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Screenshot of a tweet by @feralhousepuppy: hey so you’ve been calling me “bro”, “man”, and “dude” a lot and it’s really invalidating to my masculinity cause those are all gender neutral things you call trans women :/
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if you wouldn’t be thrilled to be called dudette maybe don’t call people dude without knowing they are cool with it, same with being called sis for bro
also consider that if you are a cis guy being called something you don’t really align with can be a fun novelty as a rare thing but as a woman being referred to with male default language /all/ the time by mostly men becomes eventually pretty grating (and having to either put up with the mild annoyance every time or having to speak up and have it be a “thing” with every new guy calling you dude or bro is just irritating in the way a refrigerator making a quiet but annoying whining buzz all the time might be.)
I really wish there was a word that was as useful as “dude” but without the gender connotation.
I tried swapping to “fam” and “cuz” but those felt appropriated, I tried “gamer” and “chat” but those felt irony-poisoned, “Sis” and “girl” feel performative. So “dude” it shall be until someone tells me it’s bad, and then they get no objective article at all.
I think the australians have this figured out with “mate”
Mate doesn’t pluralise well though, ‘I’m going out with my mates’ is fine but ‘hi mates’ sounds wrong. Also a lot of it is in the delivery, calling someone ‘mate’ can be anything from friendly to neutral to hostile depending on the tone and the words which precede it.
Of course “Hi mates!” feels wrong, it needs to be either “g’day mates” or “ahoy mateys” or “oy mates”…
Sorry.
Btw. you have the same “problem” (imho, feature) of tone determining level of friendliness with dude, dude. And partly even with bro, though bro feels harder to turn unfriendly when adressing someone.
For me, “Hi mates” or “oy mates” sounds completely okay, but I’m a non-native speaker.
Nah, mate is as gendered as dude. Like sure some woman won’t mind, but it’s mostly men being called mate by other men.
No straight man is going to be like “I had sex with my mate” when talking about say a fwb.
Nah, mate is as gendered as dude. Like sure some woman won’t mind, but it’s mostly men being called mate by other men.
Well, yes and no, depending on where you’re from.
Where I’m from, I’d say mate meaning “a person who is my friend” as opposed to mate meaning “greeting to a random person” are used a bit differently. I think it’s normal for anyone of any gender to refer to someone else of any gender as one of their mates. I would say it’s not uncommon (though less common, for sure) for women to greet other women. But men and women generally refer to someone of the opposite gender as love (and of course this is looked down upon in other parts of the country (other terms of endearment are available, but love is the most common, at least when I lived there)).
I’d agree that no straight man would be likely say “I had sex with my mate”, but I don’t think they’d be much more likely to say “I had sex with my friend”, either, unless they ended the sentence “… with benefits”.
If you call a trans woman any of these things you are morally and legally obligated to give her $20 each time.
Fun fact: women tend to use dude differently to men. Causes quite a bit of distress to trans women until they work out the code. Guys use it as demonstrated above. Women use it more like a (non antagonist) mate. It’s a gender neutral attention getter, softener and show of camaraderie
Am AFAB, can confirm. The whole argument over “dude,” for example, has been difficult for me to adjust to because I use it gender-neutrally all the time. I’ve never had a cis-woman complain about me using it with/around them; no cis-woman has ever gotten offended or said to me, “I’m not a dude, I’m a woman,” or anything of the sort. It’s just … understood differently?
But if there’s a different usage pattern among AMABs, I can see how they might feel differently about it. Truth is, if I’m calling you “dude,” it means you’re cool with me - it’s a gender-neutral term of endearment among women, having absolutely zero to do with one’s gender or sex.
Most cis women I’ve met don’t like being called dude. This isn’t an amab/agab thing. This is a thing where women like myself are asking people respectfully to stop calling us masculine terms
