Asymmetric Virtue Points

Here would be an interesting study. You get an email from someone you don't know. In their signature you see the following: "Responds to she/her." Knowing nothing more than that she lists her preferred pronouns, do you now like them more, less, or the same?

My guess is that progressives would like them more, conservatives less, and most people the same.

Here's the thing about calling people by their preferred pronoun: the incentives to do so aren't the same for each person. In fact, they are heavily favored toward progressives. When done in a public setting, progressives have the added benefit of accruing virtue points from their ingroup. "Look how progressive I am. I'm creating a safe space for trans folks!"

Conservatives get no such benefit and, in fact, might be ostracized by their ingroup. (As I'm typing this, I'm realizing that this is actually an argument for making it a law to call someone by their preferred pronoun since some people are incentivized not to do so. *shudders.)

One of the best things that progressives can to do advocate for trans folks would be to create an incentive for their outgroup to use use people's preferred pronouns. I have no idea what that would look like, I just know the current system is not designed to be helpful to anyone.