Supremacist worldviews are intolerant and do not deserve tolerance. The question at hand is whether or not OP’s assertions of gender-based divinity are tantamount to supremacist ideology, such as when a cult leader claims their followers (or perhaps descendants of an ancient lineage) are inherently superior.

Also, OP might just be a troll. Remember attack helicopters? Same vibes here.

Good luck, and I do not envy your responsibility in moderating this thread.

There appear to be some logical leaps and conclusion-shopping going on here, so I’m going to try to identify them systematically.

Capitalization of pronouns in the English language is used to denote divinity or royalty. If I refer to Jehovah with a small-h “he,” I haven’t misgendered him, I have blasphemed. I don’t intentionally misgender people (even fictional ones), but I regularly blaspheme gods. I’m an atheist, it’s what we do.

Being a man doesn’t make one part of the patriarchy and doesn’t confer superiority. Being divine ipso-facto makes you superior – both socially and inherently. As I reject the notion that some people are inherently superior to all others, I blaspheme cult leaders who claim to be gods, demigods, or incarnations thereof, and I refuse to give reverence to prophets and monarchs who claim proximity to the divine. I believe this makes the world a better, less exploitative place.

I also see capitalized pronouns used (infrequently) in BDSM. Specifically, it is how some subs refer to their doms when in some extreme forms of 24/7 power exchange relationship. That’s okay, but as with other BDSM activities, power exchange never includes people who didn’t consent to be part of it, and consent is never obligatory. Doms who attempt to extend their authority beyond the confines of a scene are swiftly ridiculed or ostracized for consent violation.

So for anyone to make the claim that capitalized pronouns should be respected by everyone, they must first make the case that divinity is a gender. Second, they must make the case that associating with the divine does not denote inherent superiority. Third, they must make the case that compulsory use of capitalized pronouns is not compulsory submission that would violate consent.

I would describe Denver as fiercely LGBT-friendly.

Colorado is becoming something of a sanctuary state for people trying to get out of the increasingly LGBT-hostile Midwest and portions of the South (Texas and Florida in particular). Colorado legislators are aware of this and have made laws protecting people who come to the state seeking reproductive or gender-affirming healthcare from external lawsuits or prosecution.

Local businesses and homes often fly pride flags all year round, and June’s pride events are absolutely massive. While rainbow capitalism is a meme, it’s also a litmus test for what capital owners think consumers and investors want to see. In other words, it would be noteworthy if they stopped.

Denver has a lot of LGBT culture, though I would describe it as newer and more militant than my limited experience of NYC. There are gay bars, an active drag scene (Alyssa Edwards and Pattie Gonia performed at Pride this year), and tons of outdoor LGBT groups (hiking, climbing, foraging, birdwatching). I recently started dressing as my chosen gender in public, and the responses from acquaintances and random strangers alike have been overwhelmingly positive. Colorado allies are second to none.

Colorado was not always this liberal. There are still conservative holdouts in places like Pueblo and Colorado Springs. Drag story hours around the state sometimes have hecklers (Proud Boys, judging from the colors), but humiliation ruins the illusion of fascist machismo, and so the efforts of groups like Parasol Patrol have proven very effective at stifling such protests.

Makeover day!

I admitted to some of my friends that I’d love the chance to get some makeup tips from them, and they pounced on that with unexpected enthusiasm. They scheduled an appointment at the mall, saying it was a rite of passage. So I got my makeup done by a professional makeup artist who taught me how to do things like foundation matching and mixing color changer, all while a gaggle of absolutely wonderful people took notes and told me I looked beautiful.

I’ve been running on that high for weeks now.

I did! 👋 Unfortunately, I mostly infodump about engineering in the comments, which is maybe not the kind of engagement we need.

Nebula link for those interested.

There are quite a few comanies now that follow some version of “name-blind hiring,” where the system scrubs the name from the resume before the interviewer sees it, for the sake of avoiding biases. These companies would be a good place to start.

Outside of name-blind hiring, a lot of people use nicknames or given names on resumes, particularly if they have non-english names that could tempt biases or be hard to pronounce. It is widespread and completely kosher as long as HR has your current legal name for your background check and W-2.

No matter what, HR will need your legal name. But in my experience, HR departments tend to be accepting and accustomed to maintaining confidentiality. And they don’t make the hiring decisions, anyway.

I’ve only just recently begun exploring my gender identity. This is all very new for me, and very raw.

Gender is subjective. Defining it is like trying to nail jello to a wall. I cannot think of a single description that is exclusively feminine. When I imagine myself as a woman, I see myself in a new light, through a new lens. It feels like home. Gender is a construct, but that’s not to say it’s meaningless – marriage is a construct, too. If it truly is possible to redefine gender as anything you want, then why do I want so very badly to be a woman and not a man?

