# I can't deal with transgender anymore **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 16, 2024, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-deal-with-transgender-anymore/1002937 "2024-06-16T08:49:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 55
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 16, 2024, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-deal-with-transgender-anymore/1002937/55 "2024-06-16T16:33:11Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > My default from a lifetime is to say, “Excuse me sir/ma’am.” > > If I needed the attention of the barista I was left with “excuse me” or “hello” which seems a little rude or throwing balled-up napkins at them (definitely rude and I did not do that). That’s a very succinct statement of the issue. Thank you. English is a mostly non-gendered language. But where it is gendered, it’s tenaciously so. As @mnemosyne said, there are lots of ways to simply not use any pronoun at all. But that’s not our collective habit and most of us here are kinda old and hence slow to change. The societal definition of “polite” is changing even as we speak. More to the point, the consensus of what constitutes “polite” has become much less uniform. Witness the ongoing kerfuffle in the current thread about use of first or last name and Mr. Mrs. Ms. in conversation with clerks, co-workers, or strangers. We each have a metric for what is and isn’t polite, but we don’t even remotely agree with each other on what that metric is. Instead of one universal standard there are now several broad camps, plus a bunch of outliers. Many people find that really disorienting and resent the loss of the verities they thought were eternal. Ref: > [@About your first name](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/about-your-first-name/1002718): > > I just got a call from a realtor interested in earning a commission helping me sell my mother’s house. The call began, “Hello, is this [my first name]? I am a realtor with …” click.        My best friends are vultures, who make these people look ugly. I understand their need to pursue a living, but it sure can get annoying.        The most irksome thing to me, though, is the friendly, familiar tone they start out with. It seems a bit rude to just right-off address a stranger by their first nam… --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-deal-with-transgender-anymore/1002937)._