Stop Instinctively Calling People Dude/bro/guy If You’re Aware Some People Are Made Uncomfortable

stop instinctively calling people dude/bro/guy if you’re aware some people are made uncomfortable

your instincts are serving to harm your community and your defense of them as being applied equally feels like a cope when asked to confront your own androcentric bias. You should confront your bias without making these excuses, asking isn’t more considerate than adjusting your speech patterns.

i’m sorry that my comment made you upset, i was not trying to defend anything unsavory. i was giving an example of how i go about ensuring i am using language that makes the people i meet feel comfortable. allow me to explain my reasoning:

when i meet a new person that i am going to be around a lot, and i ask them about wether or not it’s okay to use dude and bro, i do this to try to personalize the language i use around that person to help them feel comfortable. i see this as being equivalent to asking what their pronouns are, or if they are sensitive to curse words, or if there are topics that they become uncomfortable around discussion of, like, for example, discussion of insects. i am actively taking an interest in their comfort.

i adjust my speech patterns from person to person based on what makes them happiest. that’s why i ask questions like “is dude okay? if it’s not that’s fine, i just always ask when i meet someone new.” if this was a stupid question to ask then i wouldn’t ask it and assume a “no,” but the thing is that of all the people in my life, only one person that i’ve asked has ever told me that it was not okay with the use of dude and bro. and i was fine with it, and we actually brainstormed other informal terms i could use when referring to it and all was well in the world. we were happy and it thanked me for checking.

i don’t intend to fully amputate a piece of myself when i can just as easily take the steps to preemptively check with those around me and put some beloved words away as needed. not everybody wants to hear bro. not everybody wants to hear fuck. and yet i am not psychic and cannot know who feels what way about which words unless i ask.

anyways, sorry that was long, but this is why i ask that question. now, if i may give you a little critique in return, saying that when quote “some people are made uncomfortable” with a word means that it should be permanently struck from my lexicon is wild. if i were to, as a blanket, avoid the use of every word that some people happen to dislike, then i would never be saying anything at all. of course the key word is “some.” if “some” is “most” then the word is gone. bye bye. but to believe we need to censor every word that some people happen to personally dislike is crazy work.

(just as a little disclaimer in case i didn’t make it clear, i say this about words like “shit” or “girliepop” or “moist”. not words with a harmful history, like slurs)