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My mother is in her 70s. She won't willingly knowingly recognize a trans person to be of the "gender" they claim, because she honestly believes deep in her mind that doing so is a sin against God and man, and she would be forfeiting her place in heaven. She wouldn't hurt a fly but she's between a rock and a hard place. The only emotion she ever expresses is guilt. I think she is delusional (mentally ill) and I blame religion. If some website decided to kick her off because of a silly pronoun, even though she was behaving entirely sincerely, because IMHO they are intolerant of her viewpoint (and she is not an isolated case), then I would be inclined to leave said website as well.

I will not reply to anymore of your comments as you have expressed your view that I shouldn't be allowed to, and I don't want to offend you any further.

This is because the sex reseachers with a different view were forced out of their jobs by intense activism.

I'm not among this group we speak of, but I will never accept that view of them. They are not malicious, they are just different, and we should be tolerant of them even if they are not tolerant of transgenders.... in the same way that we are tolerant of Islam even though Islam is not tolerant of women's rights.

I consider them (Christians) to be mentally ill what with all that christian god stuff they preach. Do you therefore think I also have no place in "workplaces, large-scale online forums and polite society in general" because I consider this "group of people -- other people that participate on the site -- mentally ill"?

I think this way leads to a Oberton window that only narrows, like a boa constrictor. I prefer broader thinking and more tolerance for a wider set of views.

I personally concur with the strategy of empathy and courtesy, but others won't, and I don't think that's anywhere close to a good reason to kick them out of civil discussion.

But I simply don't buy the "hurt and suffering" argument. Just because someone has a different opinion and expresses it doesn't mean the hearer is hurt and suffering to any degree that has a snowball's chance in hell of overwhelming the right to have and express a different opinion. The right to express opinions is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than the supposed right to not temporarily feel bad.

Might I suggest that most people who insist on using pronouns derived from one's biological sex (rather than gender) are not attempting to engage in harassment, but are simply refusing to concede a currently unsettled political and societal question?

I've never seen a code of conduct that makes calling someone by the wrong first name a bannable offense. So why is it so with pronouns? IMHO it's because this issue is politically unsettled -- it is not universally resolved across society. A fair percentage of people do not accept the concept of transgenderism, and instead see a transgender woman as a mentally ill man (and vice versa).

While this issue is politically unsettled, it cannot be correct to enforce one side's view by banning people on the other side of the argument if they don't tacitly concede the argument via enforced pronoun usage.

[Personally I hold no strong opinions about transgenderism, I just hate to see society splitting apart.]

I'm skeptical of several of the claims in this. Is 125 less parts "far fewer"? Have they really already automated electric car assembly better than gasoline vehicles, even though we've been doing that all my life? Are they really striking because they fear being replaced by robots, or is it for higher wages?

History is full of labor transitions. Nobody makes wagon wheels anymore. Noboby cuts pins from wire. Certainly the job opportunities in auto manufacturing are waning, but new jobs are popping up in battery tech, solar, etc. Change is never easy.