51 flavors: What pronoun do you prefer?

Jim Geraghty writes in his Morning Jolt column today at National Review,

I thought I didn’t have a ton to add to the deafening national hullabaloo about Bruce Jenner-turned-Caitlyn Jenner . . . and then I realized I did. It’s not too much to ask that somebody like Jenner not be assaulted, not be harassed, not be deprived of any rights that anybody else has.

But it is a bit much to ask the rest of us to not find his decision, or the entire process, at least a little weird.

This is why some conservatives are really eager to see Hillary Clinton asked how many genders there are. Because a bunch of us have walked around for a really long time thinking the answer was “two.” Even if you want to change your gender, you’re changing from one to the other, no? But apparently some want to be classified as a third one. And now, because apparently a lot of vocal types think that having only two or three terms doesn’t accurately describe them, Facebook now offers users 51 categories. That seems like a lot. I mean, for perspective, Baskin Robbins has only 31 flavors.

We old fuddy-duddies walked around thinking we lived in a world where once you’ve got a gender, you stay in a gender. If I met Bill on Tuesday, and we make an appointment for lunch next week, I presume he’s going to be the same gender when I see him next. According to some progressives, this perspective is unreasonable. I am not making this up.

Here’s an item in the 2012 program for the Netroots Nation conference, a gathering of liberal bloggers:

Transgender Etiquette

There are many transgender people at Netroots Nation. To be inclusive, please keep in mind the following:

Please do not assume anyone’s gender, even people you may have met in the past. A person’s external appearance may not match their internal gender identity. Pay attention to a person’s purposeful gender expression. It’s polite to ask: “What pronoun do you prefer?” or “How do you identify?” before using pronouns or gendered words. Or better yet, ask for their name.

Really? “Please do not assume anyone’s gender, even people you have met in the past”?

The program goes on:

Please listen to transgender people’s needs and stories when they are volunteered; yet please respect people’s privacy and boundaries and do not ask unnecessary questions.

Don’t assume the gender . . . but don’t ask unnecessary questions, either!

So is it insensitive or disrespectful to ask? If I ask, am I crossing a boundary? For someone who is “gender fluid” -- one of Facebook’s 51 categories -- then yes, you wouldn’t necessarily know their gender du jour without asking. But to someone who identifies as “agender” -- another one of the 51, “someone who does not identify with any sort of gender identity” -- the question might be construed as insulting or an attempt to shoehorn them into making a choice they reject.

Progressives are trying to set up a social interaction Koyabashi Maru in which no matter what you do, you end up offending someone who can now review your interaction under their new IRS tax code of greeting etiquette and audit you for an act of intolerance for using a pronoun somebody doesn’t prefer.

...Maybe adding a society-wide non-male, non-female category of gender identity is worthwhile; I’m sure bathroom construction contractors would love this idea. (Economic stimulus! Adding a third bathroom to every major facility in America!) But if you declare, “I have concluded that the two-gender model that society operated on for generations is insufficiently sensitive to how I see myself; thus every institution in the country has to reorganize itself to create a third category to fit my self-identity,” and others reacts by saying, “eh . . . nah, not gonna do it,” it’s not crystal clear that they’re the ones being unreasonable.