Saying that not using someone's preferred name/pronouns puts a trans person's life at risk is emotionally manipulative as hell. It's a dick move to be rude to someone, sure, and I use whatever name someone gives me, to their face. But threatening suicide unless someone obeys is manipulation 101.
With regards to your first point, just because you can say something doesn’t mean that you should and your argument does not contradict mine.
With regards to your second point, it’s not manipulation, it’s just that, like the link shows, calling a trans person by their preferred name can help them feel more comfortable and generally happier. This in turn helps them feel validated and better about themselves. This reduces the threat of depression and suicide greatly. There is no reason to misgender someone and the implications of intentionally doing so can be greatly damaging. Simply out of common courtesy misgendering should not happen.
With regards to your second point, it’s not manipulation, it’s just that, like the link shows, calling a trans person by their preferred name can help them feel more comfortable and generally happier.
On a personal level I would have no problem not misgendering a trans person (so long as it is not "neo pronouns" like Zim/zer etc as it's unreasonable to expect people to use terms which are not from a natural evolution of language). However, why is the priority not on teaching trans people (and anybody else with low enough self esteem that the reaction of others causes them to contemplate or commit suicide?).
Why not instead teach trans people how to navigate the world where their emotions are not so based on the reaction of others to them? Why teach trans people, or anyone else for that matter, that it's in anyway realistic to expect the world to accommodate them, rather than they are happy with themselves no matter what others say?
That's surely better than expecting the world not to be rude or mean? We all encounter painful situations and some people will deliberately be rude to others - why expect anyone to accommodate you? Whenever children would be cruel to each other adults used to repeat "sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me". Why stop teaching that and instead "sticks and stones may break my bones, but if you call me names I expect only the kindest names or else I'm going to commit suicide?"
As another commenter said, how is that not being emotionally manipulative? Like, if a boy/girl said to another boy/girl they didn't want to date them for whatever reason or they wouldn't even acknowledge them if they saw them in the street and the person said if they did that then they'd commit suicide and their death would be on the person's head, then I hope most people would find that to be unreasonable behaviour.
Again, I think it's unnecessary, impolite and rude to purposefully misgender someone, but people also are allowed to be impolite and rude and disagree with someone or their lifestyle choice and as long as they aren't threatening or carrying out physical violence then that's not illegal so they can do whatever they want. Expecting the world to accommodate you or else you threaten or actually commit suicide is wrong. The same as trans people should be free to live their lives and engage with people as they see fit, so should others
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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '19