When trans people say “respect our pronouns” we are not just asking you to shift your language, we are asking you to shift an entire paradigm around sex, gender, and race. It’s not enough to change one word when we are asking for the end of an entire worldview.
What we are saying is not just “this word makes me feel good,” but rather I demand the right to narrate my body and my history on my own terms in a system that is predicated on categorizing, containing, and criminalizing me.
When we say “respect” what we mean is fight like hell for me. What we mean is we weren’t just assigned this gender at birth, we are non-consensually gendered every day and what are you going to do about that?
This is not an opportunity to be politically correct, this is an opportunity to stop being incorrect.