Sam the Octopus @troubleMoney@computerfairi.es

@Irick We're not suddenly deciding to gender this term

It's already gendered

It's always been gendered

@Irick None of that changes the fact that it is widely used, and widely accepted, as a male address term

That's the core issue here, individual women and enbys can decide that they'll use the term to refer to themselves, but that doesn't mean that all women and enbys have to be comfortable with the term being used that way

If you're posting a paper to back up an argument, maybe check to see that it agrees with your point first

'cause I will check shit like that

@Irick Well, for a start that's not what the data presented there indicates

It shows that it's used primarily, but not exclusively, as a male term in the groups surveyed

@Irick @squirrel [citation needed]

LB: Admittedly the UK hasn't had the best results with that so far, but we'll get it right at some point I'm sure

@Irick @squirrel entirely possible it was for a short time but currently it's definitely male-coded

I honestly did not expect my half-baked musings on a gender neutral variant of "hey dudes" to bring forth people claiming "DUDE IS GENDER NEUTRAL I USE DUDE TO REFER TO EVERYONE FUCK YOU IF YOU'RE OFFENDED"

@squirrel or hell, just use gender neutral terms until you get around to finding out

That's what I tend to do 'cause I'm super lazy

@trinsec @squirrel There's a really easy way to not offend people and that's to use terms and phrases that are generally accepted as gender neutral, takes literally no effort

"Dude" doesn't happen to be one of them

@trinsec @squirrel Well, here the pronouns are quite frequently in the bio, so it doesn't take really any effort to check

But if you don't want to play "guess the gender" then surely gender neutral phrases are the way to go

@squirrel @trinsec Yeah, calling everyone "Dude" is not good practice

@Hobbit_Habit@mastodon.host well where's the fun in that?

@ghost_bird oh yeah, other forms of address are available and work well, but I was just musing on the "dude" schema

@Siphonay@octodon.social in Spanish it's a male diminutive but in esperanto it's female. Not sure about any other suffixes that would work better

"Dudes of all pronouns" certainly works, but feels a little clunky to my ear

Hm... "Dude" is fairly male-coded, so shouldn't really be used in mixed company

"Dudette" is female-coded, so adding that might be a good idea

But that only covers the binary genders, so for non-binary I propose "Duderino"

Putting all that together, the address "Dudes, Dudettes, and Duderinos" (in any order) could be the best way to address a mixed group

Yes. This is what we do for fun in England. Don't judge.

I've just been reminded of Diggerland

https://www.diggerland.com/

It's a digger theme park!

You can drive diggers, dig around with the diggers, ride on the end of diggers

If you like diggers, you'll love Diggerland!