Me personally? I’ve become much less tolerant of sexist humor. Back in the day, cracking a joke at women’s expense was pretty common when I was a teen. As I’ve matured and become aware to the horrific extent of toxicity and bigotry pervading all tiers of our individualistic society, I’ve come to see how exclusionarly and objectifying that sort of ‘humor’ really is, and I regret it deeply.
That’s fine, but also the vast majority of people are content being called by their assumed pronouns. I’m all for inclusion but I’m not going to erase two perfectly innocuous words from my vocabulary because one person might be sensitive about it.
Use your best judgement, if somebody corrects you then apologize and use their preferred pronoun moving forward. If that’s not good enough, that’s their problem.
Eh, it costs me nothing and actually helps me with a personal goal I have to not make assumptions about someone’s identity based on what I perceive. As someone who has been misgendered many times in the past, it truly hurts, and while that may be a personal problem, I don’t really love going around potentially causing others to feel hurt in any way.
That’s fair and I appreciate your insight here. I imagine you “know” that those who misgendered you didn’t do so intentionally or intend on being hurtful, but I’m sure it still hurts anyway. I’m sorry for that.
I suppose in the real world, using my best judgement means that if I’m unsure, I skip the gendered pronoun. It still requires an assumption based on perception, admittedly not ideal. But I also view sir and ma’am as a traditional sign of respect and I’ve used them liberally my whole life. I usually give an enthusiastic yes sir or ma’am even at the drive through.
It’s obviously a nuanced discussion that we’re not going to solve here and today, but again I appreciate your non-aggressive take, a perspective I didn’t have before.
Fuck that. NO ONE LEAVES UNTIL WE GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THIS THING!
Edit: /s just in case