-> a lot of cis people use 'learning someone's pronoun' as a copout from doing the important internal work of actually reconsidering their impression of the person's gender
-https://twitter.com/pangmeli/status/1079097805250224130
-> like let's be real—the reason you have a hard time "remembering" her pronoun is because you don't really think of her as a her. if you practiced thinking of her as a her, her pronoun would just come. and then you wouldn't be privately betraying her in your head all the time.
-https://twitter.com/pangmeli/status/1079142303183327232
+Fine. That's a perfectly coherent position. But if that's your position and you care about being intellectually honest, you need to _acknowledge_ that your position exerts costs on some actually-existing English speakers who have a use-case for using pronouns to imply sex. You need to be able to look that rape victim in the eye and say, "Sorry, I'm participating in a political coalition that believes that trans people's feelings are more important than yours with respect to this policy question; sucks to be you."
+
+And of course—it _should_ be needless to say—this applies symmetrically. If you think speakers _should_ be able to misgender according to their judgement and you care about being intellectually honest, you need to be able to look a trans person in the eye and say, "Sorry, I'm participating in a political coalition that believes the freedom of speech of speakers is more important than your gender being recognized; sucks to be you."
+
+Or if you have more important things to worry about (like the fate of a hundred thousand galaxies depending on the exact preferences built into the first artificial superintelligence) and don't want the distraction of taking a position on controversial contemporary social issues, fine: use whatever pronoun convention happens to be dominant in your local social environment, and, if questioned, say, "I'm using the pronoun convention that happens to be dominant in my local social environment." You don't have to invent _absurd lies_ to make it look like the convention that happens to be dominant in your local social environment has no costs.
+
+Really, "I do not know what it feels like from the inside to feel like a pronoun is attached to something in your head much more firmly than 'doesn't look like an Oliver'"? Any seven-year-old in 2016 could have told you that that's just _factually not true_; if you grew up speaking English in the late 20th century, you _absolutely goddamned well do_ know what it feels like. Did [the elephant in Yudkowsky's brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_in_the_Brain) really expect to get away with that? How dumb does he think we are?!
+
+-----
+
+At this point, some readers may be puzzled as to the _mood_ of the present post. I _agree_ with Yudkowsky's analysis of the design flaw in English's pronoun system. I _also_ agree that not misgendering trans people is a completely reasonable thing to do, which I also do. I'm _only_ disputing the part where Yudkowsky jumps to declaring his proposed "simplest and best protocol" without acknowledging the ways in which it's _not_ simple and not _unambiguously_ the best.
+
+Many observers would consider this a very minor disagreement, not something anyone would want to spend 12,000 words prosecuting with as much vitriolic rhetoric as the target audience is likely to tolerate. If I agree with the problem statement (pronouns shouldn't denote sex, that's dumb; why would you define a language that way), and I don't disagree with the proposed policy solution (don't misgender trans people in public), why get so hung up on the exact arguments?
+
+(I mean, _besides_ [the fact that it's arguments that matter rather than conclusions, as a completely general principle of correct cognition](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom-line).)
+
+I guess for me, the issue is that this is a question where _I need the correct reasoning in order to make extremely impactful social and medical decisions_. Let me explain.
+
+This debate looks very different depending on whether you're coming into it as someone being _told_ that you need to change your pronoun usage for the sake of someone who will be very hurt if you don't—or whether you're in the position of wondering whether it makes sense to _make_ such a request of others.