-This is a pretty basic point, and yet Yudkowsky steadfastly ignores the role of existing meanings in this debate, bizarrely writing as if we were defining a conlang from scratch:
+Indeed, when I look at what contemporary trans activists write, I don't see them approving of this idea that pronoun choices _don't mean anything_. [In the words of one Twitter user](https://twitter.com/AFROlNCOGNlTO/status/13890805920844636180):
+
+> misgendering sucks, but what feels even more violent is when people get my pronouns right and i can tell they still perceive me as a man
+
+In the [words of](https://twitter.com/pangmeli/status/1079097805250224130) [another](https://twitter.com/pangmeli/status/1079142303183327232):
+
+> 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
+
+> 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.
+
+These authors are to be commended for making their view so clear and explicit: in order to not betray your trans friends (according to this view), you need to think of them as the gender that they say they are. Mere verbal pronoun compliance in the absence of underlying belief is insufficient and possibly treacherous.
+
+This point that pronoun changes are desired precisely _because_ of what they _do_ imply about sex categories in the existing English language is a pretty basic one, that one should think should scarcely need to be explained. And yet Yudkowsky steadfastly ignores the role of existing meanings in this debate, bizarrely writing as if we were defining a conlang from scratch: