[wastle]

> > The actual divisive issue is whether people who say they are the opposite sex to what they really are should be granted access to spaces that are designated for the sole use of the opposite sex.

> And of course that shouldn't matter for an online virtual space.

Depends on the space. It will matter sometimes. For instance: pregnancy forums, prostate cancer support groups.

But I agree this shouldn't be relevant for online spaces used to organise work on software development projects. These, almost always, are not intended as single-sex spaces, nor as venues for discussing people's differing views on this topic.

> It's not a "political stance" to say that people should call others by their preferred name and pronouns. It's just basic human decency to do that

I think that's more a philosophical stance. Appealing to "basic human decency" seems too subjective, both culturally and personally. There are many perspectives on what this might mean in practice.

Unfortunately the pronouns issue is difficult to avoid when communicating in English, because we have separate words to refer to female and male, and for most English speakers it's natural to use these to describe a person's sex. Overriding it because someone prefers (or demands) an opposite sex pronoun, or even some esoteric pronoun outside of the usual closed set, can be difficult even if that's something you've chosen to accede to. It's like a variation of the Stroop test but in everyday speech.

There are some reasonable arguments to be made for choosing otherwise too, though I expect you probably would not agree.