Personally when it comes to the various -isms, my opinion is that a property shouldn't include it 'just because' or for the sake of a nebulous idea of realism … As you say, for some people playing characters whose gender identity doesn't match their gender presentation, being repeatedly misgendered and having to correct others would be frustrating.
I’d definitely agree that having our characters face random transphobia or intentional misgendering isn’t something that I’d want. And I have no idea whether that would be realistic or whether transphobia is a thing in Faerun. I wonder if this is addressed somewhere in official media? My guess would be that in a society where there are fewer gender norms and no historic power imbalance between men and women, there’d also be less stigma attached to gender non-conformity of different kinds and so people on the Sword Coast would be less likely to be transphobic or blink at contravening what few gender norms there seem to be (eg around dress). Whereas I could easily imagine that Lolth-sworn drow society would frown heavily on those it saw as transgressing gender norms, given its entrenched power differential between males and females. I’ve no idea if it’s actually true that there’s a connection between sexism and transphobia (feels like that is something that there’s probably some real world evidence for or against), but personally, I think both sides of that might be amongst the interesting things that the story could engage with and add a new dimension to, and possibly take some heat out of, due to the fantasy setting. But I don’t think that simply having some characters misgender our characters would be a good way of going about it.
But yes, even if people aren’t transphobic, they still might misgender us just from not knowing from looking us what our gender is, and we might want to correct at least some of those people (personally, I don’t think I’d bother if I was intending to kill them immediately afterwards, for example!). And I agree that the net benefit of including a mechanic for this in the game isn’t obvious and it could easily just be frustrating, and that any changes would need to have a tangible benefit that adds to the experience and story.
It sounds like we might disagree on how much potential BG3 and the Forgotten Realms have for thoughtfully engaging with themes of gender and other weighty matters (I think there’s a lot), though I think we’re very much in agreement that what Larian has so far implemented doesn’t constitute such thoughtful engagement, and that any such engagement should be purposeful and add to the story or world building.
