>But also, "misgendering people" is a point of political dispute.
If I ask you to call me Bill and you keep calling me William, you're an asshole. I don't know how misgendering people is any different. Just call people what they want to be called. You don't have to turn this into some ideological battle.
> I don't know how misgendering people is any different.
If your gender is like your name, which you can choose yourself, then it can't be bound to anything you can't change, like your chromosomes or the hormone levels you had during puberty. In other words, it can't map to biological sex. Which, okay, that's kind of the idea, isn't it? Someone wants to have sex male but gender female.
Except that then nobody really cares about gender at all. When you want to have things like women's sports or prospective dating interactions in which people may want to have biological children or anything else where sex differences actually matter, what people want you to declare is not your gender but your sex.
This then becomes the motte and bailey where gender is supposed to be different than sex but somebody who has reason to actually care about sex is then told that they have to accept gender instead or they're a bigot, as if they aren't different. And that is the point of political contention.
You're overcomplicating it. As I said, "You don't have to turn this into some ideological battle." Someone asked the tiniest favor of you, simply refer to them how they want to be referred, and you said no. That goes beyond any ideology.
Calling the man "Muhammad Ali" didn't mean you had to convert to the Nation of Islam. Just call someone what they want to be called. You can do that without any endorsement of the reason behind their request. A "different worldview" doesn't give you permission to be an asshole.
I don't think that's an accurate metaphor, given names are historically pure labels with no external semantic meaning. The direct comparison here is that a man could asked to be named "Karen" and that doesn't to me seem to cause any philosophical conflict. (Some people might not want to do it, but that doesn't mean they have a legitimate reason). (Although there must be some limit here as well, eg "the great and majestic Philip, he who we all aspire to be" surely must be agreed to be unreasonable.)
The difference with pronouns/gender is that they depend on and proclaim external facts. ("She" is used for women and by going by she, I am a woman.) And by asking someone else to say that I am a woman, then really, aren't I forcing someone to change their definition of "woman"/"man"? Why do I have the right to force someone to do that?
Out of curiosity, if someone asked you to use plural pronouns for them, would you? (This is hard to ask in English, because "your" is used for both singular and plural subjects, and "they" has also commonly been used for both singular and plural as well, but imagine) What about pronouns in other languages? Do you really think that in communication, the other speaker shouldn't have any say in any of this?
I don't appreciate comments that suggest that someone you're discussing is an "asshole" for doing something you disagree with and don't think that contributes to the conversation.
What? I hate surnames like 'Bill', 'Chuck' and 'Dick' and wouldn't want them for me, but if some Charles explicitly asked me to call him Chuck, I would call him Chuck, I'm not an asshole.
If I ask you to call me Bill and you keep calling me William, you're an asshole. I don't know how misgendering people is any different. Just call people what they want to be called. You don't have to turn this into some ideological battle.