My job has made me so used to calling people “sir” or “ma’am”, but wtf to I say to an NB?
There’s a non-binary teacher at our elementary school, who goes by “Teacher XXX” instead of the traditional Mr. or Mrs. So, if you can just use their job title, that’s a safe bet.
Do they also have a SoundCloud rap career?
Lol, wut? Not that I’m aware of.
There’s a lot of soundcloud rappers that us X’s in their handles, that was the joke.
Shows what I know about Soundcloud.
comrade
This is genuinely the real answer in English that grammatically works and is broadly understandable. Unfortunately, about a century of anti-communist propaganda has caused some people to see it as having awkward connotations.
idk, a lot of the people I’d use professional address for aren’t my comrades.
But that’s basically how the Soviets used their equivalent for the longest time though, right? Would be cool in an AES society.
I vote for the portmanteau “Sadam”
I vote for pulling that british bullshit where we push it into an abstract version of itself: “Hussein”
Hoss
Everyone should just go back to having Cowboy nicknames.
“Well there’s One Eyed Pete, cuz he’s got one eye, and Lefty Johnson, cuz he’s left handed, an Big Dumps Steven, cuz he takes massive shits.”
this here’s tiny tony, on account’a he’s a fuckin’ huge unit, it’s ironic see?
big dawg
he’ll yeag
gamer
there have already been some great suggestions but i am proposing “big dawg”
I would be down to have big dawg/blud as preferred pronouns
Can you deliver the letter to big dawg?
Blud wants the letter delivered
Personally I use “busta” but idk if that’s professional enough for PMC bug eaters
Do you rhyme?
I used to… Before I was captured by T.H.O.D (Tha Horness of Death)
Honestly the only thing I can imagine liking in a formal setting is comrade. Mx has always looked and sounded awkward to me. I don’t like referring to people formally in general because I think it’s too impersonal, but if there is a time when it’s appropriate I would prefer comrade.
Obviously that will not manifest in Western society for a long time
Tovarisch sounds cooler.
I like to shorten it to tovvie
Aww that’s cute, I wish I had a GF to call that.
There’s none that are popular and well known, but many that are obscure and unusual.
It’s not professional exactly, but I really like the IWW’s Fellow Worker, which can be written as FW like how people write Mr., before names. It’s gender neutral, and you don’t have to be employed to be called a Fellow Worker, even, all it really requires is that you not be an employer/capitalist/bourgeoisie/cop (though since it’s really only used among Wobblies, an IWW membership is sorta de facto a requirement). It’s also got quite a long history, so it doesn’t feel like a made-up term like so many of those gender-neutral professional addresses.
You know, I had me a nice lookin’ job, and it paid pretty good, you know. And I got myself a swimming pool, a Wide-Track Pontiac, even a snowmobile - one of the [Japanese] makes. But the more I spent, the more I’d end up owing, and I had to work overtime at the goddamn job! Well, I’m in the locker room one night, after the shift, and the janitor comes in, and he says: “Fellow worker, you look mighty unhappy.”
And I said, “Huh?”
He said, “Read this,” and he gives me a book.
So I said, “What’s this?”
And he said, “It’s State and Revolution. It’s by Lenin.”
Well, I’m not a man who reads many books, but I read that book, and now I know: That as long as you sell yourself, you cannot be yourself! And you cannot snowmobile your way down the forest trail to inner peace!
Quoting old union songs aside, GOOD suggestion.
Mx. is often used as a courtesy title or honorific in lieu of Mr or Ms in writing (as there’s an Emacs command to make it easier), but it runs into the Latinx issue of being a bit of a pain to pronounce (mix? Em-ecks? Mish?). It’s not a direct alternative to sir or ma’am, but title systems are archaic to the point where almost nobody knows what they are.
Wiktionary lists two pronunciations (like mix or like mucks) and treats it as potentially short for Mixter.
Latinx isn’t hard to pronounce, the x as in “equis (𝑥), the algebraic concept” is an e as in egg.
So, what about latine?
Its equivalent
Yeah, just like how every other word in Spanish uses /ˈɛks/ to represent ⟨x⟩
Well no, but in that’s how the x is used in the term latinx. X is commonly used as a substitute for J in Mexican Spanish, but that’s a different topic.
