I was raised to address strangers and those I wish to show social deference to as “Sir” or “Ma’am”. It’s a difficult habit to break, as it is deeply engrained.
What is an equivalent gender neutral honorific that is relatively common in English? If I can’t break the habit I’d rather have a substitute word to use instead of an awkward pause in the middle of addressing someone
I’d just use Google to ask but I’d rather ask the people directly rather than an AI generated answer based off of Reddit threads
ETA: I suppose if Yessir and Yes’m work, Yesn’t could too? Mostly joking… but maybe… 🤔
Your highness
Dude
FWIW, Sir is gender neutral in the military — this came up in Star Trek Voyager, anyway. Basically if your senior officer isn’t male, they’re sir until they tell you otherwise.
Not really…
Like, yeah, probably in Star Trek, but that would have been a projected evolution of modern society, not a reflection of current reality.
Everyone would assume “sir” and if it’s over an email no one is getting worked up about it.
But call a female officer “sir” to her face and I don’t think it will go well
Not sure what military you served in, but the one I served in definitely didn’t call women sir until instructed otherwise. However, “mister” may be correct for all warrant officers.
Um, Starfleet… as mentioned (Star Trek Voyager… Star Trek’s Starfleet is inspired by the Navy).
I never served… Mostly due to health reasons
Oh I misunderstood you. I thought you were using the Star Trek reference as just a supporting claim that militaries follow this practice. But I see now you meant only in that context.
Yeah, I meant that Star Trek did it, and Star Trek is (supposed to be) based on the Navy, so as one who’s never served, I really only have Star Trek Voyager (which had a female captain) to go by.
With female bosses, I’ve always asked them if they want to be called sir or ma’am. It sounds like a good way to catch hands, but if you ask out of respect and good faith, chances are you’ll be answered in kind.
I served in the US Air Force. Everyone was “Sir” or “Ma’am” and it was very gender-specific. Even for the few years we allowed transgender folks to serve (before Trump banned them), you referred to them by their preferred transition title.
We don’t have warrant officers in the Air Force, so I can’t speak to their title of address.
Same, USAF but decades ago. It was actually the USAF protocol office I called to verify the “mister” address for WO. Not because we had them, but because they still have protocol for how to address them, generally army chopper pilots if I recall.
When I served (2002-2022), we were always told that warrant officers are technically officers, so treat them the same as any officer. So we would’ve addressed them as Sir or Ma’am if we came across them. As well as saluting them if we met them outside.
I don’t recall ever addressing anyone as “Mister” in the service. Heck, I retired a few years ago and now I feel weird when people call me Mr. [Last Name]. I got so used to being called by my rank and last name for 2 decades. Mister just sounds wrong.
Sir hasn’t been gender neutral in my military for like 30 years at least
No, I got yelled at when I didn’t see.
FWIW, Sir is not gender neutral in Gamestop.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
GameStop has Wendy’s now?
Yeah, Wendy’s nuts are loose but your manager “borrowed” the socket set and now your clearance display is on the ground.
Wen deez nuts are loose
It means I’m getting old…
Sir is gender neutral in fictional militaries. Every woman holding a commission I ever encountered was ma’am. Didn’t matter the country.
Yes, Star Trek is fictional.
But the way you’ve formatted your first comment is “this thing is a military thing, as can be seen from this fictional military” which doesn’t necessarily imply said thing is fictional even though the military you’ve used as an example is.
Gentlepeople?
But what if they are an MMA fighter?
Ran into that problem with my enby friend. Specifically in the jokey context, like when a friend asks you to do something and you say “Yes Sir!” Or “Yes Ma’am!” in a kind of over the top way. They hadn’t really thought about it either and they were flummoxed too. We wound up with “Yes Colonel!”
deleted by creator
“OI CUNT” 🇦🇺
Scotland approves 🏴
I use ‘homie’ sometimes. It’s not always the right option but it’s another arrow in the quiver.
Homie comes from hommes, which is French for man/men. May also be closely related to hombre, which is man in Spanish. Definitely think it’s risky to use it as a gender neutral term even though it’s just regular slang in English.
This is just made up nonsense.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homie
Might be a descendant of Latin “homo” (man), but that doesn’t matter a damn, x homie" just isn’t gendered and etymology doesn’t change that.
@jdr@lemmy.ml @Furbag@lemmy.world Wait, that wiktionary explanation seems weird too. I always thought of homie as being a derivative of “homeboy” or “homegirl”. I could be wrong, but I definitely started hearing homie after those two and have always thought that they were connected. In fact, the wiktionary page for homeboy lists homie as a related term, so to me it seems like the two pages are contradicting each other.
“Um ackshually it’s man in Latin!” ☝️🤓
Yeah, okay, thanks for proving my point. Probably shouldn’t be using a word that means “man” in several romance languages if your goal is to be gender neutral.
Mate
I think devils panties had a comic around this topic. can’t remember if she had anything in the notes with an answer.
In Dragon Age, Serah and Messere and the gender neutral terms, which i alway thought went nicely with "Ladies & Gentlemen, Serahs & Messeres!” However Serah is for those equal or lower in status and Messere is higher status. Choose wisely.
I’ve asked people to call me ‘it’. Hasn’t happened yet.
Yesn’t, I can do that
I thought ‘it’ was a third person pronoun.
Chief is the only correct answer.
I often call people chief. One time I started to say Yessir, realized midway the person I was taking to might not appreciate the label, tried to change lanes and say Yeah, Chief, and wound up saying Yes Chef.
We had a really good conversation about The Bear TV series afterwards
I mean chef literally means chief
Avoid honorifics with “there” (e.g. hello, sir - > hello there) or drop. Otherwise use boss, friend, chief or captain depending on vibes.
Mx may work for that. To my knowledge there’s no accepted sir/ma’am equivalent, though most nonbinary folks I’ve met prefer sir to ma’am unless they lean solidly to the feminine.
I like to use “dude” or “guy” in a neutral way.
I often say ‘man’ as an affectation regardless of gender, but today I accidentally said “thanks man” to an obvious trans woman at the kitchen store and felt really bad but she pretended not to notice.
Some people who aren’t men have a negative reaction to being addressed as “dude” or “guy” nowadays. There’s been a lot of writing about it online by women and non-binary folks, and some people in my life IRL have expressed that feeling as well.
“Guy” and “dude” had been all-encompassing gender-neutral terms in my head for ages (I grew up in the 1980s-1990s when we were all dudes) but I’ve been making an effort to switch away from using them that way because I like my speech patterns to be kind by default.
M’dude.
