askchapo

comrade

I vote for the portmanteau "Sadam"

Hoss

gamer

there have already been some great suggestions but i am proposing "big dawg"

Personally I use "busta" but idk if that's professional enough for PMC bug eaters

Honestly the only thing I can imagine liking in a formal setting is comrade. Mx has always looked and sounded awkward to me. I don't like referring to people formally in general because I think it's too impersonal, but if there is a time when it's appropriate I would prefer comrade.

Obviously that will not manifest in Western society for a long time

There's none that are popular and well known, but many that are obscure and unusual.

It's not professional exactly, but I really like the IWW's Fellow Worker, which can be written as FW like how people write Mr., before names. It's gender neutral, and you don't have to be employed to be called a Fellow Worker, even, all it really requires is that you not be an employer/capitalist/bourgeoisie/cop (though since it's really only used among Wobblies, an IWW membership is sorta de facto a requirement). It's also got quite a long history, so it doesn't feel like a made-up term like so many of those gender-neutral professional addresses.

Mx. is often used as a courtesy title or honorific in lieu of Mr or Ms in writing (as there's an Emacs command to make it easier), but it runs into the Latinx issue of being a bit of a pain to pronounce (mix? Em-ecks? Mish?). It's not a direct alternative to sir or ma'am, but title systems are archaic to the point where almost nobody knows what they are.

Well Janeway prefers sir, so it's good enough for me.

I have a teacher friend who uses Mx.

Personally I think that whole class of words should be abolished. They're feudal holdovers that the bourgeoisie "universalized" as part of bourgeois politeness, I hate them!!

I like when people call me friend instead of sir or ma'am.

Much like a non-binary equivalent to mom/dad, there is no singular answer as there just hasn't yet been enough pressure for people to collectively land on a singular answer. So there are currently innumerable different proposals used by different people and you can find lists online. Esperanto already has this issue solved so I proposed loaning the word from that language (gesinjoro) and contracting it to ges'njor'^[Pronounced like "guess" + "neur" as in neurology. Stressed on the second syllable.]. But this was an idea for an honorific that specifically signals non-binarity, rather than one that's just generally gender-neutral.

For a generally gender-neutral honorific, I think my proposal would be some variant of doctor. Like maybe ductor or another reduced form to follow the pattern of other terms of address and distinguish ductor (generic term of address) from doctor (as in MD/PhD).

For real though, pretty sure you should just ask them how they’d like to be addressed.

I went somewhere recently where all the customer service folks exclusively used “friend” for me, even though afaik I’ve never met a single one of them before. I heard them ma’am/sir at least some other people who looked a bit more conformist - I only screamed that you don’t need to look enby to be enby inside, not out loud.

It felt a little odd to be called friend by people I didn’t know, and isn’t “professional” in the same way so maybe doesn’t fit what you’re looking for, but it still felt a hell of a lot better than being gendered.

There was one person who would use “boss”, which is perhaps more “professional” than friend, but that makes me feel icky in different ways.

Most of all, I want people to just drop the “professional address” with me, but I get that it’s hammered into people in customer service that they absolutely must use some form of it.

Professional like button down shirts or professional like trades?

Buddy works great in my profession but i have been told it can be perceived as male coded

your worship

Warchief

death to formal language

Glooby

senpai

You can call them okyaku-sama

i work in IT so i have to talk to people i never see, plenty of times i could absolutely guess the wrong gender(name from another country im not familiar with or someone whose name is "typically" gendered one way). So i just use the persons name. I really try to never use gendered terms with strangers because it's respectful, plus i won't do anything awkward like call Sam(Samantha) a he/him.

Ask them what they'd personally like to be referred to with.

I had a coworker once that just use Dr. In place of a Ms/Mr on an office plaque.

When I spoke with them though I referred to them as "your grace" but we were friends so that last part doesn't necessarily apply here lmao. We both agreed it was a very funny way around the problem though.

Mx (pronounced "mix")