I have a few questions on how to best behave to be as welcoming and inclusive as possible without sounding bad. I hope you guys don't hate me.

I'm just a straight male. Are my pronouns he/him? Is that how I should tell people? Do you actually tell them as you meet them ? Do I have to wait for a certain social cue ?

How about online. Should I tell people or have it on my personal profile somewhere?

And about respecting other people's pronouns. How do i figure them out ? Is it a big faux pas if I don't before I know them ? Is it a faux pas if I refer to someone I just met and I assumed to be male as he/him?

I've never seen anyone referring to anyone irl by non conventional pronouns. Is it an actual thing or is it currently being pushed to make the world a more inclusive place?

I'd love some help with all of this.

  • BuddyTheBeefalo@lemmy.ml
    ·
    10 months ago

    u/t3hgrl on reddit:

    I have some strong opinions on this topic. It really is the default to talk about a group of people and most people out there won’t be bothered by it. Does that mean it is no longer a gendered term? Absolutely not. We’ve defaulted to male pronouns to refer to all humans for a really really long time, and it has never gone the other way. Using female pronouns to talk about a group has always been belittling, and there’s no female equivalent of “guys.” One of my favourite lines for when a man tries to tell me it’s okay to use guys because it’s completely gender-neutral is to ask “oh okay, so do you f*ck guys?” (Works for “dude” as well by the way!)

    Personally I’ve been trying to remove it from my lexicon and have been having luck with saying y’all, everyone, friends, you two (or three, or four, etc.), and fam. “Y’all” is also not at all local to me either but I’ve found a lot of people have been using it as somewhat of a silly alternative and it’s become more accepted (in Canada. Might be a bigger stretch in Ireland.) I appreciate hearing people work on removing “guys” from their use and it does actually stick out to me when someone refers to me as a “guy,” but I have never corrected anyone. I see this as a change I’m working on for my own language and am not shy about sharing why, and I see a lot of people working on that same change (especially in LGBTQ2+ communities) so I foresee “guys” becoming much less common in the future.