Like “mix”. It’s fairly simple to most people who have common sense and aren’t actively trying to be offended over nothing.
”Good morning, I am Mx. Vary, your science teacher." That’s it, that’s all you need for the entire year.
Do your classes take place entirely over text? They’re asking how you pronounce that in speech.
Mr. Is short for “Mister” Mrs is short for mistress, but is usually pronounced “Misses”
So how does one pronounce Mx.? Mix or Mixter? Mixes? And sometimes Xs are pronounced like Z, so is it just Mmmz?
Asking how to pronounce someone’s preferred pronouns is entirely reasonable when their preferred pronoun is not a regular part of the English language. I’d rather know how to say something and not offend someone than say it wrong for who knows how long and definitely offend them.
Your version of “common sense” in this situation only applies to a small minority that naturally extrapolates beyond the meaning of the statement alone.
“Mx.” as a prefix is not in any way established in common vernacular, nor does it easily make sense unless you assume they’re doing something specific that most people don’t do.
However, the law says that anyone is free to do so as they please; you can sexually identify in any way and must not be discriminated against for that in terms of your employment.
You’re the divisive one here, suggesting people are hateful for having legitimate questions.
It’s so simple, just like Mr. Is pronounced merr.
You’re very much part of the problem.
I don’t remember writing that anyone was hateful. Actively trying to be offended, yes. Legitimate questions ask questions like this “So how is Mx pronounced?”. The comment was I replied to intended to mock it, not ask in good faith. But see, you’d have to come to that conclusion by using common sense, so here we are again.
It’s not “fairly simple if you have common sense”. The known abbreviations have been in use for a hundred or more years and are widely known. Everyone knows how to pronounce them, the only curveball is Mrs being misses since it was originallymistress but that word later became associated with cheating and “ladies of the night”.
Mx was made up recently, it stands for nothing AFAIK. They just took the standard M beginning and slapped X on it because X tends to mean “unknown”.
It’s akin to asking you to address me as “Zf. Cat” because that’s what makes me feel comfortable.
They weren’t introduced in anything like an analogous way. Mr and Mrs evolved slowly over decades and even centuries from older forms referring to master and mistress.
I don’t have a strong opinion about Mx either way, but as an amateur linguistics nerd I can assure you that the way it’s been introduced to our lexicon is very different from these much older terms.
Ok, Zf. Cat :) If that makes you feel comfortable it costs me nothing to be considerate of your preference. See?
Now you have to remember that for every interaction with me. If you happen to call me sometime else, I’ll grit my teeth and have to correct you or if I’m an asshole, I’ll berate you about it, constantly. You will also have to refer to me as Zf. Cat to everyone you know, regardless of whether or not they know me, or are in my presence.
Except it’s not like that at all, because you just made that honorific up!
Mx. has an actual cultural context outside of their classroom. Sure, it’s new, but it’s not like this teacher just made it up themselves.
So common sense is dictated now by a few members of niche social media circles?
One, it’s virtue signaling at its best.
Secondly, randomly adding in the letter x to things is not ‘common sense’.
Common sense is the ability to make practical judgments and behave in a sensible way. It’s the knowledge and experience that most people have, or should have.
So my original point still stands. ‘Mx’ is not common sense. Knowing not to play a game of chicken with traffic, is common sense. Maybe this is why common sense isn’t so common anymore, people just appropriate words/phrases to mean whatever they want, instead of what they mean.
This is how we’ve ended up in a world where the word literally no longer means the word literally.
You’d think someone using the name CaptPretentious would be all in favor of things being made up by niche social circles.
Well see, common sense would have me ask “hm, how do I say that?” then google it, then when I see that it’s simply pronounced “mix” I’d say “oh, okay”. And then go on about my day… instead of ranting about how hard it is to figure out and how angry it should make everyone. But that’s just me.
If it were me, I would probably figure out what the person I’m trying to argue arguing with was actually arguing about. Instead of getting up on a soapbox and pretending like I know what I’m arguing about. But that would take effort.
But you keep using those canned responses you got ready to go.
