Thank you for taking the time to not scream at me.
I have received verbal abuse in the past for having longer hair. Ironically it was transphobic abuse despite me not being trans. But I also had a toxic friend group which tried to pressure me into being trans. They kept talking about hating men, their pronouns, etc. I made a vague notion of being non-binary as I wasn’t one of these “evil” men they were talking about and wasn’t very masculine either. They took it and ran with it and basically started insulting cis men saying it’s okay because I’m “not a cis man”. At the time I was very affirming of transgender people. I advocated for their preferred pronoun use, rights to use preferred bathrooms, etc. It wasn’t until they started talking about neopronouns and I began to look into it and debate it rather than straight accept it that they all kicked me out. I also had another friend who detransitioned. I also realised the comments online saying stuff like “billions must trans their gender” weren’t a joke. I realised it had become some sort of social dogma which you cannot dare question, and a peer pressure element and sometimes a trauma element. The same movement I was trying to appease would fundamentally hate me anyway as well.
By calling someone by their preferred pronouns or letting them use a preferred bathroom, I am affirming them. But I don’t believe anymore that I should be affirming them or telling them that they’re correct and this is the right thing for them. I’d prefer to use gender neutral they/them pronouns as to not make them explicitly uncomfortable because they have a right to be comfortable, but I don’t think it’s right to play along with their emotional turmoil. Maybe I am wrong and genuine gender dysphoria does exist, but the trans people I interacted with, the ones claiming to be men acted like women and the ones claiming to be women acted like men. I don’t believe in it anymore.