Well, as I've mentioned before, I have a gay daughter, who's married. So, this is a situation I've had to get accustomed to. Her wife, Mandy, is rather masculine in appearance, although a very sweet person. I'm fairly confident she would laugh me out of the room if I referred to her as a "ze."
BINGO!!! Thank you!!!
This is sort of what I'm getting at - we have self-appointed czars proceeding to inform us what the PC terms are we "should" or even "must" say. And the ASSUMPTION is that they speak for every single person just like them on the planet.
I've heard lesbian women who referred to themselves with the D word that rhymes with bike (trying to choose my words carefully here). I was never comfortable with the "second F word" or the Q word (in regards to orientation) and never really used them (the second one I did but that's because when I was a kid we used to play a tackle football game called "smear the -----.").
Otoh - I once saw a gay rights rally in 1992 featuring bikers chanting "Fs and Ds for civil rights." THEY were using that term themselves, which I suppose it tantamount to the whole N word speaking analogously.
I don't mind if a person says he/she/ze wants to be referred to with that particular term, but don't insist that the rest of us are bound by YOUR rules of decorum.
Btw - anybody else have this experience: have you ever noticed that the PC morons like this imbecile at UT......follow them around and watch them for a few minutes and it won't be long until they themselves are using an epithet to describe a group of people THEY find distasteful - rednecks, crackers, Holy Rollers, Bible bangers. While I'm not naive enough to suggest that say the latter 2 are as offensive as the F, D, and Q words, they're still nothing more than descriptive and somewhat hateful stereotypes.....the very type which the champions of tolerance profess to abhor.
To me, it's not much different than the self-appointed champions of "law and order" or "family values" never seem to live up to the standard they demand. Self-appointed champions of "tolerance" I've found are often the most intolerant of all.