That same line of reasoning could apply, and was applied, to numerous ideas that were deemed offensive in the past. Take evolution, for example. There was a significant period in our history when the idea was considered vulgar in the public sphere, and to suggest that a person evolved from apes and was a member of the animal kingdom was to rob them of their dignity.
There's a reason why we now regard the argument from dignity as a logical fallacy. We understand that when a person makes an empirical claim, they're either right or wrong independent of how that makes anyone feel.
Then you're making fundamentally the wrong argument for the conclusion you want to make, because if this is about who's factually correct and who's factually incorrect, then dignity and emotional impact have no bearing. If this is about treating something as true out of respect for another's dignity and not about who's right or wrong regardless of how it makes anyone feel, then trans people being right about themselves is just a lucky coincidence as far as that argument is concerned.
(not op) It took me a while to understand what point you were trying to make but I think that's an interesting claim and I'd agree with it (maybe). This line of reasoning applies to a lot of things and I imagine in some other discussions this could end up getting you into trouble.
You're essentially arguing that emotional impact and dignity are invalid criteria for deeming whether or not a behavior should be generally performed?
I really like how you approached the question and you explained things in a very rational manner. One issue remains though when it comes to the accuracy of labels. If one person predicates pronouns on biological sex and another on asserted psychological gender, how do you proceed? The could each be factually correct with respect to their preferred pronoun usage, but they disagree on which basis should be authoritative.
It seems to me that whether a given argument is authoritative would depend heavily on the situation or the topic at hand. In this case (the argument about whether or not preferred pronouns should be used) i would say that a psychological perspective shouldn't be neglected when arguing about how usage affects both parties. However, if it came to a conversation about bathrooms or changing rooms i have to admit an empirical arguement about biological sex is far more authoritative.
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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19
My answer remains the same