I guess it's possible for both sides to be at fault - one side should be sensitive to others' preferences and proceed carefully perhaps by wearing a mask when they know it isn't required, perhaps by using pronouns carefully even when they don't know which are preferred. The other side needs to recognize that their preferences are not universal. People tend to want to bend all others to their particular risk assessment, and bend everyone to their usage of English to differentiate human beings from each other. Do they have a point? Sure. Is it worth the relational damage to impose this viewpoint on everyone? Maybe? Maybe not.
And PC can backfire. Making a point of not using a PC-speak word, when the PC word is clumsy or silly, makes the not-PC-speak word a very effective cultural code word to those who want to reinforce the very things the PC police are trying to change.
And arguing over words has almost zero possibility of any positive impact. There have been a few exceptions (say, for example, the N-word [no, no, don’t say the N-word]).
I will refer you to the wikipedia articles about political correctness and gender-neutral language as they probably do a much better job of defining the matter than I would.
I understand that you feel like "someone" making these definitions should have some kind of authority to be trustworthy. However, what happens is that someone makes a claim and then a large portion of society agrees. This is what gives them authority. And that is just how change is done usually in the democratic process. For example, at some point someone decided that women should vote and large portion of society agreed. And now, a few years later, we live in a society were women voters are the most normal thing you can think of.
> And arguing over words has almost zero possibility of any positive impact.
You just say that but you don't cite any scientific sources?
