Honestly, I agree with both of you, but this person like... they're smart. As in masters degree in a logical field. In just about any other matter I wouldn't question their judgment for a second, so when it comes to this sort of thing, how seriously should I be taking their choice of gender pronouns? I'm evidently not using it in a place they can't see/don't know about, but otherwise? I just kind of avoid the issue altogether. How do you approach something like this without just sounding like an asshole to the person & any of their friends who think similarly? :/
But also, once you switch off the binary genders he/she, it's not like there's any clear choices to use. In my first post in this thread I mentioned the options of singular they (generally my preferred, as far as referring to other people with unknown gender), xe (and then xer/xis? I forget already ._.), and then... the nounselfs. Like I know a lot of the nounselfs are completely ridiculous because seriously, who is ever going to identify as potatoself, but since English doesn't actually have a standard genderless pronoun, I don't really see the difference between making up your own to bridge the gap between him/her. I guess I just wish people didn't make it sound so silly? Because it definitely makes just about everyone go "lol this whole thing is stupid" when it's not, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with it.
And then I also wonder, how far does this go? If we don't recognize the silly ones, sure, but how far is too silly? I know there's the obvious, but then there's also like... genderfluid is pretty weird to most people. Sometimes you feel female, sometimes you feel male? Or occasionally in-between? When it comes to pronouns, that's ridiculously inconvenient for the world at large since pronouns are supposed to be useful to refer to someone and if you don't know whether they're identifying as male or female or whatever, how do you know what to use? (Most people are probably really chill about this because they get that it's complicated, but there are still also plenty of people who do get kind of riled up if you aren't using the right pronoun, whatever it may be.) Where does that fit in? Where do the in-betweens go? This is pretty much what my confusion generally boils down to. It's just... so difficult for me, with no actual concept of finding gender so important/restraining (?) that I have to identify with another, to really get a lot of this.
God I'm sorry if I sound ridiculous. At this point I'm probably like halfway between "tumblrites are stupid" and "ok but what if i actually insult someone by assuming [x]"...