People aren't asking you to call them "your royal highness" though. It's typically "he", "she", or "they" 99% of the time, words you already use to refer to peo

People aren't asking you to call them "your royal highness" though. It's typically "he", "she", or "they" 99% of the time, words you already use to refer to people. People are just giving you the right mapping rather than hoping your heuristics get it right. I appreciate this especially in situations when my heuristics fail, and if you meet enough people they fail often enough to create noticeable social friction. As the world becomes more interconnected, this friction is appreciable, and can be alleviated easily by just adding pronouns to the formalities of introducing one's self. When we meet, I already tell you my name. You tell me yours, and I wouldn't presume to just call you whatever I want. It would signal I don't appreciate you or consider you worthy of remembering. The same is true for pronouns. If I tell you I want to be called "they" and you decide you'd rather call me "she", it's the same level of indifference as if I tell you my name is "Sue" and you insist on calling me "Sam." They aren't asking for special treatment either -- I think everyone in your life appreciates that you refer to them using their personally preferred gender pronouns, rather than ones you might prefer for arbitrary reasons. Go ahead and switch around the pronouns you use with people in your life, and see how those people react. Trans people and non binary people are just asking you to use the pronouns they prefer, the same as everyone asks and expects.