I don't think using someone's preferred pronoun capitalisation is a worship thing. On My antirealist discord server, capitalised pronouns are the default. If you want lowercase pronouns, you have to pick a role that says so.
I've met people who thought capitalised pronouns were a matter of religion. But I've also met people who think "he" and "she" pronouns are a matter of religion. They think their gender identities are handed down to them by Elohim, and refusing to use someone's god-given pronouns is a form of disrespect against their god. They say "My god doesn't make mistakes", and think their religious beliefs are a reason to misgender people. I think that if treating people decently means decoupling pronouns from religion, then everyone should decouple pronouns from religion.
This reality is a simulation. But it's not electronic like the Matrix, it's social. You've been socially conditioned to see what the owning class want you to see.
I think it's very simple. If you spend all day thinking about gay dick, your body is going to react. Normally only gay mascs and horny women spend all day thinking about gay dick. Straight men don't have a reaction to gay dick because they don't condition that response. They don't think about gay dick for long enough for Pavlov to kick in. Homophobes condition themselves by constantly thinking about sex (hot; unconditioned stimulus) and gay (conditioned stimulus) at the same time. If they just quit thinking about gay sex all day, their fetish would go away. But that would require being less homophobic, and they can't. Then they get worried that they're gay, because they like dick, so they assume being gay is what they have. And since what they have sucks, they assume being gay sucks, which makes them more homophobic.
A similar thing happens in POCD, or Pedophile Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The fear of being a pedophile conditions an association between children and arousal, which self-reinforces in a vicious cycle. Fortunately, most people with POCD are not fascists, so they're capable of having a normal response to it in which they don't proceed to deliberately indulge in the association. In order for someone to be homophobic and suffer the same thing with gay thoughts, their judgement has to already be compromised, which produces a more toxic reaction.
You probably don't know this, but hatred of narcissism is historically related to conservative social philosophy. https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/why-reactionaries-hate-pride-and-narcissists-938d39261f13