If someone were to take offense to me calling them dude I would absolutely make every effort to stop the behavior. I would never want anyone to feel invalidated over something like that.

That being said I feel like this whole outrage is manufactured to rile people up. I highly doubt many people are getting worked up over it. Dude has very much become a gender neutral term and is even now just used as an exclamation. I'd be willing to bet a large portion, if not the large majority, of the trans community doesn't give a fuck about the term and they probably use it themselves.

[–] euphoric_cat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

your probably right in it likely being a small minority, but it does give me the ick, for example

[–] MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world 54 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I mean, if someone politely asked another person to stop calling them some phrase or another and they refused they're definitely an asshole. No doubt about it.

In the same token though if someone gets rude and indignant over someone calling them dude one time that person is also an asshole.

We should be treating people with respect. Period.

[–] LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 9 months ago

You're right. I do think it's important though to be open to admitting that many of the terms we use are reflective of a hetero/cisnormative patriarchy. I live in a region where it's very common to call someone "guy," regardless of gender. It may be used in a non-gendered way by most people here, but I'm trying to drop it from my vocabulary since it has gendered roots, and there are better terms I can use that are more inclusive. I feel the same way about "dude."

I think everyone needs to be open to at least having a discussion, but I've seen people double down when asked to use a different term. That's not what you're doing obviously, but I've seen it.

I think this also applies to people trying to reclaim slurs. I've had other LGBT+ people call me the f-slur repeatedly when I simply tell them I don't identify with that term.

We all need to be more thoughtful, I think. Myself included