[ryandrake]

Not OP, but I think we are not obligated to be respectful and nice, but why deliberately be an asshole? It's like someone preferring a nickname. If I know my friend Michael prefers to go by "Mike" and will get upset if I use "Michael", I'm not obligated to call him Mike, but I would be an asshole to deliberately call him Michael. Why be an asshole when you can do something very simple to not be an asshole?

[ohCh6zos]

I think I agree with you, up to the line of participation in beliefs I do not share. It would be awful to go out of my way to harass someone with religious dietary requirements, but lacking belief I would refuse to refrain from beef, or go along with fasting during Ramadan.

[ryandrake]

Calling someone by their preferred nickname or pronouns does not require you to participate in anything. Nobody's asking you to change your own name or fast during Ramadan if you don't want to.

Using another analogy, I have vegetarian friends and acquaintances, and when they come visit, I serve us all veg-friendly food because... I'm not an asshole! Doing this small act does not require me to adopt their religion or become vegetarian myself.

[ohCh6zos]

I don't disagree with you on any of this, I think that's a fairly non-controversial opinion. What about things like letting males into female only spaces? Do we have a moral obligation to affirm their identity? Several religions present a duty for women not to expose themselves to men so we have a conflict.

[deltasevennine]

Sure I agree with all of that. However the culture war you see nowadays is the result of etiquette becoming part of compelled behavior enforced by rules and law. Not just that it is redefining our interpretation of reality and science.

It's not just about respect anymore; it's about truth.

https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/how-one-swim...

Because we didn't want to her feelings Mia, a biological male with a female gender was allowed to compete in women sports. She's dominating that sport now; and it's starting to display a comical mismatch between the old reality and a new reality.

The argument is more complex then simply truth and etiquette. Because proponents of etiquette are literally redefining objective truth. So when you talk to both sides, they literally think they're side is the objective truth. Truth is as fluid as gender and it's literally hard to know which one is real.

There is as much validity to say most humans are male or female as there is to say that gender is a gradient, a small minority of people are neither male or female. These are just arbitrary categorizations that are being redefined.

[Banana699]

If your boy Mike, however, had a temper tantrum every time someone called him "Michael", or exerted public pressure on corporate HR and lawmakers to make it illegal to call him "Michael", I would indeed go out of my way to call him Michael, even if I don't actually know or care about him. It gives me pleasure to enrage entitled people demanding things they have no right to expect.

In order to have my respect and niceness, you have to ask for it with respect and niceness. Otherwise you're just begging for abuse, and you have nobody to blame but yourself when it comes. I suspect I'm far from the only one who see it this way.