Ask Lemmy

Avoid honorifics with "there" (e.g. hello, sir - > hello there) or drop. Otherwise use boss, friend, chief or captain depending on vibes.

Comrade

"OI CUNT" 🇦🇺

FWIW, Sir is gender neutral in the military — this came up in Star Trek Voyager, anyway. Basically if your senior officer isn’t male, they’re sir until they tell you otherwise.

I'd accept 'your majesty'

Mage

Having worked in the retail sector for some time, I quickly learned that appearances are often deceiving after a few embarrassing blunders on my part. I taught myself to call everyone 'my friend'. I had no more problems after that.

Comrade

I was raised in southern hospitality, so I know exactly what you’re going through.

I just stopped using pronouns altogether.

“Excuse me” “Thank you” “I appreciate you” “Do you know the way to San Jose”

Turns out 99% of interactions don’t depend on what genitals a person’s rocking. I guess if you’re asked to identify a suspect in a crime it might help? Point being, stop focusing on their crotch and what they’re doing with it 😁 you’ve been trained to be weird about it.

Some of my friends use "yes them" jokingly to replace yes sir/yes ma'am. Certainly not correct in any grammatical way, but it does flow well enough and is kindof funny as long as the person being addressed doesnt mind.

Personally, I like "Sir" as in the Star Trek/Orville usage. It did happy things to my brain when the crew on the Orville referred to Commander Kelly Grayson (a cis woman) as "Sir", respectfully referring to her by her proper title as a commanding officer. That was cool. I like the gender neutral "Sir" a lot.

But for casual usage, "Friend" or "Neighbor" is nice. "Hey, neighbor, you dropped this." "Excuse me, friend, lemme reach around you here."

I use "friend" a lot.

I just call everyone "comrade".

Ok so reading the comments, from Appalachia, and I didn't see it about anyone specific.

So the reason why nothing seems correct is because nothing new will have the same level of cultural history. If you're trying to show social deference to people things like "friend" or "pal" won't work, and "chief" sounds too informal.

You can still use "sir" and "ma'am" under most circumstances, so the question is more about your circumstances.

Are you trying to find something that replaces those honorifics all together, or do you want a backup third option in case someone says they are non binary?

Are you still in the same culture, or have you moved to a culture that doesn't emphasize honorifics like you were raised with?

Ran into that problem with my enby friend. Specifically in the jokey context, like when a friend asks you to do something and you say “Yes Sir!” Or “Yes Ma’am!” in a kind of over the top way. They hadn’t really thought about it either and they were flummoxed too. We wound up with “Yes Colonel!”

M'theydy

Chief is the only correct answer.

I've asked people to call me 'it'. Hasn't happened yet.