https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-63785679
I've been attacked a lot for misgendering people like Jessica Yaniv. People are insisting that it's just a matter of simple etiquette to accept a person as the gender that he or she tells you that he or she is. In fact, a lot of people think that it's somehow bigoted to ever question a person's stated gender identity.
The thing is, this monster allegedly identified as a woman when he raped a fourteen-year-old girl and got her pregnant. I say "allegedly" while the BBC doesn't. Namely, the BBC is taking the rapist's word for it. The BBC then went on to refer to the rapist with "they/them" pronouns because the rapist has, apparently, decided to not divulge how he identifies post conviction.
So, I'm not misgendering him by using he/him pronouns. The BBC wouldn't be misgendering him by using he/him pronouns. He's not saying what he identifies as right now. We know that he's got a functioning dick. He's a man.
So, why not entertain the idea that this person is just lying about his identity? Why not explore it? Why not see if he actually is gender dysphoric?
I mean, if this is a cis-man who raped a girl and lied about his gender identity because he figured that it would get him off of certain charges (he was acquitted of two rape charges) or get him sent to a woman's prison, that's a real story. That would also be an important insight on policy.
Questioning this person's gender identity wouldn't be an attack on the LGBTQ+ community. Hell, it would be the opposite. It would be an active attempt to remove fuel from the false narrative that LGBTQ+ people are child predators.
The thing is, too many people are falling into the Lena Dunham effect. You say that "Nobody lies about x." because you want to show your support for x; but, it always does more damage to x than it helps because it's never true that nobody lies about anything.