Are there more than two genders?

Requiring gender pronouns is an affront to free speech

Question: Are there more than two genders?
Position‹4 of 4: Gender is not the point
Argument: Requiring gender pronouns is an affront to free speech

The trans movement is being co-opted by radical activists with a political and social agenda.

The argument

Legislation and campus reform requiring people to use pronouns of a given individual’s choosing is an extraordinarily dangerous precedent. Language and social mores that have evolved organically have never needed laws in order to do so. This is a deliberate attempt to curtail and control free speech and, ironically, expression. The activists speaking on the part of the transgender population are seldom, if ever, truly affected by the debate in any real way; their outrage is feigned and overblown with the aim of virtue signaling, controlling free speech, and of furthering an agenda. It is apparent in the way bills in governing bodies use the weight of the law to force people’s hand in this matter. The concept and use of fabricated genders cannot survive in daily parlance without that.

Premises

[P1]Language and social norms have historically evolved organically without needing legal coercion. [P2] Laws and campus rules mandating chosen pronouns use state power to compel speech rather than allow organic evolution. [P3] Such compelled-speech mandates are driven by activist agendas and cannot sustain themselves without legal force. [C] Therefore, requiring gender pronouns is an affront to free speech and should be rejected.

Counter-arguments

The refusal to use a transgender person’s preferred pronouns is a denial of their human rights.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The true infringement on human rights is the denial of trans peoples' right to have their pronouns respected.

Proponents cited

The Heritage Foundation
“The truth is that compelled speech doesn’t benefit anyone. The public square should be a battlefield of ideas where the only weapon is diplomacy through persuasion, not a sword of compulsion. Our Founding Fathers understood this, and so they enshrined the freedom of speech in the First Amendment. This is the cornerstone of our republic, and it is the envy of all those who live under repressive regimes.”
Jordan Peterson
“The government is requiring us to use certain language; that’s not the same as not using certain language. And this is the fundamental issue: that’s a line we should not cross. We should not allow the government to decide which words we’re allowed to use. It’s a mistake, and it’s a mistake that strikes right at the heart of free speech... Freedom of speech is freedom to engage in the processes that we use to formulate the problems in our society, to generate solutions to them, and reach a consensus. It’s actually a mechanism, not just another value. And you should put constrains on free speech with the most extreme caution because you interfere with people’s ability to think and communicate.”