While I certainly agree with you, I think I also see what Emma is trying to get at. In my decade plus of working in transgender activism, I have gotten frustrated again and again at the oversimplification of this process by many in the trans community, both on an activist level and on a personal level.
It is not uncommon at all to see a trans person be devastated and angry because, for example, someone in their class used the wrong pronoun for them despite the fact that they had included preferred pronouns in their introduction. There is rarely any acknowledgement of how *difficult* it is to override the gendered messages we are subconsciously picking up from a person’s body, energy, and pheromones with nothing but the knowledge that they prefer a certain pronoun or identify a certain way.
I think trans activists are absolutely aware that we are conditioned to see gender, but more often than not, a nuanced discussion about these subconscious messages is overlooked in favor of something far more simplistic and unhelpful like, “You should respect people’s pronouns!!”
