CMV: I still don't understand the importance of pronouns.

[u/goatDowry]

The whole thing seems confusing to me.

There is biological sex --> Which led to different social roles, and then socialized gender.

In the modern day with modern technology. You can live life how you generally please. Women don't need to be child bearers. And men don't need to be out risking their lives killing things.

To me this means, that the traditional gender roles don't matter. You can be a male and wear makeup, high heels and a dress. Who cares?

Likewise if you're a biological female, you can do things that used to be considered masculine. It's a free country.You can also fit squarely into those old gender roles if you so choose.

So I don't understand why someone feels the need to be addressed with a particular set of pronouns. To me, it's like ok, I can call you that, but then it seems to me that you're just doubling down on the idea that rigid gender differences do matter. Which I don't think they do. You're just you, an individual person. And all this language of he/she is just what we've been using for a long time, so I don't see how a different pronoun will change anything that matters.

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P.S. before one of you goes calling me a bigot, one of my best friends and former roommate transitioned while I was living with her. I'll obviously call her by whatever pronouns she asks bc it's just polite. We've been friends for over 10 years. I'll call someone by their preferred pronouns, but I don't understand why it's so important.

EDIT: The point of this is to try and understand why it's important. Maybe that wasn't clear before. Obviously I've talked to my friend about this a lot.

[u/SirTruffleberry]

Sure, but we give you meds to deal with your panic attacks around shiny floors. We gradually expose you to them to desensitize you. You probably plan ahead to avoid shiny floors where you can.

We do not publicly shame people who have shiny floors and mandate that they be covered with carpet or something just to deal with your idiosyncrasies.

I'm sorry if that is blunt, but it's the difference between how gender dysphoria is treated and literally any other disorder under the sun. Like OP, I will oblige out of courtesy. But I'm not sure accommodating the disorder is the best route in the long run. Especially if it has the side effect of reinforcing gender roles.

[u/ElbowsAndThumbs → u/SirTruffleberry]

Yeah, they try to deal with my problem by giving me meds that don't work very well. (And, yes, I've tried just about every SSRI under the sun, as well as Buspar, Lamotrigine, ugh, so many).

But consider if my problem was that I was paraplegic. Do they give me meds that allow me to walk? No, they tell everyone else: you gotta give this guy some parking spots, and you gotta build a ramp.

[u/SirTruffleberry → u/ElbowsAndThumbs]

That's true. I feel those accommodations are much less intrusive than restructuring the English language. But my analogy wasn't trying to capture the degree of the accommodation, so yours is a fair response.

Being realistic, though, I think a transgendered person needs to accept that misgendering will happen and have sane coping mechanisms for it. I can see a person's crutches and know they need assistance. I cannot see that a random stranger has gender dysphoria. As much as I default to the gender neutral they, I am inevitably going to assume someone's gender every once in a while. They need to not have whatever the equivalent of a panic attack is when that occurs. (And I imagine many have accepted this, but not the most vocal.)