>>7Nobody can force anyone to address anyone in any specific way, as no one can force anyone to speak in a certain way.
One can be forced by social pressure, or by fear/threat of ostracism. But I see you point, and I should not have used such a strong term in the first place and/or should have been more specific.
However, the person can ask that they are referred to in a certain way as a sign of respect and as an acknowledgement of their identity.
Ah, identity. You know, I've come to have little respect for things people identify generally with, and for identity in general. You probably really don't care, but I'll tell you why anyway. I might sometimes describe and define things in unnecessarily painstaking detail in what follows, and for that I apologize for I am a rather dull individual.
Consider the following (small) sample of terms: man, woman, white, black, asian, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, cissexual, transsexual, transgender, transman, transwoman, monogamous, polygamous. These terms are useful in that they allow people to succinctly describe themselves and others; for example, instead of saying "I have a penis, a laryngeal prominence, negligible breasts, and I am attracted to people with vaginas who have at least 3/4 of the following characteristics: long hair, lack of laryngeal prominence, large breasts, and higher-pitched voice", people instead say "I'm a straight guy". It's a great shortcut, a real time-saver
! Who could possibly oppose such a display of verbal efficiency?
Obviously terms can have multiple meanings, and very soon (i.e. instantly) every single one of these terms gained an extra meaning as an
identity. The identity associated with a term is roughly an affiliation with a group whose membership is strongly correlated with being described by the term. Now, to distinguish between the two, I'll write term
desc for the descriptive meaning, and term
id for the identity meaning. To exemplify, men
id are people affiliated with a large cultural group almost all of whose members are men
desc, and to which almost all men
desc belong.
Now, compare the following: "I have erections when I am sexually aroused because I am a man
desc" and "I hate chick flicks because I am a man
id". Both follow as logical consequences; in the former, men
desc have penises and penises generally get erect upon arousal, and in the latter, men
id hate chick flicks because they deal mainly with love and romance, and those are womanly
id things.
What if a man
id & desc says "I have erections when I am sexually aroused because I am a man
id"? That is nonsensical, for erections require a penis, and having a penis has nothing to do with being in a cultural group.
Now, what if a man
id & desc says "I hate chick flicks because I am a man
desc"? That is nonsensical, for one's enjoyment of a movie has nothing to do with one's penile ownership.
Or does it? What if a man
desc & id does enjoy a chick flick one late night, and the next day a friend tells them "you're not a real man
id"? Watching the movie has suddenly become less enjoyable altogether, for the price it had was exclusion from a group one was affiliated with (or, more practically, a social "slap on the wrist").
The strong correlation between the descriptive and identity meanings has another consequence, owing to the brain's very strong reliance on patterns and association: people perceive it as odd, mentally unhealthy, or even evil that one who is described by a term does not identify with it. After all, "everyone else does, so what's wrong with you?"
Returning to our example, suppose a man
desc who is not a man
id enjoys a chick flick one night, and the next day they are told "you're not a real man
id". Responding with "that's OK, I actually don't even identify as a man
id" carries a high risk of even more ostracism than before.
OK, the guy watching a chick flick example is almost benign, and it would be misleading to not give some more severe examples of the effects of the description-identity confusion.
1. A black
desc person living in some shitty ghetto in the USA enjoys classical music and studies hard to become a physicist, but pays the price of being excluded from their community for "acting too white
id", lowering their chances of success.
2. A white
desc person enjoys black
id or indian
id or asian
id music and/or food and/or literature and/or movies, but gets called a "wigger" or "weeaboo". (Or, in a highly ironic turn of events, is accused of "cultural appropriation" by intersectional non-identity-rejecting feminists.)
3. Every single man
desc vs woman
desc double standard. In fact,
all of gender (in feminist terminology).
4. A heterosexual
desc man
desc wishes to see whether they are also attracted to men, but doesn't due to fear of ostracism from their heterosexual
id peers.
As a small note, I'm somewhat surprised and disappointed that while feminism managed to cleanly separate the descriptive and identity meanings of "man/woman" into sex ("male/female") and gender ("masculine/feminine"), they have failed to generalize the process for all of the other terms. I suspect that the entire "cultural appropriation" issue stems from the descriptive-identity confusion of the race/ethnicity terms.
Also please note that the rejection of identity does not imply uniformity; on the contrary, it liberates one from the social cost of exploring, adopting, and enjoying new things that used to be outside of one's identity.
I hope I have convincingly demonstrated that identity, and the descriptive-identity confusion that stems from it, is an most uncool social phenomenon, and that the solution is awareness, and ultimately elimination.