Obviously, having had a peripheral friend since kindergarten who came out as trans in our thirties, I misgendered him for about thirty years; but, I didn't know. The moment that he said that he was transitioning to a man and changing his name, I changed my language in reference to him.
Now, the controversy that I've regularly stirred up comes from a position that I stand by -- there are bad people in the world who will game woke ideology for their benefit.
The Loudoun County school rapist, at the time of the rapes that he committed, identified as non-binary, and used they/them pronouns. I never referred to him as a they. A large part of my reasoning is that I know what it's like to be a horny, highschool boy, and what it's like to interact with horny, highschool boys. It's not lost on me that, especially in a large school, if a policy were passed that said that a boy in a dress could waltz into the girl's bathroom and nobody was allowed to question it, that there would be one boy at the school who would figure that he could manipulate the policy to fulfil his sick pleasures. Hell, the woke mob believes that one in three girls in college experiences sexual assault, and we're acting surprised that a high school boy was willing to lie about his gender in order to rape a girl and get the school district to cover it up.
Anyway, a year since the rape, the boy is now identifying as a boy. So, I guess I took the risk of misgendering the rapist; but, in reality, everybody who was referring to him as "they/them" was just buying the lie.
I have never referred to Jessica Yaniv by his preferred "she/her" pronouns. I don't believe that I'm misgendering a trans person. If I am, I don't know it. I'm talking about a sick man, and a known liar. This is a man who scheduled Brazilian wax sessions just to force women into the choice of touching his dick or getting sued into oblivion. This is a man who tried to schedule a topless pool party for young girls -- parents not welcome. This is a man who claims that he's having periods. We know that he's sick, and that he's a liar. I don't believe that he's telling the truth about his gender identity. Even if he is telling the truth, I don't want him associated with the trans community -- they're dealing with enough bullshit already.
I have never referred to Ezra Miller by his stated "they/them" pronouns. I believe that he's lying. I believe that he's gaming the system. He's grabbed a woman by the throat, and thrown her to the ground on video. He's been arrested for assaulting a woman at a bar in Hawaii. He's been arrested for felony burglary. If we were telling the truth, that he's a man, he'd be in prison for about six to ten years. He's gaming the system, and exploiting the power of woke ideology to get away with whatever he wants to do.
This pronoun thing, which seems small, is contaminating our thinking.
If we buy into woke ideology entirely, that means that we're not allowed to even voice the possibility that a person is simply lying about his or her gender. There are states that are already experimenting with laws that allow men to be sent to women's prisons if they simply say that they identify as non-binary. Spain has had that policy for a while. Why am I not surprised that almost every biological male, non-binary and trans inmate has raped a woman in prison?
If we can't ask whether or not a person is lying to game the system, we certainly can't ask whether or not kids might simply be wrong, or that they were influenced by the internet, or that kids might regret their decisions later if they alter their bodies.
If wokeness isn't a religion, it's trying to be. It has its own dogma, and its own strategy for manipulating language so it seems like it can't be wrong and can't be questioned.