He said it's unfair for anyone to assume that he should respect them.

okay, is that not true?

Regardless of what 'respect' means, I believe that

Well it is kind of important what 'respect' means since you are invoking its name in support of prosecuting people on the basis of the language they use or don't use. So no, you don't get to brush that under the rug.

It's used here as a platitude, and I find it's good intellectual practice to be distrustful of positions that rest on mind-numbing anodynes like ' we should be nice to people' that are designed with the intention that you get to call your opponents bigots or racists or whatever accusation has the power to demerit. Best case scenario it's utterly vapid - worst case, there's something creepy and sinister behind it.

Do you know any non binary people? I do.

Yes, and why are you asking me that? I know trans people and non-binary people - the trans-people I know for a fact (they made youtube videos saying so) don't agree with the language-policing, and are pretty much normal and prefer to be referred to as 'she' or whatever. The people who describe themselves as 'non-binary' are the SJWs - which makes sense because this stuff is motivated by narcissism and when trans is no longer special or provocative, they need a new identity such as non-binary.

And I used to say that it was unfair of them to ask me to change my language until it was explained to me in a language I could understand- by a person who was suffering

You were moved by pity or compassion or emotion - and that's fine, that's a valid motivator for a personal decision. Not really for an ethical dictum, you can't insist other people be moved the same. The mere fact of suffering doesn't give you powers of compulsion over people, let alone to warp language - what a sick idea.

Here's the thing: You (or anyone in this camp) keep invoking 'respect' as something to compel people to speak about other people in however arbitrary way they want to. I am telling you that to compel me, as someone who values spoken truth, to use language that is unnatural to me in order to validate someone's narcissism isn't showing much 'respect' to me. And it is narcissism, (don't invoke their suffering again, I don't deny the suffering that goes with any mental condition) - it is nothing more or less than narcissism to expect the world to conform to you on a unilateral basis. You would ask me, as someone who values truth, to lie for someone else's 'benefit'. Don't you think that would make me 'suffer'?

You haven't at all addressed the legal repercussions - does it really seem just to you that someone could be fined thousands or go to jail for not saying 'zur'?

Truth is more important than compassion - I'm not the biggest fan of Peterson (if you got the impression I was) but I agree with him on that, compassion can become pathological a la the Oedipal mother - as can anything, taken to extremes. Compassion is not something to base an entire worldview or an entire ethics on.

Discounting emotion all together and trying to rationalize everything as if humans aren't emotional creatures, as if you personally are somehow 'above' emotion, as if every interaction, social construct, or thought you have isn't absolutely steeped in emotion, is a flimsy excuse for truth, in my opinion.

This seems like a straw-man - who are you referring here? Is this what you think I'm saying..?

I'm saying that truth isn't simply a matter of feeling and that people should always be able to speak the truth as it seems to them and certainly should not be compelled to violate their truth by the state.

off their perceived oppression

I can't quite take you seriously if you think a person not being called 'zur' like they want is 'oppressed' and someone else who is threatened with loss of career, financial ruin, and/or prison for not saying the fucking words the state tells them to is 'perceived oppressed'. You haven't addressed this at all, I suspect because you know most people are going to find it distasteful that you actually agree.

I'd challenge you to broaden your scope.

In what way?

Try reading the Anti-opression guidelines laid out by modern socialists.

OOF, no thank you. No codes or guidelines for me, I don't fuck with that. /r/LateStageCapitalism banned for explaining mathematics, apparently that's 'capitalist apologia'. Those subs aren't places for people who thin freely. It's strange to me how this pronoun stuff is a cause celebre of the left today (apart form the old-school marxists who reject identity politics as bourgeois distraction from class-struggle), I mean we take it for granted but it doesn't make sense in and of itself. Every socialist state that ever existed was virulently anti-LGBT and killed them en masse along with so many others - Castro put gays in camps. Nevermind how the trans/non-binary narrative is highly individualistic (this is who I REALLY am, inside in my SOUL society can't tell me otherwise) and doesn't seem very communist. It just seems to be one of the tribal lines modern Western (mainly American) politics has arbitrarily divided along. Like how being for low capital gains taxes or being pro-guns doesn't seem inherently connected to not believing in climate change, yet one is a reasonably good predictor for the other.

that I found language that worked for me

You found a compromise between language that worked for you and language that wouldn't upset people. Your position is predicated on your belief that this is a reasonable or a just compromise to aim for. This is not going to be the case for everyone and you should respect that.

I don't believe in any hierarchical structures at al

Says everyone as they shill for the state. I had never heard of Jordan Peterson before his resistance to this legislation - nevermind that you don't like the guy, do you agree with the legislation or not? Do you think people facing legal prosecution from the state for not saying words people make up is a good or a bad thing?