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.
Removed by mod
Honestly in my social circle āDudeā has basically become gender neutral.
Iām a school bus driver. Kids call everybody of all genders ādudeā and ābroā. Also the n-word but thatās a different matter.
Dude, man, bro, and āfellasā have all become gender neutral to me
Edit: come to think of it not only has ābroā become neutral, but ābro-sephanieā has become something I use for guys.
āBroā is gender neutral for me. Though I still try to avoid it with transfems I donāt know very well (which isā¦ all except one) since I canāt know if theyād tell me if it makes then uncomfortable. Since even if you know how itās meant it can still feel bad.
One of the very few things where Iāll change how I interact with a transfem vs a ciswoman
āDudeā and āBroā being gender neutral really varies from social circle to social circle. I always air on the side of caution although Iāve even seen some cis females call each other dude and bro
I always air on the side of caution
Bro ā¦ itās āerrā.
Engrish hard :(
Going some 20-25 years back I recall some of my friends from English speaking countries using it as gender neutral, and I guess once I wrapped my head around it, thatās how itās been for me. But your mileage may certainly vary.
God I wish. I accidentally ādudeā my trans friends on occasion. I feel so bad.
As a transfem, I definitely appreciate this.
Removed by mod
https://www.etymonline.com/word/dude
Interesting suggested etymology, Iād never have thought dude about the type of person described there.
Earnest question ā sorry if this is offensive or something everyone already knows ā but shouldnāt you treat transwomen and ciswomen the same?
I mean, mostly, yeah. The issue is, while most people will say dude is gender neutral, it really depends on the person.
Iām trans, I have two friends who call friends dude. One is a woman who I have known for like 5 years and will call everyone and everything dude. When she says it I donāt feel weird about it.
I have another friend who says dude is gender neutral and Iāve known them for about the same amount of time. However, I have never heard them call a woman dude. They say they do, but I our mostly female friend group, I think Iāve only ever heard it towards me.
Thatās really the issue. People will say itās gender neutral but not use it neutrally, and believe me, trans people notice it. Anecdotally, this is how my trans friends view it as well, but take my experience with a grain of salt.
Yes. If I know or suspect that a certain word can potentially hurt a cis-woman I know due to her unique history, I wonāt use it around her, either.
Trans- and cis women are both women, but that doesnāt mean they are the same in every way, no?
Yes but this is more like not telling 911 survivors plane jokes or rape survivors rape jokes
You are not wrong. But trans folks can be a lot more sensitive around language use sometimes. Misgendering ranges anywhere from annoying to hurtful to being an actual verbal attack. So their skin is often less thick for gendered language.
is using gender-neutral masculine terms like āguysā misgendering?
Itās like in a romance language. If itās mixed genders, then no, but if itās only women, then yes. If Iām in a mixed group of friends, āYou guysā is totally fine, but if Iām solely with my transfem friends and someone says āYou guysā to us, it feels tone deaf at best and like pretty blatant misgendering at worst.
I get this when weāre at restaurants sometimes and itās pretty clear when the waitstaff are being rude. Table of all cis women next to us? āCan I get you girls anything else?ā Our table of transwomen clearly presenting femme? āCan I get you guys anything else?ā kinda sucks.
Unironically, āYāallā has become a significant part of my vernacular when talking to groups of people, but especially around my queer peeps because it covers every possible option, including those outside the gender binary.
As a general rule, donāt use language someone asks you not to use.
Even better, rather than thinking about specific actions, just try to treat everyone with genuine respect. If you commit a faux pas, learn from it, chuckle at yourself, and move on. š
It can be. Depends on the person
It can be depending on the person. My general advice is to just use gender neutral terms like āfolkā or something.
Removed by mod
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 wouldnāt like that. Is there a good gender neutral replacement for the word?
folks, friend(s), yāall, sweetie, partner, sport, buddy,
pal, chum, sunshine, famIsnāt āpalā masculine, with āgalā being the feminine version?
Speaking only from my own experience, Iāve never associated āpalā with masculinity. āGalā is, to my knowledge, the feminine form of āguyā
Oh, maybe! Iām not an english speaker
Looking at wiktionary, apparently the two words have completely separate etymologies - but āpalā is borrowed from ābrotherā in one language, while āgalā is borrowed from āgirlā in a different language (which itself derived it from English, I think?)
