I guess I see us as obligated to try to treat each other as well as we can, but I don’t see us as being obligated to take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state, as that is an impossible burden. This is, of course, a shame, because it’s always sad when someone suffers. It would be nice if we could help everyone, all the time, but sometimes there are real costs to adopting a certain policy. But, just to be clear, we should respect people’s naming preferences insofar as is reasonable/practical.
A choice of words literally costs you or the OP nothing- its just a simple choice you make. And it says far more about you in the context here than you think. Choosing to be empathetic in the way you communicate, again, costing you absolutely nothing. It is what an altruist would do and it certainly doesn’t oblige you to “take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state.”
Only if you completely disregard the suffering and trauma associated with deadnaming.
I guess I see us as obligated to try to treat each other as well as we can, but I don’t see us as being obligated to take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state, as that is an impossible burden. This is, of course, a shame, because it’s always sad when someone suffers. It would be nice if we could help everyone, all the time, but sometimes there are real costs to adopting a certain policy. But, just to be clear, we should respect people’s naming preferences insofar as is reasonable/practical.
A choice of words literally costs you or the OP nothing- its just a simple choice you make. And it says far more about you in the context here than you think. Choosing to be empathetic in the way you communicate, again, costing you absolutely nothing. It is what an altruist would do and it certainly doesn’t oblige you to “take full responsibility for everybody else’s psychological state.”