Livre d'Or

*hugs*

It seems to me that you probably are in an impossible situation. Which doesn't mean it's not worth thinking about carefully and trying to make the impossible situation as good as possible. But trans people are different, and although there are some general blindingly obvious respectful things like 'don't misgender me' some of the subtleties are going to be personal. I hope that with greater awareness and less transphobia in the world this will change, and there will become standard socially acceptable ways to deal with the situation of finding out preferred pronouns for people you have only just met, but we're not there yet. Given we're not there, everyone will have their own opinions, and it might be that you can do what the consensus is is 'best practise', that can make 90% of trans people think 'yes, that is an informed ally' and _still_ meet trans people who hate what you are doing, find it upsetting, and don't think it's a helpful way to do things.

Is it possible to ask the student who was upset how they would have liked you to behave? It sounds from your write-up that they just wanted to be read as their binary gender, and not have the point that gender is difficult and anyone might not be something obvious raised anywhere near them, particularly in a public way. In which case it might be that there was no way to do what you wanted to do - acknowledge that gender is complicated and tell people you will respect their preferences - without being upsetting to someone who doesn't want people thinking about that near them. Or it might be that it was the 'putting them on the spot and making them give their pronouns' thing. Lots of people hate talking in front of a group, particularly about stuff they find personal or upsetting. So given that giving pronouns is not a standard thing people do every day, even if you make the whole group do it, that's going to feel quite high pressure and possibly upsetting.

I wonder if the way round that is to not ask for any response at all. So email or talk and say 'please let me know if I get your name wrong or use the wrong pronouns for you, I'm keen to do better and respect your identity' without demanding a response of 'my pronouns are such-and-such'. Alternatively, if you have 5 minutes and it's not a class that always works together, you could put people into pairs and give them five minutes to chat, and then get them to introduce each other. That means you're more likely to _hear_ preferred pronouns, as they'll say 'He likes horseriding' rather than 'I like horseriding', and if someone has non-obvious preferred pronouns that they want the class (and you) to know about they can raise them in a smaller conversation between the two of them? Would take more time, and I'm not sure if it'd work though.