Yeah, nah mate.

That frankly sounds like concern trolling. You’re worried these laws with harm trans people yet they’ve got states outright making laws to harm trans people such as refusing to use their name, or letting them use the right toilet. Doing things that make it less likely for them to get a job, seek help in an emergency, etc.

These laws will do far more good than the small risk of one or two trans people ever abusing them.

The reality of working with black people will mean you slip up and use some casual racism sometimes. These laws are going to add fear to speaking to coloreds let alone hiring them. And what if they're abused?

The reality of working with women will mean you slip up and and get handsy with them sometimes. These laws are going to add fear to speaking to respectable women let alone hiring them. And what if I'm just talking with the guys?

I didn't always know that the turban wearing guy at the office wasn't a Muslim but was actually a Sikh. But I didn't need to be told twice, and if I did it was never with malice.

We're smart enough to know when someone slips up on accident and when someone is being an asshole. We're not idiots.

There is a pretty obvious difference between accidentally misgendering and maliciously misgendering.

The key word in the guidance is "persistently" misgendering. So if someone gets the pronouns right 95% of the time, that's hardly "persistent". These guidelines target employers/people who willfully and purposefully mis gender/discriminate. If you're trying to claim these rules make you afraid to talk to trans people, you might want to take a long hard look at your own biases/phobias.

I can see the concern, as a trans and nonbinary person, about the phrasing of the headline. Casual readers will totally think the actual guidance says “if you fuck up a person’s pronouns, you go to jail” or whatever.

But not the guidance itself. We need more protections against intentional, malicious misgendering as verbal harassment. Which is usually less “she said— oops, they said—“ and more stuff like “(female coworker) put has pronouns in her signature? I thought she was a REAL WOMAN”

(The second being a real example from a friends work place. Funny thing is, friend is stealth trans and the coworker being misgendered is cis, but i digress)

But yeah all that aside I think the real context is misgendering when someone needs the bathroom, e.g. “you’re in the wrong bathroom” type comments. Where we really need stronger protections.

Ya I totally hated that one time I got fired from my CEO job because Google autocorrected she to he one time. 😂

Is it really that fucking hard to remember a pronoun? Especially when someone devoted time and energy and specifically asked to be referred to a specific way? Sounds like a you problem.

these laws are going to make certain social media users obsess about what could go wrong with these rules despite the fact such rules often aren't well enforced to begin with. Just gonna say, often you have to be really going out of your way being an asshole to get hit by this kind of stuff.