https://www.newsweek.com/misgendering-should-crime-according-millennials-1813178
Obviously, any single survey should be met with a healthy amount of skepticism. Still, for the sake if this post, I'll operate under the assumption that this is in the ballpark of being representative of the attitudes of Americans.
If this is a ballpark representation, I've gotta hand it to Gen Z for providing me with a pleasant surprise. I was pretty sure the TikTok generation would be more in-line with the idea of criminalizing "misgendering" people than millennials; but, they're significantly better than even older millennials on this issue.
The broad American population seems to be more sane than millennials on this issue; but, I've gotta say, the people who respond with a "don't know" or an non-answer scare me as much as the people who polled directly in favor of criminalizing the use of pronouns that aren't preferred by the party of which or to which you're speaking. If your answer needs to be flat out, "No. That's dumb. It should not be a criminal offense to misgender a trans person." Otherwise, you're showing that you're dumb enough to think that it's a matter of context, and that there are some cases where it should be legal, and some cases in which you should go to jail. No, this is not an issue where you get to play games.
Of course, the First Amendment makes it nearly impossible that such a law could ever survive. Still, the fact that so many people are musing that it should be law should terrify every person of even mild intellect.
This isn't just support for a law that would require to demolition of the First Amendment. Support for this would be a way to get everybody walking on eggshells every day in terms of what they say under force of government violence.
As the woke ideology keeps pushing this idea further and further that gender is entirely what's in your head, and not what you're showing to the world, and that you can change your gender over time, and that men can have vaginas and breasts, and that women can have penises and thicker beards than what I can grow, and that non-binary people fall into the trans camp, and that we can't tell whether a baby is a boy or a girl because he/she/they/zir whatever hasn't told us yet, it would be a law that could get you thrown in jail for the mistake of trusting your own eyes.
I don't have to spend too much time on a person like Layshia Clarendon, who calls herself trans and non-binary; but, this is illustrative.
As a side note, before you come after me for misgendering Clarendon, everybody, including you, are assuming her pronouns.
Two years ago ESPN wrote an in-depth profile on Clarendon that came with an editors note that Clarendon uses she/her, they/them, and he/him pronouns. Originally, it looked a bit like Clarendon was just cool with any of those pronouns, but, the article became nearly impossible to read because Clarendon basically changes them up on a whim.
I'm not saying that Clarendon herself is a vindictive person. I am saying that this is a concept in gender ideology that exists, and that there are vindictive people in the world, and that there's no reason to believe that nobody would abuse such a law to get political opponents, or people who they just don't like into legal trouble.
At an even broader level though, this is a large amount of people who would support making it it legally punishable for large swaths of the population to tell the truth as they see it.
A large component of the ideology is that it's bigotry to question how a person identifies, and nobody would lie about such a thing.
Well, I don't think that Jessica Yaniv is a woman. I think he's a man who wore a wig until he could grow his hair out a bit, threw on a dress, and used Canadian law to coerce women into touching his dick against their will.
Why would anybody lie about being trans? Well, how about if you're a dude on death row for killing your ex-girlfriend and raping her dead body in a state that has a policy that prisoners should be housed on the basis of gender identity rather than biological sex (this isn't a hypothetical by the way)? What if you're a dude like Yaniv, who probably had problems finding women who wanted to touch his dick before saying that he was really a woman, and spent a lot of time (while still identifying as a man) chatting with young girls online about sex and menstruation, who also has expressed xenophobic, anti-immigrant sentiments, who is living in a country with laws that are so warped that by simply putting on a dress and declaring himself to be a woman, can legally entrap religious women from other countries into the choice of touching his dick or being sued into oblivion, and advertise clothing-optional pool parties directed at young girls with the stipulation that parents aren't allowed.
Should I go to jail for saying, "No. I don't believe him."?
Maybe, just maybe, the floating in the middle people think that there's some nuance to be had in the intent of the speaker. Maybe they figure that accidents shouldn't be prosecuted; but, misgendering with the intent to hurt a person's feelings should be punishable.
Well, to that I say, if you think that I have been misgendering Jessica Yaniv, my intent is to hurt his feelings. If he ever reads this, I want this to scar him deeply. I have absolutely no problem with hurting pedophiles.
Still, after this whole rant, I agree with the majority of people in that I don't intentionally misgender the overwhelming majority of people.
There's a reality that nobody looks at anybody and sees a zie/zir without being informed of that preference. I haven't met anybody like that yet. If I do, that's across the line for me.
Really, maybe that's why Gen Z is better on this issue than millennials. For millennials, the trans people that we've met are people who just want to live life normally, and would be just as offended as I would be if somebody felt compelled to ask them what their pronouns are. Gen Z, as my niece and nephew often report, are dealing with the ideology every day.
They're the people who have to worry about somebody flipping out because they didn't know that the person goes with an obscure neopronoun that they weren't aware of.