They kind of got us coming and going there. In the case of the 2023 Nashville shooter the reporting on trans masculine shooter Aiden Hale (he/him) was widely reported using only his deadname and was referred to a “trans” “female” “woman” and the articles used she/her pronoun sets making the whole reporting very confusing and supporting a framing that Aiden was a trans woman.

A lot of the popular discussion at the time misread the articles as this being a trans woman and a lot of people used the case as justification to solidify their opinion that trans women are provably as prone to violence as cis men.

From a trans perspective, there is no way to fully disprove someone is non-binary in a court of law that would not negatively impact actual dearly held trans identities. To encourage rhe speculation and treatment of fakers and bad faith actors still causes the ax to fall heaviest on trans people. We keep the boundaries of gender identity fuzzy on purpose because Non-binary identities are quite a wide spectrum representing a bunch of different states and needs. A lot of well meaning cis people tend to simply treat Non-binary identities as just a third box to check and treat that the end of the conversation. Pronoun sets are basically surface level requests for an accommodation seated in a range of deeper needs , you should not need to justify yourself or identify as trans or non binary to request the use of a preferred and most of us do not require that everyone we ask to use them deep in their heart of hearts believes we are metaphysically anything specifically… Though it can be a requirement to actually establishing deeper connections.

So many people want to establish credentials. To create a rubric for determining real from fake but policing gender is antithetical to the point of wellness of the people who need the accommodations. Conservatives being bigoted idiots and implying that any individual’s deeds speak to some deep rooted evil in an entire population group should not be tolerated under any grounds. A trans person could shoot up a queer nightclub for internalized transphobic reasons and it would still be a hate crime.