Language can be funky
WillStealYourNicknames
I use āmy liegeā and ābossā quite a bit.
Folks.
Kenji Lopez alt signs off with a shout-out to āguys, gals, and non-binary palsā so thereās that
The Lawful Good version of ābitches, bros, and non-binary hoesā
I think I had a couple iffy uses last week but friends always know I mean well.
Pal?
Pal, friend, and bud all soundā¦ idk, somehow condescending to me? I donāt really know why. I think the best one Iāve been able to think of so far is yāall.
Mate?
u 'avin a gigul?
Fam?
deleted by creator
Real. I donāt have a lot of female friends so I had to adjust a bit.
I work as a bartender and call the most feminine cis gendered women the world has ever seen bro, brother, mate and man. I donāt even want to do it and always feel embarrassed afterwards Iām just a chronic bruh poster.
I was working at this fancy upscale botanical garden and instead of greeting the patron with a very formal āHello, welcome!ā I said āSup?ā with the chin up and everythingā¦
I died a little inside that day.
Wassup!
Is it weird that Iām a Trans girl and I still use dude like so much?
And yet when other people use it for me, I feel like I have to ask how they meant it š
6 months in and I still misgender myself sometimes lol. It definitely isnāt a super easy switchover after decades of using something else.
Neuroplasticity is a thing, but it takes time and vigilance for changes to happen.
Oh I donāt see it as a bad thing. Iām just saying itās ironic.
dude isnāt gender neutral?
It really depends š
ayo your avatar moves??
oh yeah you get that with lemmy pro. if you upgrade to lemmy pro+ you get an animated banner for your profile too!
You guys have avatars?? (Iām on voyager so idk what Iām missing on desktop)
omgg Iām subscribing right away!!
Itās a little inconsistent, but donāt beat yourself up too much. Language is complicated and slow to change, same as our usage of it.
but donāt beat yourself up too much
Oh donāt worry, that wasnāt the spirit of my comment at all. If anything, I started using dude after my egg cracked. It fits with the chill, tomboyish image I have of myself.
I feel that, it was drilled into me in the 90s and I just it for most people as well.
I used to use āmanā in a gender neutral way a lot. Like āhey manā or āwhatās up manā. Probably a '90s kid thing. But hereās the thing, itās not about how I feel about the word. Itās about how the person getting called that word feels about it. So Iāve made a conscious effort to stop using it. Itās really not difficult to not be a selfish asshole.
These days, the only person I still say āhey manā to is my weed guy.
I still say āhey manā to my weed guy
Thatās like their formal title lol. My last dealer (4 years clean now) was a woman and I always said āhey manā to her.
Whenever anyone says āhey manā to me I respond with, āno, not anymoreā and they tend to get really confused.
I used to say ādudeā and āmanā to everyone. It was pretty easy to give up ādudeā, and I just kinda seamlessly switched āmanā to āfam.ā
I still think guy/dude is gender neutral. Call it the Good Burger principle:
āIām a dude, heās a dude, sheās a dude, weāre all dudesā¦ HEY!ā
doesnāt matter if it isnāt to whoever you are referring to
Yeah I agree. At the end of the day Iām not going to disrespect someone by calling them something they donāt want to be called
Yeah for me, just she/her, thanks.
If you wanna borrow from old gang verbage, you can call me girl, I suppose. Like āwhaddup, girlā or babe is nice too. Likeā¦ Maybe call me something sexy and degrade me, donāt nullify me by making me into a man. I would rather be a sex toy, a literal object, than be a man.
Yeah I use all those in gender neutral ways. āManā can start a sentence and not be directed at anyone.
My closest gender neutral family member likes dude, if youāre in doubt just ask, theyāll appreciate it
Asking and respecting the answer is true big brain <3
Yeah I mean, Iām not calling someone dude or guy intentionally if they donāt like it. Thatās just being polite.
Dunno, I use ādudetteā pretty frequently with my girl friends (and I donāt mean Egg Carriersā¢, nor do I have something better than āgirl friendsā - initially wanted to go for āchick palsā as a snappy equivalent, then I started feeling like That One Creepy Uncle). Actually use ādudetteā more than I do ādude,ā it has a nicer sound to it.
