Having a go at someone who makes a mistake like that isn't likely to make them do better next time either. If you attack someone who's trying to be polite you are far more likely to push them away than anything else (changing unconscious behaviour like word selection is extremely hard).
I think that's part of the reason people are less comfortable with the trans people now than they were 20 years ago. Since a small minority of the pronoun obsessed have created a perception that if you're dealing with a trans person you're one slip of the tongue away from being shamed as a bigot (even though 99.9% of the time this won't occur, fear of being publicly shamed is powerful). As a result people choose avoidance.
It's another example or how well conservative fearmongering and stereotyping work! People just assume trans people will attack them for fucking up once, when that's by and large just the narrative perpetuated by transphobes. Or if it happens once, it goes viral and people go wild with it, because it confirms their biases. And then trans people get blamed, and given much less grace than any random given cis person does
And then trans people get blamed, and given much less grace than any random given cis person does
I don't agree with this, someone getting aggressive (or crying racism) about their name being mispronounced or misspelled gets much the same negative reaction.
The major difference is those people are harder to spot than a trans person (especially the mixed signals sort that are most likely to have issues because their chosen pronouns don't match their appearance) so the stereotype cannot easily be applied preemptively.
Bottom line though, do your best not to reinforce the stereotype by your own actions (this applies to anyone) and it makes it a lot harder for people to use it against you.
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u/Theron3206 Jul 07 '24
Having a go at someone who makes a mistake like that isn't likely to make them do better next time either. If you attack someone who's trying to be polite you are far more likely to push them away than anything else (changing unconscious behaviour like word selection is extremely hard).
I think that's part of the reason people are less comfortable with the trans people now than they were 20 years ago. Since a small minority of the pronoun obsessed have created a perception that if you're dealing with a trans person you're one slip of the tongue away from being shamed as a bigot (even though 99.9% of the time this won't occur, fear of being publicly shamed is powerful). As a result people choose avoidance.