To "Dude" or Not to "Dude" A ? about gender identity

british people are just naturally funnier than americans, especially in a reality show setting. im sure part of it is the lack of bruv though.

If I had subtitles, all the women in my life would know that I was referring to them as "'man" and not in fact "man."

I worked yinz completely out of my speech to get away from the "yinzer" stereotype, and now I feel like it's a perfect gender-neutral replacement for "you guys," which I probably use too loosely.

I'm a masc-presenting enby. Fine with dude, man would get my goat a little

Yinz is a wild fuckin' word. The whole yinzer accent just blows my mind. I'll stick to my "you's" and "y'all" and the occasional "yallses"

DUDE!

Y'all is the one thing that stuck from living in the south for the larger part of my adult life. Totally gender neutral but fucking weird IMO if you're only talking to one person. I've been much more aware of my use of "Man" and have generally removed it from my default vocabulary unless I have a relationship w/ the person I'm talking to & they'll know it's a term of familiarity that has nothing to do with gender.

I bring this up because my GF has a trans daughter who only came out latter mid 2019. One day early last year she came downstairs and asked if I could stop playing for an hour because she was going to be on a zoom call & drums are FUCKING LOUD. I responded "Yeah man of course". And I've been mortified by my choice of words ever since.

So now that things are slowly getting back to "normal" I started thinking about playing shows again & how to interact w/ other people outside my bubble. You will tell me your name & I will forget it before I respond to the first thing you've said to me. It's fucking crazy. I so so suck w/ names. It's some sort of mental thing. Like people who can't recall peoples faces, I'm like that with names. I'll remember your face but I've already forgot your name by the time you've finished introducing yourself.

So, I don't know you're name & I need a gender neutral placeholder for it. From what I'm reading dude seems acceptable

Nah. That's Aussie af.


edit: Upon reflection, my british friends here say it a lot too. But they say it almost entirely in a negative way. Like, "oh, c'mon mate! what are you doing!" or "no, not me, mate." or "oh no mate, not today"

Aussies use it as a greeting far more than brits do, ime. But I've officially given too much thought to this. 

I like how this dude just logged onto this site after I assume years of not being on it to pose a question around gender identity etiquette and dip again