The biggest incentive I have to stop gendering men is that I do not want to invite the opportunity for people to gender me as a man any more than they already do. To illustrate, in the situation I had at Target, these nice women associates teamed up to help me locate a backrest pillow. After a male associate informed one of these ladies over walkie-talkie that there was just a rather fluffy looking one, the lady stuttered for a moment and after regaining her composure pressed the associate to look for something else, claiming that the customer she was helping (me) was a male and that the item in question might be too “um… feminine”. After the initial shock I tried being nice and I leaned it and clapped my hands down and said: “that’s okay, it’s fine, it doesn’t matter to me, I’ll look at it”. This woman was what… trying to protect my shattered male ego? This is a more innocuous example; experiences with men have been far worse. If I stop people from gendering me, it’s not about “you need to get my pronoun right so I feel recognized” – it’s consequential in how you are going to treat me in a conversation. If you gender me as a man, you are almost certain to treat me differently. You’ll assume all sorts of things about me, like that I respect authority or traditionalism or nice suits or stocks or mechanics. You’ll tone down your emotional intelligence and assume I don’t want to receive affection or concern. You’ll have expectations of me to perform in a leadership role that I can’t fulfill, or worse, be emotionally stable, which is probably never going to happen.