There's a time and a place to be pedantic, and this really isn't it.

Transgendered people go through a heap of terrible, terrible crap and the least we can all do is give them the dignity of using their identified pronoun. If anybody has earned that respect, it's ms. Manning.

I mean really, how the heck does it hurt anybody to say "She" instead of "He" after you've been informed that's not how she identifies? Does it really matter that much? Obviously the extreme SJW flamewar reaction you usually see on misgendering is excessive, but after being politely informed that's not how she identifies, how are you harmed by going along with it?

Will the ghost of Plato arise and smite you down for failing to properly class something?

It seems totally unreasonable to me to intentionally misgender anyone against their wishes even after such intention was communicated. What possible purposes such action can serve?

I think it's more comparable to calling someone by their old name even after someone went through a trouble of changing one's official name because they hated the name given by their parents. You'd agree that's a bad manner.

> It seems reasonable to me that this person, having XY chromosomes and all the hardware that go with them, may be correctly referred to using masculine pronouns.

Gender != your chromosomes and gender != your "hardware" or any other body part for that matter. Gender is about social identity and structure.

> There's something to be said for respecting the wishes of the individual in how they'd like to be addressed. But there's definitely a point at which that drifts off into absurdity. Just because I can claim descent from Henry VIII doesn't mean that I can reasonably expect people to address me as "lord".

Laying claim to a royal lineage is not the same as having a gender. Also, lord is a title and we are talking about pronouns, things used when talking about anyone.

> So I'm interested in respecting people, but think we need to let this percolate through society first, and determine where to draw reasonable lines, before you accuse someone of disrespect for failing to honor someone's alternate world view.

We already know where to draw reasonable lines: Manning has already publicly stated her gender. You have disrespected this person by misgendering them. Manning's world view is not an "alternate" world view and you are being incredibly transphobic.

It seems pretty simple to me. If you ask me to describe my best friend, I might say he's smart, studied this or that in school, speaks such-and-such languages, likes such-and-such music, and so on. His height and weight would be pretty far down the list of things I find important.

Similarly, we think of our mind as being our "self" in a much more fundamental way than our toes.

If a person is female in their mind but has a male body, it seems very clear that we should consider the former to be their "real" gender. Why should the body matter more or be more fundamental?

In polite society we respect the ways that others wish to be addressed, as long as the request isn't unreasonable (I want you to call me 'Doctor wavefunction' yet I lack the credentials).

It is not absurd to refer to someone by the gender they prefer.

This posts reeks of cisgender privilege [0]. Gender is a social construct, not a biological inevitability, and it is disrespectful to refer to someone as a gender that they have explicitly stated they do not identify with.

I'll let you fill in the comparisons to widespread sexism, racism, and homophobia for yourself. Go back to the leaders of the American civil rights movement and tell them to let things "percolate through society" so they can know "where to draw reasonable lines".

[0] http://www.t-vox.org/index.php?title=Cisgender_privilege

people have a long history of taking offense when you don't address them as they prefer to be addressed

from Mohammed Ali and Kareem Abdul Jabbar, not wanting to be referred to by their given names

to all sorts of doctors and professors wanting to be address by their professional titles

to all sorts of adults not wanting people under a certain age referring to them by their first name

you to intend to offend, by all means, offend away

but don't act under the pretense that referring to someone other than how they prefer to be referred to won't cause offense