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Remembering a person’s preferred (and ever changing) pronouns for everyone I interact with in my life is a bridge too far. We’ll all end up at “hey” or “y’all” anyway. I’m still trying to remember what I had for breakfast.

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I grew up in the land of you guys but really grew to like y’all after spending a winter in North Carolina.

I have very limited experience dealing with people who prefer to tell others what their prefered pronouns are. Though I try to respect people’s feelings whenever I can. But sometimes you just can’t win. I had to take a required workplace harassment thingy last year for a big company I was about to do some contract work for. One of the questions asked was something along the lines of - you meet John for the first time. Do you A. Assume what pronouns to use based on their appearance? B. Introduce yourself and ask what their preferred pronouns are or C. Pay attention to how John refers to themself and use those pronouns. When in doubt always guess C right? In this case I was wrong and told that B is the appropriate answer. It’s a good thing this was a recorded training because if it was live I would have asked them who was going to pay for all my medical bills the first time I walk up to a construction worker and say “Nice to meet you what are your preferred pronouns?”. I find that many construction workers are very sensitive about having their gender preferences questioned! Shouldn’t I care about their feelings too?

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I’m so confused…just watched an old film, The Three Faces of Eve, tee hee.

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So what are countries that mark for gender doing? You think we have problems! I call everyone guys; plural- yous guys.

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The poor German language. Masculine, feminine, neuter articles… der, die, das… and now everything in between??? Dif, dus, dek, dow, dax, duh…

I swear, it’s going to sound like everyone’s talking in scat:

When your sweetie tells you
Everything’ll be okay,
What pronouns do you use?
Skeep-beep de bop-bop beep bop bo-dope skeetle-at-de-op-de-day.

(With apologies to Cab Calloway)

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“You boys get wise. You get yourself to church!”

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