Pronouns Aren't a Free Speech Issue (TW transphobia)

“Forcing me to use your pronouns removes my free speech rights.” - Eric the Cis Man.

Hello, Eric. When I meet women like you, I always get a little irritated because you all expect me to use your pronouns. I’ve seen your avatar and have concluded that you are, in fact, female. My opinion on your gender is infallible because science, so you won’t mind if I keep referring to you as “she”. What’s that? You want me to use “he/him” pronouns? But what about my free speech rights?

I don’t consent to your wife’s decision to use your surname, either, so I’ll continue to refer to her by her maiden name. I’ve yet to work out what that even is, but don’t worry. I’m very good at making these conclusions based on nothing but a 200-word profile and some guesses. The other day when you changed your Twitter handle, you expected us all to start using it. I see your sneaky tricks. You’re clearly taking away my First Amendment rights.

My rights are inalienable. When James Madison wrote the US Constitution, it was because he knew folks like you would one day require us to use pronouns we didn’t like.

I know people think he had larger goals like governmental censorship and ridiculous things like that, but I know better. He did, in fact, write it so that I could refer to Donald Trump as a “she” if the mood struck.

Look, Eric, two wrongs don’t make a right, so I’m not really going to use “she/her” pronouns for you. Misgendering cis transphobes became a trend a few years ago. Do you know who put an end to it? The trans community — the very people you insist on misgendering. They thought you deserved more respect, Eric. Perhaps you could return the favour.

Still, I hope I’ve made my point. You have preferred pronouns, too. You respect others’ pronouns every time you refer to Trump as a “he”, Melania as a “she”, and Andrew Tate as an alien from Xygon. You’ve never said those pronouns take away your free speech rights, so why are trans people different?

Let me answer that question: You don’t want to give them the respect they’re due. You're refusing to use their pronouns to dehumanise an entire swathe of the human population. Maybe that’s because you haven’t educated yourself on the science of sex and gender, so let me get you up to date on that.

Biological sex is bimodal, not binary. That means it isn’t expressed in two poles, but on a continuum with every overlap you can think of in between. There are male and female traits, and most people fall into the most extreme of both poles. After that, things get trickier.

You probably think of women as XX and men as XY, but there are other patterns. There’s XXY and XYY and even XXX. Hell, some people have XX cells and XY cells in the same body.

Some XY folks have extra WNT4 genes, so they develop both testicles and fallopian tubes. Hormone receptors push people even further into the continuum.

To complicate the issue further, gender and sex are different things. Today we’re discovering that the brain becomes sexually differentiated in the womb, so gender identity is inherent. You can’t know someone’s gender by looking at their junk, Eric. Scientists are finding that gender is even less binary than sex.

Your he/him pronouns are no different than a trans person’s.

You’ve been using other people’s pronouns all your life without citing the First Amendment. The only ones you feel interfere with your free speech rights belong to trans people. That’s not an issue of free speech, but hate speech.