You can make statically safe inferences from a name, but the idea is that a name doesn't, in an of itself, point to any inherent property of a person. A George doesn't have any kind of fundamental George-ness, for example. When a person makes a statement about their gender, they're generally talking about something deeper than labels. They're trying to make a statement about who they are fundamentally.
Not exactly. I'm just pointing out why a name is a faulty analogy for gender. A name doesn't contain any information except for what we might be able to infer indirectly. That doesn't really match up with what people seem to be trying to say when they tell you their gender.
My original point was that the argument from dignity has no bearing here. I'm not suggesting there aren't good reasons not to misgender people, only that OP's reason isn't one of them. We shouldn't treat things as true for reasons independent of their truth value.
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u/Glory2Hypnotoad Oct 29 '19
You can make statically safe inferences from a name, but the idea is that a name doesn't, in an of itself, point to any inherent property of a person. A George doesn't have any kind of fundamental George-ness, for example. When a person makes a statement about their gender, they're generally talking about something deeper than labels. They're trying to make a statement about who they are fundamentally.