I was dating a person who was incredibly feminine, in every aspect, but claimed to identify as they / them. I made sure to always refer to them in a gender neutral way, but I made a mistake twice, and really beat myself up about it. And they let me beat myself up. And then I learned they actually identified as she / them, but really amped up the they / them just just dating profiles. Everyone in their life referred to them as she / her and they were fine about it, but they absolutely let me feel terrible whenever I referred to them as she / her, and called me our hard both times, despite my obvious attempts to respect their gender identity. They also gave me a lot of shit for a bunch of other things, which blew my mind because I've always been such an ally for progressive causes.

I'm glad I'm no longer speaking to them.

Shitty people will use nearly anything as a weapon, unfortunately. And for the shittiest of reasons.

My work got rid of gender preferences next to names on company systems because some people would use mistakes to attack others

They can just deal with like adults now

ERROR - cannot define-

"Their"

The important thing is to place barriers on communication. If you don’t care, then you are the asshole.

Willy wonka eating candy, aka The king of creativity and snozzberries, is now the one to shut down communication in this example.

It doesn’t matter how you identify, what apparently matters is that you use it to feel superior and shut people down based on stuff like that.

It’s like immediately shutting down a conversation just because someone used Fahrenheit and you only tolerate Celsius. Arbitrary and the opposite of connection, but that’s how you tell yourself you’re better than.

It's like students wondering whether to call me "Sir", "Mr Hex", "Dr Hex", or "Professor Hex" when they first come to office hours. I can see the indecision, that social panic, the fear of making a mistake.

Best option, just tell them what you prefer when you see this - no-one gets it right consistently anyway, and folks are more kindly disposed to the helpful.

This is why I always default to "fighter."