What word would be the equivalent for sir or ma’am for a person not in the gender norm. I like greeting strangers with it while working retail & have always wondered what would be the right why to respond to someone who did not want to be called either sir or ma’am.
I really wish there was one that’s already built consensus. I’ve asked about this on reddit, in meat space, here on lemmy, and other places with not even a front runner for a widely accepted option.
The closest I’ve seen is in socialist spaces, where comrade replaces all other honorifics.
There’s great value in the formality of honorifics, and having a gender neutral option would go a long way to cracking one of the language barriers. It may seem like small potatoes, but not having a formal honorific is as big an issue as the struggle for the singular they/them. It really would help tip thinking towards non binary and gender neutral people as being respectable (by people that find it easy to dismiss them).
It’s fine if individuals don’t want honorifics at all for themselves, but there’s a need for it for general use.
Mx (pronounced “mix”) is the one I hear most common.
I’m also partial to Mage (or Mg.). It’s a shortening of the Latin word “magister,” which means “chief, head, director, teacher.” Magister is the root word from which we get “mister” and “mistress”
Mx sounds awful to me and is the result of people trying to use “x” as gender neutral. Like “Latinx” was controversial, both on its appropriateness of use and its pronunciation.
Mage is cool and I like that it has etymological justification.