I never realized how much I despised my body hair until the first time I removed it. The first time my spouse called me “beautiful,” I cried, because until that moment I did not realize how many decades I’d been waiting to hear it. Gender is expressive. It’s how I see myself, but also how others see me. The desire to express is the desire to be known; I want people to know that I am gentle and nurturing, fragile yet strong, irrational yet relatable in my strangeness.

But I could be wrong about this, every single word of it, and it wouldn’t make any difference. Because I started down this path by deciding to want what I wanted, to feel what I felt, to act without trying to justify my actions to some invisible judge. And when I wear a cute outfit and see myself in the mirror, I smile. When my spouse calls me “wife,” I blush. When I think of femininity, I think of reinventing myself. To me, femininity is daring to live a life I have dreamed for myself. It is not troubling my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood.

Gender is nothing. But it’s also everything.

My husband (transmasc) found this an immediately responded, “Someone needs to tell Kristen about HRT right now.”

In no particular order:

Organized Christianity needs original sin.

If people believed could achieve righteousness on their own, they wouldn’t need a church. To keep people perpetually indebted, organized Christianity needs people to feel not just that they did something wrong, but that they are something wrong. Enter the self-appointed apostle Paul (don’t get me started on that guy), telling you that every natural desire you have is evidence of your sinful nature. This is why the most widespread denominations heavily regulate sexuality and identity.

Patriarchy needs masculine superiority to be immutable.

Patriarchy doesn’t say men deserve authority because they do better, but because they are better. A man is assumed to have a set of masculine virtues suited for authority, and so to claim that authority, a patriarch just needs to show up and remind people he’s a man. But what if a man could lack one of those masculine virtues (such as aggression)? And what if a person who looks male isn’t, or vice-versa? The more things a man could be, the harder a patriarch has to work to prove they’re the “right kind” of man by flaunting their masculinity (see also: truck balls). And for women who gain privileges by sucking up to the right patriarchs, every stripe on the rainbow flag is yet another thing they have to prove they’re not. So punching down on “deviants” isn’t just a way to reassert one’s position in the hierarchy, it’s also revenge against those “deviants” for stealing or diluting the patriarch’s claim to his birthright.

The heteros are upseteros.

Heterosexual people are very accustomed to society and commercialism catering to their sexuality. Objectification is rampant. People are so accustomed to sexualizing anything on two legs that the mere mention of homosexuality has them vividly visualizing the act. Even devout religious people. Especially devout religious people. And that can be unpleasant if you’re not into homosexuality, or trigger a self-loathing spiral if you are but don’t want to admit it. This is why so many homophobic people make exceptions for whichever kinds of queerness they like to see in their porn, and others make exceptions for every kind of queerness except the ones they like in porn.

Fascists need a scapegoat

Fascism is a form of authoritarian ethnocentric ultranationalism based in a social-darwinist backdrop that promises mythical palingenesis if the weak and treacherous are purged. Fascism has deep ties to religion and patriarchy, but it is uniquely reliant on having a scapegoat or “other” to cast as treacherous, powerful, and responsible for the nation’s failures – after all, if there’s no scapegoat, then there’s no reason to grant power to a fascist dictator. Critically, that scapegoat must not actually be powerful, or else purging them would be a self-defeating endeavor. While fascists regularly change their formula to avoid categorization, they almost invariably target sexual minorities thanks to their disenfranchisement by religion and patriarchy.

Self-determination is an act of rebellion.

I saved this for last so I could end on a less depressing note. If you believe mankind is inherently evil (see also: original sin), then you also believe that giving people the power of self-determination is dangerous. I believe that art is the battlefield upon which the wars for the identity of a nation are fought, and America in particular has a long history with this battle. In a 1787 letter to his nephew, Thomas Jefferson wrote that morality is a construct by and for society, and that individuals should ignore peer pressure and trust their instincts when choosing their moral and religious beliefs. Jefferson was a Unitarian, a denomination later sadly but predictably deemed heretical. In the mid/late 1800s, the American transcendentalists spat absolute fire like Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” (a guide to radical self-acceptance and being a bad boy sugar daddy), Thoreau’s “Walden” (a guide to rejecting capitalism and living in a cabin thanks to your sugar daddy) and “Civil Disobedience” (a guide to big dick energy which would later inspire Ghandi), and Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” (a guide to getting high in a field and realizing there’s nothing evil or gross about you). Many years later, this philosophy inspired works like Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” (a guide to punching me, specifically, right in the feels). The very concept that there’s nothing wrong with you and that only you get to decide who you are continues to be radical, dangerous, and completely unstoppable to this day.