Using "woman" in place of "female"

So what if it is? If it applies to them and only to them, then it’s just like a name. And if you have trouble with names well, you’re in the same boat as I am. :slight_smile:

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Who’s insisting you call them lord almighty?

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If you don’t refer to someone the way they prefer to be addressed then you are disrespecting their life choices. It is up to you to decide whether or not that individual is worthy of your respect, but if you decide that they are not you shouldn’t be too surprised if the feeling is mutual.

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You quoted my statement but then ignored the second part of it. Ah well.

Fair enough. I guess I’ll stick to “words in the dictionary” then as a guide.

So you laughed at them and refused? Okay. Good for you. I would have too.

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You will now refer to me from now on as “Lord Almighty” instead of “Enso” and, when in the third person, I demand “zig” as my pronoun. Thank you for respecting my life choices.

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No worries mate. I know exactly what to call you. :smirk:

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I have a gif for this!

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Subtle. I like it.

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I don’t really do subtle.

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Me.

 

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But, seriously folks, I actually want to be respectful of people without feeling like I’m enabling ego driven entitled self-involvement and pretentiousness. There should be some straightforward social norms beyond “call them whatever they want, no matter how silly.”

Otherwise, it feels like this competition at times:

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A generalized solution: don’t use nouns whose intrinsic properties include compromised physical ability (a ‘cripple’), mental problems (a ‘schizophrenic’), or ego dystonic concepts (referring to a male-identified person who appears feminine as ‘she’). Language is modular. Start with the basics (ex: person) and let modifiers do the rest of the work.

ETA: There are always exceptions. ‘Alien’ (as in ‘undocumented alien’) is perfectly valid in legal context.

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Since I have reacclimated to the bay area, I know exactly what you are talking about. It isn’t the reasonable, semi reasonable, or really even outright odd requests, it’s the bordering-on-zero-sum approach that so many people in this area express.

I’ll call anyone whatever they like, but at some point if there are too many options my tiny brain will revert to a) calling everyone Jeff, b) always using Hey You, and C) name tags.

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Even so “crippled” has largely fallen out of favor. You don’t see many institutions with names like “Home for Crippled Children” these days, for example.

I pretty much go case-by-case. True, more subjectivity is going to get into the soup than I’d really like, and (breaking news) I’m rather far from perfect. Some people will want nothing to do with me when I misunderstand where and why they’re coming from. Okay, I’ll wish them well and move on to the next fellow human. So yeah, I’m bound to offend someone people, and some of the people I offend are probably people I’d actually care what they thought if I hadn’t misunderstood (most can go fuck frolicker in the open ocean like flipper themselves). That’s amore.

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It’s contextual.

“feeeeeeemales” versus “female [something or other]”

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He’s got my hair.

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