me, possibly due to the family bubble I grew up in. I was probably an adult before I internalized the fact that some people don’t care very much whether that they say is true. I have not fully internalized the fact yet. That may also explain why I am still puzzled when, in a context like climate, people are not very interested in whether my claim that something they believe can be shown to be false with evidence easily available to them is true.2
Thinking about my attitude to these issues, I am reminded of something that happened when I was in high school. My school had a sale of second-hand things, probably as some sort of a fundraiser. I saw a set of plates that I thought were very pretty and bought them as a present for my mother. When I gave them to her she told me that she did not like them.
I have been grateful to her ever since for the demonstration that she would not lie to me, hence that I could believe what she told me.
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There was some disagreement on the forum as to whether such a legal rule existed. The relevant law is here. The Wikipedia article on Jordan Peterson asserts, for all I know correctly, that “Since the bill's enactment in July 2017, no Canadian person has been jailed or fined for misgendering another person.” On the other hand, a firm has been ordered to pay damages to an employee for repeated misgendering and “to implement a formal pronoun policy, as well as mandatory diversity and inclusion training for all managers and staff.”
IIRC Jordan Peterson did not object to being polite. He has explicitly stated that if someone asked him to use a certain gender pronoun, he would do so. What he objected to was a law that forced him to do so.
I think the broader point is that the Left wants to take over language as a means to taking over one's thoughts and at least getting one to kowtow before a convention they impose. If you don't kowtow, we can identify you and make you an outcast. This is the playbook of totalitarianism.
Perhaps we should consider ourselves lucky that, unlike Arabic (anta/anti), the second person pronoun is gender neutral in English: you.
Perhaps we should consider ourselves unlucky that the third person pronoun in English is gendered (he/she) unlike in Farsi, for example, where it is gender neutral: u. (Makes total sense given how Iran is a shining example of a society with gender equality!)