What is with so many of you referring to Manning with male pronouns

[Jim Lane]

242. To some extent, one can dodge the issue that way, but it isn't always the best answer.

I just skimmed Chaz Bono's Wikipedia bio. I didn't notice any instances of using a pronoun for him during his pre-transition life. This follows your suggestion, but it results in some awkwardness of its own, with repeated use of "Bono" over a long stretch of prose when much more natural English usage would have been to use a pronoun occasionally. Transgender people shouldn't be condemned to clunky writing in situations where comparable passages about cisgender people would read better. (Hey, Skinner, why does the DU spell-check flag "cisgender"? As a cisgendered man (yeah, that one gets flagged, too), I protest.)

I'm not advocating for a solution "that insists genitalia determines gender identification." I'm starting with the same premise as in your OP -- to respect people's choices. If someone makes an autobiographical reference to how coming out as a lesbian "catapulted me into a political role that has transformed my life, providing me with affirmation as a lesbian, as a woman, and as an individual," which Bono did, then that person is, at least with regard to that time period, identifying as a woman (and is using the name "Chastity Bono" as the author).

As for being empathetic, an alternative voice was raised in the Wikipedia discussion of how to handle pronouns for the transman Patrick Califia. One editor, Stella Omega, wrote:

Pat Califia was a model for many women with transgender identity issues. In the days when she was female, she offered us the possibility that we could be true to ourselves even though we were missing our penis. With books like "macho Sluts" she gave us examples of a kind of masculinity that could be incorporated by a female body.

And honestly when I heard that my hero had begun transition I felt a bit shattered. Until then she had been the primary voice of butch empowerment. She embodied a queer way of looking at one's identity, a possibility to be accepted by other queers even though some of us had dicks and some of us did not.

For this reason, I feel that calling Califia "he" before transition is insulting and dismissive to butch women and negates her identity during that time.

(I'd give you a link but it includes colon-then-P, which produces a smilie. You can go to the Califia bio and select "Talk" at the top. If you're interested in a more general discussion of the pronoun issue among Wikipedians, there's this thread from 2004, prompted by the Califia article, and a much longer current discussion, prompted by the Manning article.)