As I see it, ādudeā is gender neutral when used as an interjection, same as āmanā and āguy.ā
Soooo much appreciation for this š©· I think Iāll forever mentally twitch when people use dude, man, mate, bro, etc. towards me. I totally know itās done in a gender neutral way, but I still feel a small pang in my heart.
Howās Homie sit with you? (I think Homie is a great gender neutral term!)
Using a validating, non vaguely-male term is great, though!
Most of the terms are like: āthese are MALE terms and also girls can be āone of the brosā in certain circumstancesāā¦ but thatās just not what transition is about.
We donāt want to be ājust one of the brosā; you gotta understand that:
a) thatās NOT what a lot of us after,
b) the world doesnāt revolve around men and being men and being masculine (and perpetuating that male chauvinism perspective is shitty),
and c) itās okay to call girls, girls, and to be a woman. That isnāt a negative or lesser or othering l thing, despite how much of society raises us to believe.
Iām also not saying that we donāt want to be included wherever we feel comfortable fitting in, we absolutely do. And I think a lot of allies understand that. But just as many allies understand that trans women feel left out from being included in feminine spaces, as well. And sometimes, while we may fit in better with the bros, way more than the girls, that itself can feel awful and really get the dysphoria going. Sometimes though, some of us realize that the dudes that are bros we realize are hot and dumb and we want to be closer to them forā¦ different reasons.
Personally, Iām poly and pan and just want everybody to get along and not have weird stereotypically forced gender segregated hobbies, interests, and cliques anymore because thatās weird and uncomfy. I donāt even know what Iām talking about anymore I havenāt eaten today yet. Homie is fine, I guess, but borderline, personally. I donāt know a better replacement.
Haha that was a lot.
Thank you for that perspective.
I am not very close to many trans people so most of my approach just comes from wanting to be able to be ābuddiesā strictly plutonic friends with people of any gender.
I found for CIS people that homie was welcoming and friendly and more likely to get thrown around by everyone as its a little silly
I can appreciate the importance of recognizing someoneās gender especially if they are experiencing dysmorphia and I appreciate you pointing out that importance
Lmao itās platonic. Plutonic sounds like youāre radioactive or something.
Also, dysmorphia is when something is āmorphedā differently and it is dis-tressing, a la shape or physical attributes. Like seeing yourself as overweight when youāre not, or obsessing over your nose being too big or too small. In usually unhealthy, obsessive, and inaccurate ways. Think: anorexia.
Dysphoria is the opposite of euphoria. Itās very different. When somebody has gender dysphoria, itās a fundamental opposite-of-euphoria about ones gender. Trans women do not want to be men (because theyāre women), trans men do not want to be women (because theyāre men), and enbies donāt want to be whatever it is they donāt want to be (because they are actually chaos and you should definitely go on that journey with them, I guarantee itāll be interesting .).
All LGBT and queerness and liberalism is doing is trying to make the world suck less for people who are actually different. Itās not some weird, alternative lifestyle crazy people. Itās just that some people didnāt fit into the stupid little boxes enough (trust me, nobody fully fits into them) that they said āfuck you and your little boxes, this is stupid and Iāve had enough. Why do we even have these stupid little boxes anyway?ā And proceeded to examine why, and what they found was a deeper and deeper and deeper rabbit hole of bullshit that infected everybodyās brains and was hurting EVERYBODY needlessly and only served the billionaires and the string pullers of society at the top and was in various forms around the world, perpetuated by almost all religions and, while having various times in history where it was seen and less an issue, keeps having resurgences because it is so fundamental dismantling of so many tools of control that the billionaires fear.
Itās like, seeing through all of it (the bullshit) leads to asking too many questions about our existence and fundamental social structures, which leads to loss of power for the billionaires over generations.
Why DO they fear trans women so much?
Iām a person who calls everyone ādudeā, ābroā, āmanā etc. regardless of gender. When I talk to a woman using those words, my mentality isnāt that they are necessarilly āone of the brosā specifically meaning āsimilar to one of my male friendsā, but more that Iāve never called anyone āsisā or āgirlā in my life, and Iām not about to start. I also donāt like using gendered pronouns in any conversation, regardless of who Iām talking to. For example, instead of āhimā or āherā, I will usually say " 'em" (short for them).
To me, I am not talking to a man or a woman; I am talking to a human.
With my transfem friends, though, I usually just call them by their name, since that seems to be a good compromise.
