if you call everyone dude and a transfem person gets mad about it, don’t get defensive. just say like “sorry, i won’t do it again” and don’t argue “actually it’s gender neutral” or “i call everyone dude”. even if you do, i guarantee she’s heard that argument from someone who very much does not call people they see as women dude. i certainly have
same goes double for the word guy.
I appologise (un-ironically)
I admit I am still a little debatebro brained, and I did not realize this was the trans specific comm when I first posted, If this is not a space for disagreement, I apologize for inserting my opinion into it.
I do not support intentional or malicious use of bro/guys to misgender, And if anyone in particular were to ask me to stop referring to them as such, I would (and do) try my best to do so.
My goal was to start a productive discussion about the conflict between the take you posted and linguistic descriptivism, which I tend to align myself with and believe is a popular opinion in these circles. I feel justified to discuss this issue as I identify with groups that use bro and dude as a gender neutral form of address, and hence I feel justified to defend myself. once again, if this is not the space for that I apologize, and will remove myself from the discussion, however If anyone would like to have a productive discussion on the topic I am open to changing or refining my opinion.
I also used a poor tone for my goal, and to communicate my dissatisfaction in the response i received, reedit snark is a hard thing to get out of your system.
edit: forgot how formatting worked, broke up brick of text into pieces
i don’t think you don’t need to leave or anything, and i appreciate the genuine apology. i do think it’s important to note that a lot of times issues with microaggressions are difficult to parse when you’re on the other end, and as mentioned many people see themselves as using bro/dude as gender neutral but very much do not. linguistic descriptivism isn’t a bad way of looking at it but i think it’s important to try and put yourself in the shoes of the group actually being discussed here and imagine what it looks like from their perspective. very difficult to know what camp someone falls into when talking about it online
You know that’s entirely valid. I tend to over-empathize with groups I superficially fall into (such as people who use dude/bro as gender neutral) and assume that their intentions are as innocent as mine, which they may well not be, which leave me dying on the same hill as bigots.
You’re conflating is and ought. Descriptivism is only concerned with what a particular language is while everyone here is talking about what a language ought to be. Prescriptivism isn’t in opposition to descriptivism in the same exact way is isn’t in opposition to ought. When people shit on the Academie Francaise for prescribing some ridiculous word for “seat belt” that no one actually uses, people are actually shitting on a colonial institution that’s out of touch with European French speakers never mind Francophones not from Europe. But there are plenty of cases where prescriptivism is useful. The easiest case is on the topic of slurs. If the marginalized community believes a given word is a slur, it doesn’t matter if the majority of society doesn’t recognize the word as a slur. The word ought to be considered a slur and ought to not be used regardless of descriptivist arguments to the contrary.