Let’s say there’s someone I want to call Mr/Ms/Mrs [Name], but I don’t know their gender, is there a title I can use that doesn’t assume their gender?
“Hey cunt” works for anybody. But your mileage may vary depending on your location.
Should that not be properly, “Oi, cunt!” ?
M’theydy
This is one of the reasons why I call everyone " friend"
Too bad we can’t adopt the Japanese “-san” honorific, as it is gender neutral!
Mx. seems the most commonly used for gender neutral. It’s used both by non-binary people and in cases where you purposefully don’t want to put a gender as a prefix.
Mx is common-ish among nonbinary people. Here’s a relevant poll regarding people’s usages of it: https://www.gendercensus.com/results/2023-mx/
I have started just using M. Like, “Dear M. Lastname”. I saw it being done in French and just adopted it for English too. No one’s complained yet. (Have also seen Mx. but figure that could be confusing.)
A sci-fi book from 1991 used that (Hyperion), and I thought it was just futurespeak. TIL!
Just fyi, M. in French is only equivalent to Mr, it’s short for Monsieur. Mme (short for Madame) is equivalent to Mrs, and Mlle (short for Mademoiselle) is equivalent to Miss/Ms.
So using M. for everyone is equivalent to saying Mr. for everyone.
Yeah, I know! That’s why I was surprised when someone addressed me as “M.” (while I don’t present as such, traditionally) in French. So, I thought “that’s neat!” and picked it up.
Lord [name], my [name], my dear [name], the one they call [name], oh great and powerful [name].
Jokes aside, one I’ve heard of that I liked was “misc” like miscellaneous lol. That one works a bit better in writing that verbal though.
Some other popular ones include Mx, M, Ind/Div, N/A, Mt, Nb, and many others.
For my own personal suggestion, I kinda like the idea of using “The” as a gender neutral title. Like instead of Mr or Ms Smith, it’s The Smith. Has a nice ring to it lol
Hello, The Gary…
You can’t tell me that isn’t objectively the best way to refer to someone named Gary.
Slightly off topic but I really like the approach where the honorific is just dropped entirely. So just [Name]. No Mr/Ms/Mrs. It mostly doesn’t serve any purpose anyway.
