this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
45 points (76.5% liked)

Asklemmy

43744 readers
1364 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I want to be respectful but if they say they don't care what pronouns I use for them, that feels like it puts the decision on me to choose what to call them and I guess I would probably default to "they" because choosing a gender for them feels weird... am I wrong?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"They" is perfectly acceptable, in fact I've taken to writing work emails as such too. Because you can't always work it out through their name alone.

The real problem is not learning or correcting themselves when told.

"This is Alice, she...".

"Oh he is a nice pers...".

"She, mum".

Be open to correcting yourself when told, people are used to correcting people. But continually not correcting yourself makes you look like a bigot even if you don't mean it.