If I just lie still....

"If I don't say something, if I just lie still" - MILCK, "Quiet"

In an attempt to start saying something (because I need to fikanta start working on that), I talked to someone today who is totally ignorant about gender issues (that unfortunately I have to get along with - the best I can do is get them to start thinking). Long story short, I tried to explain that transgender people do not experience things the way that cisgender people do, and just because someone was born with female sexual organs does not mean that they cannot choose to be a boy. They argued that "male and female He created them" means that men are men and women are women and God intends to keep people in strict genders. (I responded that I do not read/interpret the Bible that way. Which I do not, because the Bible is going to reflect the pre-science era in which it was written.) They refused to understand that even if you believe that, it's nothing but respectful (they claim to respect people no matter what) to use the prounoun that the person prefers.

I understand that this person is not UU (and therefore hasn't made a choice to affirm and promote the first principle), but it's still frustrating. It's extremely, extremely rude in my view to ignore someone's pronoun choice. This situation has encouraged me to not keep quiet.

(Let's not even get into the current political situation and their attitude toward it....)