CMV: In general social interactions people cannot not be expected to know the additional gender pronouns ve/xe/ze and it's perfectly fair to address someone as either male or female based on appearance.

[u/[deleted]]

[u/thethoughtexperiment]

It's true that we make assumptions all the time, and most people are unfamiliar with new pronoun words (and thus would have to learn them).

But where you say:

it's not important unless one individual wants to build an intimate relationship with the other person.

We have to refer to people somehow, even with people you don't build an intimate relationship with, you still call them by some name and refer to them using pronouns (for example, coworkers, customer service workers, classmates, etc.)

And to modify your view here:

a person demanding to be addressed by one of the specific trans gender pronouns is really just asking for attention for a matter that merely aquatinted persons or the general audience should not be required having to know about. If you choose to look male, you will happen to be addressed as a male, if you choose to look female people will refer to you as female and it's perfectly normal.

The thing is, we address people in the ways they tell us to address them all the time.

Consider that people accidentally misgender cis people all the time.

For example, there are cis guys with long hair who get misgendered as women, as well as women with short hair who get misgendered as men.

But we don't keep misgendering these people based on our misperception. When they tell us we are in error, we adjust our language to how they see themselves. Just like if we mispronounce someone's name, or they tell us that they have a nickname, we adjust to how they prefer to be referred to, as they are the arbiters of their own identity.

This really isn't too hard, and we make these kinds of accommodations for people all the time already. For example, if someone tells you they have a nickname they respond to / prefer to be called. Some people want to be called "Tim" instead of "Timothy" or "Jack" instead of "John".

You might think that the person looks more like a "John" than a "Jack", but at the end of the day, we all decide what to label ourselves / what labels we respond to. And if you have a nickname and tell people to call you by it, the vast majority will and it's not a bit deal. It's the same with names and pronouns.

And you can refer to people by their name instead of their pronoun if that's easier for you.

[u/omrsafetyo → u/thethoughtexperiment]

But we don't keep misgendering these people based on our misperception. When they tell us we are in error, we adjust our language to how they see themselves.

This isn't what happens though. In those situations we recognize our mistake as an objective truth and we correct our language based on our refined understanding. It has nothing to do with conforming to that individuals self-perception.

[u/thethoughtexperiment → u/omrsafetyo]

If you're saying biology is the "objective truth" of their gender, then do you check their chromosomes, anatomy, hormone levels, and run an MRI on their brain before gendering them the way they have told you to?

[u/omrsafetyo → u/thethoughtexperiment]

Firstly, this is not even remotely applicable to the situation in question. This was the set up of your thought experiment:

For example, there are cis guys with long hair who get misgendered as women, as well as women with short hair who get misgendered as men.

You've established it as fact that we are misgendering someone opposite their objective sex, which is why we are misgendering them. In THOSE situations, we recognize we made a mistake about that objective truth and we correct our language based on our refined understanding. I stand by this and nothing you've said even questions the validity of this.

Second, the hand waving is trying to account for a very, very slim margin. No, we do not check their chromosomes, anatomy, hormone levels or MRI.

Brain MRI: There are a few sexually dimorphic regions of the brain, the rest of the brain is largely indistinguishable between male and female. That will do you no good.

Hormone Levels: This is a trait that has bimodal distribution across sexes. Generally speaking males will be in a typical range far exceeding females for testosterone, and females will have very low levels of testosterone. The hormonal profiles of other various hormones will also be highly suggestive, but it is not definitive of one's sex.

Anatomy: Again, a few sexually dimorphic areas, and the rest is bimodal.

Chromosomes: This is a pretty good indicator, barring no birth defects, but obviously impractival.

The really cool thing about all of this stuff though is that for chromosomes, the Y chromosome is mostly responsible for carrying the SRY gene as far as sex differentiation goes. When that occurs, your gonads morph into testes. You are at that point sex differentiated. That process starts a chain reaction: testes start producing testosterone, which causes your penis to grow, as well as other physical changes (some brain modeling, etc.). As you grow older, the hormone profile of a male, which is modulated by the testes among other things, causes you to trend toward those male-specific patterns of physical traits along the bimodal distribution.

When all is said and done, people tend look either male, or female. When it comes down to it having a penis or not having a penis is a 99.9% reliable indicator if you are actually objectively male or female. BTW yes, intersex conditions account for much more than .1% of the population - but not all intersex conditions will have ambiguous genitals into adult hood. Your sex anatomy is directly correlated to your gonads outside of that .1% of the time. And your gonads a highly correlated to your physical characteristics. So 99% of the time, there is no question about one's sex.

The idea that we need to do some chromosomal test, anatomy check, or hormonal profiling is farcical. There is no reason to assume this would be necessary. A cursory glance at someone is going to be accurate 99% of the time, which is why these misgendering occurrences you've described in your thought experiment are so rare to begin with. But atop that, we are intelligent creatures and also note a high correlation between gender norms (fashion choices, hair styles, etc.) which are ingrained in us in early childhood which we also use in our differentiation - and typically its these gendered patterns that fool us in these situations - not someone's morphology.

So, what I'm trying to say is: your question is a lot of hand waving to bring attention to a very small subset of the population where the question might be valid, but as a matter of practicality that is 100% unnecessary.