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There are two basic situations in which I will use cross-gender pronouns without reservation or reluctance:

1) Cases like Imane Khelif (or, at least, people who are in the position she is speculated to be in). There's something that seems especially cruel in "forcing" male pronouns on someone who, when they looked down every day in the shower, they saw female parts. For a person in this situation, they deserve whatever pronouns they choose.

2) Transexuals who have had dysphoria consistently since early childhood and have at least socially transitioned. This situation suggests to me that there's something real going on, something we could probably study that has less of an obvious link to social mores and fashions.

I think my real difficulty with using "preferred" pronouns is for people who have looked down at themselves in the shower and saw the evidence of their sex for years, and then suddenly decide they are confused about it when *everyone* starts feeling more self-conscious of their bodies: sometime around puberty. That smacks of misunderstanding one's own feelings (though I am open to being wrong on that, the zealous certainty among progressive activists induces great skepticism that anyone in that pond is looking empirically in good faith), and I'm annoyed that my uncertainty and skepticism, were I to voice them, mark me a bad person in some of my social circles. I resent the unearned righteousness.

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And this is the position of all true (as I see us) liberals. Which is why I don't fall perfectly into line with either pole in this tiresome controversy. We can be reasonable people without pretending things for the sake of good standing in a group, if we hold to that value.

I have to say that I lost respect & trust for a number of right-leaning people I usually pay heed to on this one. It revealed a genuine bigotry that disappointed me.

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