> Is that such a terrible thing to have to deal with?
For me? No. I imagine that someone that might deal with that 10 times a day or more might feel a bit different about it, and be tired of being in the situation of either correcting people or just letting it go because it's too tiring to deal with. I mean, I used to get that way because of my first name which has an uncommon spelling, and just correcting people writing it down for me (because otherwise I always have to worry if they search digitally where they recorded it whether their system is smart enough to do levenshtein distance or something similar to find it). I imagine it's much worse when it's something you might really care about, like gender identity, or even just people that get mistaken for the other gender often.
I'd like to think that everyone deserves the benefit of a doubt and one or more times being corrected, but some people are worse at remembering than others, and I don't see a problem with people putting preferences down, or people being asked for their own preference, especially when they think it's such an obvious thing to see.
> I'll call you whatever you like, but if you look like and dress like a man, or your name in the company directory is "Jim," I'll use "he" if I haven't been told otherwise, and I'll think you're a bit weird if you make a big deal over it.
I mean, so do I, but if Jim has corrected me once already or has registered a preference that I've seen, I should probably address them as they'd prefer, right? Anything else is just being an asshole, IMO.
> So then I end up referring to them by name all the time, which can be a little awkward in an otherwise informal written email.
They/them went out of favor a while back in English for gender neutral communication, which I think is weird, because it's super useful. I remember an English teacher in college telling me not to use it, because it was less direct and impactful. I always disagreed. I just default to you/they/them whenever I don't know specifically. It doesn't seem to cause problems, from what I can see. If someone asked me to use something else for them, I would try to remember to do so as a courtesy to them.