I'm trying to think of a way to interrupt that, that doesn't reflect horribly on you.
I mean, there's some truth in what he's saying about the brain and body.
Rather, the brain is the body. It's just as capable of doing something "wrong" as any other part of the body. It's just that the brain is complicated, controls a lot of things, and creates through its processes the being that we call "us," so it's easy for us to consider it distinct it from the "body" in our minds (funnily enough, maybe it's a bit of narcissism on our parts, lol).
Yes. This is why I explained find the answer to this topic for society is a fool's errand. We'll never understand the location of consciousness, and there IS a cost, which is increasingly logical inconsistencies with how we share understanding of the objective world. People are already losing track of the brain being a body part and accidentally substituting the brain for the mind/body distinction (when the brain is a body part). This idea of forcing pronouns that aren't agreed upon on society (sometimes by force) is that problem extrapolated further. It's not about a lack of empathy, it's about a degradation of the shared fabric of how we define words when people who don't want to play along are forced to play along.
"Forced"
What gives you the right to force your ideas upon trans people when you refuse to even grant any merit to the possibility they're genuinely of the gender they state they are?
The only one forcing anything on others is people like you who think the right to be jerks is more important than granting some dignity to others. ---