Who knows. Maybe Iāll just start calling everyone ācomradeā
I appreciate your sense of trying to do right, but you should really not degender people, as thatās a thing that transphobes do when trying to not be seen as a transphobe. Degendering is very similar to misgendering, btw, in that it doesnāt respect the personās pronouns, and thus is attempting to discredit their gender.
If youāre truly gender-abolitionist and (I will optimistically assume) race-abolitionist, and donāt want to have gender be part of you, congruently, maybe donāt use dude or bro at all anymore? Would you kiss a dude or a bro? Or did that question make you mentally imagine a masculine person?
I dunno. If I met a person in real life that truly never used he or she pronouns, and included me in that, I would probably be okay with it. But if they werenāt consistent and they just used it around me or with other trans people, I would have a huge problem with it. Because the crux of the problem would be whether or not they are truly trying to change everything, or if they just cannot see me as a woman and are trying not to be hurtful without trying to understand.
I notice a lot of corporate-like personalities try to do this by hedging their language. It always feels spineless and shitty, they are NOT trying to change everything, theyāre just trying to manipulate everybody so that they can HAVE everything.
If youāre truly gender-abolitionist and (I will optimistically assume) race-abolitionist, and donāt want to have gender be part of you, congruently, maybe donāt use dude or bro at all anymore?
Gender, race, nationality, and country abolishionist.
I would love an alternative, but the colloquial American English language does not have casual, non-gendered words to refer to people in general other than ācomradeā, but I donāt want to call everyone a comrade because then everyone will think Iām a communist (I am, but I donāt want that to be public).
folks, friend(s), yāall, sweetie, sugarcube, partner, sport, buddy, pal, chum, sunshine, fam
English has quite a few
ā¦Giving me flashbacks to that Mercedes Lackey book that tried to make āsingular yāallā a thing, work characters in Appalachia. (Iām told itās a thing further west, but for Appalachian characters it was nails on a chalkboard). š
I find buddy and pal way more gendered (to me) than dude, tbh
Iām fine with being called dude, it makes me feel like a chill homegirl. But you call me ābudā and Iāll want to punch you.
Lol āsugarcubeā. But yeah, maybe I should take a page from Canadians.
Perhaps you should reflect on why you think bro and dude is humanizing but sis and girl is not
Easy. Iām a straight male who grew up around surfers in California.
This is kind of the logic that hurts me. People like me will express that those terms make them uncomfortable, but someone will argue that theyāll use gendered words with the intent to be gender neutral. But likeā¦itās not very empathetic to disregard someoneās feelings because using āgirlā is uncomfortable. Itās kind of putting your feelings above thereās. If you have the opportunity to be kind and affirming, to make someone feel safe and comfortable in the world, why not embrace that? A simple change in your language could make someoneās entire day.
Nobody (including you) should put other peoplesā feeling above your own, as that is an extremely unhealthy thing to do. Being considerate of someoneās feelings and sacrificing your own feelings for someone else are two very different things.
The people I talk to donāt mind the way I talk, and that is how I judge my language. I also make sure that I give them the environment necessary to express their discomfort with my language if they have any.
Do you have any non-gendered alternatives to ādudeā and ābro?ā
Nobody (including you) should put other peoplesā feeling above your own
I kinda see where youāre coming from, but I wholeheartedly disagree.
You should never put your needs below anyone elseās, but Iād argue that itās very healthy to mildly inconvenience yourself in order to avoid majorly inconveniencing or hurting others. In fact Iād say thatās kind of the entire cornersone of human civilization.
Yes, and every time someone is bothered by my language, I change my language specifically for them, like how I call my transfem friends by their name instead of saying ādudeā, etc.
My long-time friend and hair stylist very occasionally uses that with me and her other girl friends. She uses it super occasionally and in such a loving way that it doesnāt bother me as much. Itās very context dependent with her since sheās so caring and affirming to me and usually uses girl, sis, beautiful, babe, etc. If someone I didnāt know used that with me, Iād probably understand itās being used in a gender-neutral way, but it originates from āhomeboyā, so it still carries that slight weight.
I use it mainly with people I am familiar with.
I like to have terms of endearment for others and thats just one thats been good in a lot of contexts for me.
You and SCmSTR have pointed out the complexity in choosing that as a go to.
Thank you!
