Mastodawn

What is a gender neutral honorific for non-binary folk?

What is a gender neutral honorific for non-binary folk? - Lemmy.World

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

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Chippys_mittens 3d ago

I use “friend” a lot.

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BertramDitore 3d ago

This one bugs me a bit. I’m sure it’s said with good intentions, but I have a client who calls everyone on my team “friend” whether or not she knows us, and it always rubs me the wrong way. We’re not friends, she’s the client in a professional setting, and she has never shown any interest in getting to know me enough to actually call me “friend” and have it mean something, so it always comes across as superficial and unnaturally folksy.

As someone who doesn’t have a ton of deep friendships, the ones I do have matter a lot to me, which means I don’t like to throw around the word “friend” lightly.

Could just be my own emotional hangups though.

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Chippys_mittens

Yeah this is a perfect example of why it doesn’t matter how polite you try to be. Someone is going to be bothered by ANY language at some point. So long as you have good intentions, you’ve satisfied your end of the interaction.