So, let's say that someone (like a user of Twitter, or a writer for the Babylon Bee) points out that Rachel Levine, a public figure, is a man.
How does that actually harm him?
He's in an incredibly privileged position, and indeed has enjoyed male privilege for pretty much all of his life.
Should we avoid saying any truth that might slightly upset a public figure, or anyone really, just in case they feel a bit sad if they happen to hear it?
https://sci-hub.st/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32345113/
Good paper, but here's a sentence from the conclusion.
> Findings underscore the importance of risk factors such as emotional neglect within the family, interpersonal microaggressions, and internalized self-stigma
In addition, what reason do you have to not respect a trans persons identity? Biological sex is already much _much_ more complex than just the XY we're taught in middle school. Klinefelter's and intersex people both exist, as do other blurred lines.
There's also nothing inherent about 'sex == gender' - transgender people have existed throughout history:
So everyone just has to lie and pretend, just to make trans people feel better? Push down their own beliefs and feelings in case someone who thinks they are the opposite sex reads anything that may be critical of this?
As a more concrete counterpoint, here's a news article from last year which includes a lesbian woman describing her rape by a man who calls himself a woman: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-57853385
The editors decided to replace the male pronouns she used to describe him with "they" and "them":
> Another reported a trans woman physically forcing her to have sex after they went on a date.
> "[They] threatened to out me as a terf and risk my job if I refused to sleep with [them]," she wrote. "I was too young to argue and had been brainwashed by queer theory so [they were] a 'woman' even if every fibre of my being was screaming throughout so I agreed to go home with [them]. [They] used physical force when I changed my mind upon seeing [their] penis and raped me."
How do you think she must have felt reading this truthful quote of hers mangled into a lie? A rape victim who isn't permitted to have her rape accurately reported, after she had already been shamed into getting into bed with this man by him weaponising the same ideology that censors her now.
Was she guilty of hate speech by describing her own rape?
I read your source by the way, it's very one-sided, and mostly irrelevant to the conversation about speech.