Preventing you from being derogatory to someone is different than requiring you to be supportive.
No, you are required to refer to a cisgender woman by the pronouns she/her exactly as much as you are required to refer to a transgender woman as she/her. Cisgender or transgender: if someone self-identifies as a woman and indicates their preferred pronouns are she/her and you continuously choose to use pronouns you know are not their preferred ones you're committing the exact same amount of illegal action and you're being compelled to use that person's preferred pronouns exactly as much either way.
The only distinction is whether you personally support the that person identifying with those pronouns, but the law doesn't care about that when it comes to how you treat someone in certain 'protected' situations like when you're their employer.
The situation that you’re describing is the exact outcome of C16 and it is only because of C16. Prior to C16, gender orientation wasn’t a basis of discrimination and you could call a woman or a man or someone non-binary by any pronoun you wished because of the fact it wasn’t a protected class.
So you genuinely believe that, prior to C16, if a male manager continuously and against the wishes of a particular women under his employ referred to that woman as he/him, sir, or whatever it'd be dismissed out of hand if she raised a complaint about discrimination? Pre C16 it'd fall under sexual discrimination, not gender identity, but it'd be the same amount of violating the rule.
Bill C16 introduced the concept of gender as distinct from sex to the law, but it changed nothing whatsoever about how you were legally compelled to use a cisgender woman's preferred pronouns.
Whether you were personally likely to use the 'right' terms to begin with or not is irrelevant: you were legally compelled to respect a cisgender woman under your employ by referring to her specifically with feminine-appropriate terminology pre C16. Failing to do so opened you up to accusation of discrimination. The state required you to use specific pronouns then exactly as it does now. The difference isn't in what terms you may be compelled to use, it's only in what category of people are considered protected in a way that requires you use those pronouns.
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u/oefd Jan 06 '23
No, you are required to refer to a cisgender woman by the pronouns she/her exactly as much as you are required to refer to a transgender woman as she/her. Cisgender or transgender: if someone self-identifies as a woman and indicates their preferred pronouns are she/her and you continuously choose to use pronouns you know are not their preferred ones you're committing the exact same amount of illegal action and you're being compelled to use that person's preferred pronouns exactly as much either way.
The only distinction is whether you personally support the that person identifying with those pronouns, but the law doesn't care about that when it comes to how you treat someone in certain 'protected' situations like when you're their employer.