[mattnewport]

The visible outrage is not from people "complaining about people being upset about being misgendered", it is from people complaining about an actual policy change introducing compelled speech. If people complaining about being misgendered is as rare as you suggest then why does stack exchange feel the need to push through such a controversial policy change?

[hypnagogicjerk]

The policy is about recommending polite speech in a public forum where rules to this effect have been enforced for a long time. And it's articulating what that means to people who don't understand what pronouns are for.

That some people may use a pronoun other than the one on their birth certificate is the way things are going in the modern world, so polite use of the language must take this into consideration.

I have living aunts and uncles and grandparents who still think it's okay to refer to dark skinned persons, and with all politeness, as "Negro." I take it on to school them and, yes, compel them to use polite and accepted speech.

By the way, there is no society or culture without compelled and enforced norms, which by the way are what's under debate underneath all this.

[mattnewport]

> The policy is about recommending polite speech

The policy is not about "recommending" anything, it's about "requiring". That's the essence of most of the negative reaction. There are plenty of things that I will usually be happy to do voluntarily but will strongly oppose being required to do.