"Hey cunt" works for anybody. But your mileage may vary depending on your location.
Should that not be properly, "Oi, cunt!" ?
Depends on what you're going for, I guess. I'm just an American who doesn't like most people.
M'theydy
🎩
🧔
Slightly off topic but I really like the approach where the honorific is just dropped entirely. So just [Name]. No Mr/Ms/Mrs. It mostly doesn't serve any purpose anyway.
That's what we did in Sweden in the 60s. It feels so archaic whenever I have to enter an honorific on documents (i.e when booking hotels and flights) from other countries.
I spent the last 20 years in the US military, most of it being referred to as "Sergeant [cobysev]." The past year since I've been retired, I've been trying to get used to being called "Mr. [cobysev]." It's really weird, especially since I joined the military at 18, so no one called me Mr. previously.
I have started just using M. Like, "Dear M. Lastname". I saw it being done in French and just adopted it for English too. No one's complained yet. (Have also seen Mx. but figure that could be confusing.)
Just fyi, M. in French is only equivalent to Mr, it's short for Monsieur. Mme (short for Madame) is equivalent to Mrs, and Mlle (short for Mademoiselle) is equivalent to Miss/Ms.
So using M. for everyone is equivalent to saying Mr. for everyone.
In the sci-fi book Hyperion (which takes place hundreds of years in the future) they use this convention throughout and it works really well, so I've also wished that it were widely adopted in our society. (Except for androids, where the title is A. rather than M.)
I vote that we change it to Mmm.
That will make all honorific communications sultry and interesting.
Mmm Adulated, We appreciate your interest in our organization, but we regret to inform you that we will not be able to hire you for the role. Please continue to.....
Mf
Too bad we can’t adopt the Japanese “-san” honorific, as it is gender neutral!
Not a contemporary one, but during the French Revolution, they used 'Citizen' for everyone.
comrade
Which, in French, is "citoyen" (masculine) or "citoyenne" (feminine). Not a neutral gendered word.
Mx. seems the most commonly used for gender neutral. It's used both by non-binary people and in cases where you purposefully don't want to put a gender as a prefix.
Seconding the honorific "Mx". From what I've seen, it's decently well-adopted in the non-binary community. I've not seen it much used outside of that community--it seems to be used mostly when someone 'needs' an honorific but doesn't fit into the 1950s list. I've heard it pronounced "Mix" and "Mux". I tend to go with "Mix".
IRL, I've used "Hey, you" and "Yo!" when hollering at folks I don't know (example, "Yo! You dropped something!")
Sidenote: As a nonbinary person, I prefer not being given an honorific over being given the wrong one.
Minirant not directed at OP: And omg, if you need to go with a feminine honorific and you don't know whether the person is married, go with Ms, not Mrs. or Miss. The connotations of the wrong one are just creepy.
Not married and called Mrs="Hey, you're too old to be unmarried. Please feel judged about your relationship status"
Married and called Miss="Hey, you're too young to be married. Please feel like I don't respect you as an adult."
In all cases Ms="I don't know and/or care about your marital status and I'm trying to be polite"
Do you have any suggestions on sir/ma'am? I'm from the south, and genuinely don't know how to stop saying sir/ma'am. I always try to go with whatever the person is presenting, and I have tried not to say it at all. But that southernism is deeply ingrained. Like at a drive through or something, where you only have a voice to go off of it's especially bad. I do try to avoid it, but I wish there were a gender neutral version, because language just feels rude without it to someone who grew up with that instilled in them. All adult people must be addressed as ma'am or sir, regardless of age in any kind of setting that isn't close friends. If I forego it, I feel rude as fuck, and most of the time whoever you're talking to also acts offended. But the last thing I want to do is misgender someone, especially with words like sir/ma'am, that are such... Strict terms. Halp?
I'm wicked sorry, I don't have a good answer. You could try Mx and see how it feels. I've dropped sir/ma'am for folks that I know, or that appear my age or younger. I still use it for older folks I don't know out in the wild.
I, personally, never take offense at being misgendered in a Southern accent if I'm called "ma'am". I grew up in the South and to me it just feels like someone's trying their best to be polite and I take it as intended. Sometimes I also just misparse it as "man", which feels a bit informal, but whatevs. Miss still feels creepy, but I get that less now that I've hit 30.
If you're working at a drive through where there's a customer/service worker dynamic, I'd 1. go with ma'am or sir 2. accept it if someone corrects you, and 3. recognize you're more likely to be yelled at by someone for using a 'new-fangled honorific' than for misgendering someone.
Edit: Oh! I have replaced "Thank you sir/ma'am" with "Thank you, kindly" and that seems to work for me.
“Yo.”
Lord [name], my [name], my dear [name], the one they call [name], oh great and powerful [name].
Jokes aside, one I've heard of that I liked was "misc" like miscellaneous lol. That one works a bit better in writing that verbal though.
Some other popular ones include Mx, M, Ind/Div, N/A, Mt, Nb, and many others.
For my own personal suggestion, I kinda like the idea of using "The" as a gender neutral title. Like instead of Mr or Ms Smith, it's The Smith. Has a nice ring to it lol
Mx is common-ish among nonbinary people. Here’s a relevant poll regarding people’s usages of it: https://www.gendercensus.com/results/2023-mx/
My wife and I are both Dr. X
Liar!! You are are not "Dr. X". You are "Dr. Cog"
Not since Elon Musk bought me for 44 billion dollars
Dr. Twitter???
Dr. The Site Formerly Known as Twitter
In all seriousness, I think I've seen 'Mx' used in this context.
Usually though, you'd go with a generic greeting such as 'Dear Sir or Madam' or 'To whom it may concern'.
I'm still trying to figure out how you pronounce that. Mix? Mks? Mex? M'ex?
It's pronounced Mix.
Comrade
"Oi, fuckface!"
I vote stop using honorifics entirely
'Citizen...'
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!