I really wish people would stop using that argument and link, for several reasons:
1) The first amendment has been applied to companies which hold a position which similar to that of a town center. To be fair court decisions has gone both way, but the argument in favor is that when a company operate a space which is indistinguishable from a government operated space then it should be treated equally under the law.
2) When people in the US sue companies and talk about free speech or freedom of religion they usually don't win under the First Amendment ruling but rather under anti-discrimination laws. They will talk about freedom of speech to the media, but as a practical matter will raise anti-discrimination law in court as those have a much larger scope than the first amendment. In places anti-discrimination law can do more or less anything the first amendment do, except the first amendment restrict the government and anti-discrimination restrict companies.
3) In eu both freedom of speech and freedom of religion protects against governments, companies and people. Freedom of religion is particular broad and covers political and world views, and do not require any official religion or belief. EU law impacts many international companies. EU also has it own set of anti-discrimination and in 2000 added "any discrimination based on any ground such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation shall be prohibited".
One of those three can likely be used when people bring up freedom of speech. Just because you think someone is an asshole for holding an opinion does not mean you can discriminate against the person saying it. The technicality of the first amendment is not a license for others to restrict speech.
And according to the SO 2019 survey, "only" 91.7% of people on SO identify as male (do keep in mind that not everyone who identifies as male uses he/him too), yet most people default off to he/him when referring to others.
This can alienate the 8.3%+, and is probably one of the reasons why that percentage is that low.
This change isn't just about trans people, but about anyone who doesn't use he/him or isn't male.
> This can alienate the 8.3%+, and is probably one of the reasons why that percentage is that low.
That "probably" there isn't justified, in my opinion.
As others in that FAQ thread have pointed out, StackOverflow isn't a place where a lot of third-person interaction is taking place, so I'd consider it a stretch to make that out as a reason that non-males are lacking there.
Maybe it's just that women often have better things to do than to ask strangers for help on why their Haskell state monad is acting up.
A new user will typically arrive at SE for asking or answering specific questions. Even most of the users with accounts rarely seem to go near meta and chat.
When I was active on SE (I gave up logging in a few years ago), meta was the afterthought to bitch about some policy or detail and the annoying habits of questioners. The chat usually empty or quiet enough that even looking to see if it was active seemed mostly pointless. I'm sure it's grown since, but that's not really where new people are going.
> Also, I wonder what happens the first time somebody says their preferred pronoun is "God", or something 127 characters long? or Little Bobby Tables? or...?
It isn't. If one accepts the premise that gender is separate from biological sex, one accepts chosen gender-based pronouns as acceptable descriptors of a person's gender identity, but the premise of gender-based pronouns is that they describe gender. As the set of human genders is not infinite, the set of valid pronouns to describe human gender is also not infinite.
"I identify as an attack helicopter" is obviously stated in bad faith, as "attack helecopter" is not a valid human gender. "God" or a base64 hash are also obviously not valid genders. The only people who would do so to begin with are trolls who want to mock trans identity.
Though where is the line drawn about what is a valid gender/pronoun? For instance, are all the pronouns listed on https://askanonbinary.tumblr.com/pronouns acceptable or not?
99% of this issue is about the validity of calling someone either "he" or "she" when their gender identity is not the same as their biological sex. The use of such "nounself" gender identifiers[0,1] is uncommon and controversial even with the LGBT community[2].
Personally, if I know someone is sincere and wants me to use such a pronoun, I probably would, even though I'd find it odd.
So let's draw the line here: at the very least if someone wants to be called "he" or "she" that should be respected regardless of their biological sex, and agree that it gets "complicated" from there.
> bad faith actions like having a 127 character pronoun means that it must be reported:
Why is that assumed bad faith? What if someone has a legitimate 127 character pronoun and that is how they identify themselves? Are you not refusing their identity? Would it not be bigoted to not refer to them as their 127 character pronoun(s)?
The FAQ clearly states that if you don't know then you're free to use they/them, and only are required to use their preferred pronouns if you're asked to do so by the person or if you very clearly knew before (say that you wrote 10 answers to someone over a week, if you defaulted back to they/them on each, then it could be seen as intentional).
I don't get the backlash either, I think it's a combination of genuine bigotry and the "nice" feeling of being on the side of everyone. In the end, it does feel weird to upvote a post that is at -700 or to speak positively when most people's reactions that you see are negative.
You're still perfectly "allowed" to maliciously misgender people, it'll just get you warned or banned.