Well Janeway prefers sir, so it’s good enough for me.
I have a teacher friend who uses Mx.
Personally I think that whole class of words should be abolished. They’re feudal holdovers that the bourgeoisie “universalized” as part of bourgeois politeness, I hate them!!
I like when people call me friend instead of sir or ma’am.
kink
The only person I call sir is my boyfriend. And if anyone is calling me “miss”, they better getting down on their fucking knees for me. Calling me miss is a privilege to be earned
How do you pronounce it though? mix?
Mexico
Yeah, mix
That’s how I’ve heard it irl
I agree that they need to be abolished. Getting called sir or madam just feels fucking weird to me.
Yes, exactly.
Much like a non-binary equivalent to mom/dad, there is no singular answer as there just hasn’t yet been enough pressure for people to collectively land on a singular answer. So there are currently innumerable different proposals used by different people and you can find lists online. Esperanto already has this issue solved so I proposed loaning the word from that language (gesinjoro) and contracting it to ges’njor’[1]. But this was an idea for an honorific that specifically signals non-binarity, rather than one that’s just generally gender-neutral.
For a generally gender-neutral honorific, I think my proposal would be some variant of doctor. Like maybe ductor or another reduced form to follow the pattern of other terms of address and distinguish ductor (generic term of address) from doctor (as in MD/PhD).
Pronounced like “guess” + “neur” as in neurology. Stressed on the second syllable. ↩︎
I went somewhere recently where all the customer service folks exclusively used “friend” for me, even though afaik I’ve never met a single one of them before. I heard them ma’am/sir at least some other people who looked a bit more conformist - I only screamed that you don’t need to look enby to be enby inside, not out loud.
It felt a little odd to be called friend by people I didn’t know, and isn’t “professional” in the same way so maybe doesn’t fit what you’re looking for, but it still felt a hell of a lot better than being gendered.
There was one person who would use “boss”, which is perhaps more “professional” than friend, but that makes me feel icky in different ways.
Most of all, I want people to just drop the “professional address” with me, but I get that it’s hammered into people in customer service that they absolutely must use some form of it.
I call anyone but my boss ‘boss’ or ‘chief’ at work. Its a kitchen so telling people youre behind them or asking for times on things or whatever comes up a lot so I have a wide variety of generic terms for a person in several languages in rotation just cause saying the same thing over and over sucks
Having a peer use boss wouldn’t be icky in the same way to me.
I’ve had co-workers who absolutely hated it.
I think when you use one of those words that refers to an unbalanced power dynamic it can make people feel a variety of ways you don’t necessarily intend.
I’m thinking in particular about a guy I worked with who might have felt it highlighted our age difference, or that he inferred I saw his behavior as domineering and “bossy,” or he might have been labor-pilled cuz if we all hate the bosses, it’s not a very endearing term to use.
Could also come across as sarcastically demeaning
What way is this?
@[email protected] nailed it:
I think when you use one of those words that refers to an unbalanced power dynamic it can make people feel a variety of ways you don’t necessarily intend.
The context I was talking about was as a customer, being called boss by someone in customer service, so much as I didn’t want there to be a power dynamic, there is one, and that’s what made it feel icky to me.
That’s fair. In kitchens acting professional isnt a thing so calling someone Boss doesnt carry any connotations if they arent your boss.
“My friend,” abbreviated “MF”
something, something, “professional”
For real though, pretty sure you should just ask them how they’d like to be addressed.
Generally that’s what I’d do. I just think having a NB equivalent to “sir” would be useful in some contexts.
The awkward space is where you’re expected (e.g. by management) to address a stranger/customer with a gendered term in a professional context before you have an opportunity to ask that question.
e.g. “Excuse me Mx, you appear to have dropped your purse” or “Hi Mx, can I help you pick out a shirt?”
(I get by with “Hey there” if the person I’m addressing can be understood by context, or “mate” in relatively casual settings)
If management is making you sound like a loser then you should throw in a “your majesty” or a “my liege” every once in a while. It’ll make the customers feel nice too.
Good call, your highness
