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.

    • ratboy [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      132·
      1 year ago

      They may be acting facetious, but “guys” is a gendered term and some folks don’t appreciate being referred to as a guy. Just like some people don’t like being called “dude”. But that’s person to person, anyway. To answer your questions from my perspective (I’m a nonbinary millenial fyi)

      Your pronouns are whatever feel reflective of your gender. If you feel that you’re a cisgendered man (someone who aligns with their gender assigned at birth), then yeah he/him is probably accurate. It’s whatever feels most authentic to you.

      As for telling people your pronouns, I think it honestly would be really nice for more cisgender dudes to normalize that. It’s pretty uncommon for men to do in my experience, and I think it would show that you want to be respectful of gender nonconforming folks. Also if you share first, it may actually help people to feel more comfortable around you, and then they’ll likely share theirs so you won’t have to ask.

      As for pronouns irl I’ve only really met folks who go by he/him, they/them, or she/her. I am not really deep in the queer community, though, and I think it’s more common to find folks who have other different pronouns in those spaces because they feel comfortable using them. It probably also depends on where you live. I live in a pretty queer-friendly town and so trans and other gender nonconforming folks make up a decent chunk of the population.

      In conclusion though, I think doing all of the things you just asked about is really great and more men should do. Be a model for other dudes; get people comfy with it because if anyone else gets weird/hostile about it you are in a place of privilege to push back on that, and more of that is needed, especially in the political climate we are living in rn

    • BuddyTheBeefalo@lemmy.ml
      112·
      1 year 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.