Edifying work, a must read.

Purple Sage

I mentioned in a response to Skepto that lesbians get called by neutral or male pronouns sometimes by people who take a look at their appearance and assume they don’t identify as women. He responded:

“My first reaction to this was abject horror, because misgendering people is extremely rude and disrespectful in my eyes. Then I realized this was somewhat ironic considering who I’m talking to. So… if you don’t believe that pronouns can do any harm, as you said in your previous post, why do you feel that calling people by male pronouns against their will is bad?”

What an excellent question! I think there are two distinct questions here, in fact.

(1) Why do I “misgender” trans people but not want to “misgender” lesbians?
(2) Why do I care about lesbians being “misgendered” if I don’t think pronouns can harm people?

Let’s start with an introduction to…

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