It costs nothing to be kind to trans folks

Not every kindness is free. If your friend falls and breaks their leg, you might send flowers or dinner. That will cost you a little money. It’s still worth doing because kindness matters, and, in the case of our example, someone you care about is hurting.

Being kind to our trans brothers and sisters, is, however, free. It costs nothing. What’s the ask? Using their preferred pronouns. Cost to you to do so? Precisely zero.

And they are hurting. American trans folks are currently being slandered and assaulted, legislated against and marginalized.

That some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world are angrily joining in the fusillade is abjectly pathetic. Here are some folks who are hurting, and you choose to deny them a most basic kindness?

What our trans family are asking for is not exotic. I go by Alex. Not Alexander. No one finds it odd that if you call me Alexander, and I ask that you call me Alex — as it is my name, far more than anything written down on a piece of paper when I was born — and you decline to do so, I will think that you are an ass. By continuing to call me Alexander, you are effectively saying that you know me better than I do. You don’t.

The same riff applies to pronouns. If I ask you to call me he, or she, or they, and you decline to do so, it’s a bit more than merely rude; you are making a very notable claim about your knowledge of myself and it being superior to my own. Fuck off.