rule - Lemmy.world

This is the part I have a problem with:

Gender is a category assigned by the individual

Gender isn't assigned by the individual. Gender is assigned by parents, doctors, the community, and society broadly. Gender is an inherently social construction. Some people have misconstrued this to mean that gender is an individual construction. It is not. How you see yourself is only part what makes you, you. You are also defined by how others see you. I understand that some people don't identify with the gender that has been assigned to them, and thus want to change their gender assignment, and I empathize with those people, but whether or not they are able to do this is at least partially out of their control. Just because you see yourself a certain way, doesn't mean others will see you that way, and, again we are defined not only by how we perceive ourselves, but how others perceive us.

Umm, people can definitely change how others view them. And if person A refuses to accept person B for who they are, that doesn’t define person B. It defines person A as an asshole.

And if person A refuses to accept person B for who they are, that doesn’t define person B. It defines person A as an asshole.

Agree. And that sentence is not only valid for gender, it's for anything other cultural label (like genders are).

If I say that I'm a gamer, or a fan of star wars, or whatever, and you're spending your energy trying to convince the world I'm not what I said... it says much more about you than about me.

that sentence is not only valid for gender, it's for anything other cultural label (like genders are).

How about race? Can white people elect to be Black?

This is a bad faith argument, and at best a whataboutism. They aren't remotely related.
Are you aware of a good rebuttal to the comment you replied to? It tends to trip me up as even through it's often presented in bad faith, our concept of race is mostly cultural too isn't it? It feels like they're different somehow, but I can't articulate the reason why and so it's like I've stumbled into a "gotcha".
gender is a social construct which can change depending on social expectations or the mental feeling of the individual, while race is a biological construct that can't be changed
But what kind of people put so much energy into trying to show person A that it is indeed the case? Person A may be an asshole to refuse the evidence, but person B could also be selfish to take a lot of energy into convincing person A of something that might not be apparent or even might not even reflect reality. It doesn't mean that one is more right than the other or being disrespectful. Truth hurts after all. But then, if someone keep repeating the truth, maybe that person becomes an asshole. Or maybe we should ask this person if it is indeed an asshole to not misslabel them an asshole and hurt its feeling.
Describing misgendering someone as "truth" is simply transphobia. Be better.