Hey all, I am locking this post. Here is the bottom line. Blahaj is a trans safe instance. Regardless of your personal opinion on whether a term is gender neutral or not, the moment someone tells you that they are not OK with that term, that should be the end of the debate. This is a good rule not only in Blahaj but in real life. Continuing to argue with someone about what they should or should not accept in this matter is harmful.
Soooo much appreciation for this 🩷 I think I'll forever mentally twitch when people use dude, man, mate, bro, etc. towards me. I totally know it's done in a gender neutral way, but I still feel a small pang in my heart.
Yeah I'm terrible at this. Almost put man in this sentance twice. I don't stop myself unless explicitly asked as it would be quite patronizing to treat them like they're somehow different than all the other women I call man or my guy however but when asked it's hard to stop. I do my best though
I used to use "man" in a gender neutral way a lot. Like "hey man" or "what's up man". Probably a '90s kid thing. But here's the thing, it's not about how I feel about the word. It's about how the person getting called that word feels about it. So I've made a conscious effort to stop using it. It's really not difficult to not be a selfish asshole.
These days, the only person I still say "hey man" to is my weed guy.
I work as a bartender and call the most feminine cis gendered women the world has ever seen bro, brother, mate and man. I don't even want to do it and always feel embarrassed afterwards I'm just a chronic bruh poster.
I always mean words like dude or guys as gender neutral, and luckily none of my friends have an issue with it, but I understand why some people wouldn't like that. Is there a good gender neutral replacement for the word?
I have a brit friend. Rough guy and personal security specialist (ex military). His funniest quirk to me is how he will use "honey" and especially "sweetheart" with anyone, regardless of gender and with absolutely no malice.
EDIT: LOL, this was meant as a response to a comment I can't even find now. Sorry, didn't mean to reply to main.
Fuck, this is my daily struggle. At this point if I realized I messed up in text I let the conversation go for a bit then quietly edit that part out, because when I used to apologize I ended up just calling attention to the problem, which was annoying to my friends and caused it to hit worse.
I feel kinda like an outlier in that I never used dude/man/bro pre-transition, but now that I'm openly enby and on E I use them reflexively with my friends. For some reason it feels like an expression of my queerness now. I also have friends who call everyone "girl/sis" and that rocks too, but I don't tend to use those words myself. My sister calls people "girliepop" and I find it delightful. I tend to wait to use any of the words with new friends before figuring out if they're cool with it though.
I also tend to call everyone they/them unless someone tells me what their pronouns are explicitly (or via button or something), I don't really like gendered pronouns. It makes for a funny situation where I use they/them for basically everyone except trans people.
I've done this a few times, and I hear myself doing it and alarm bells go off, and I can see them trying not to react to it, and then I try to overcompensate by using it more and more to prove how gender-neutral I consider it, but I think I eventually end up digging a hole and squatting in it. 😢