How do you even say that? “Mexico Smith, can I get a hall pass?”
Like “mix”. It’s fairly simple to most people who have common sense and aren’t actively trying to be offended over nothing.
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.
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.
Ok, Zf. Cat :) If that makes you feel comfortable it costs me nothing to be considerate of your preference. See?
”Good morning, I am Mx. Vary, your science teacher." That’s it, that’s all you need for the entire year.
So common sense is dictated now by a few members of niche social media circles?
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.
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.
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.
I agree that Mx is made up bullshit, much like “Latinx” is nonsense in Spanish, but the law does not make any such distinction. You cannot be discriminated against in your job based on your sexual identity, even if you identified as an Apache helicopter (“oh yes daddy, let me fuck you in your missile tubes” - “hah, as if you’d even touch the sides”).
I agree that Mc is made up bullshit
Boy do I have bad news for you about every other word that exists in every single language. There is no word tree we harvest fresh ripe new words from, everything is made up. We are just meat squirting air through our various holes because we like the sounds they make and wish to communicate thought.
Something being made up doesn’t make it bullshit, but something made up by a tiny minority within a minority expecting everyone else to adopt it certainly does.
Boo, get new material.
Seriously, sexually identifying as an Apache helicopter? Go back to edgy 2012.
I’m merely pointing to that as a ridiculous exception that is still technically valid in this instance. Sexual identity is a protected class, if only in matters of employment.
Frankly, I think it should be a universally protected class, in almost all cases and for all classifications, but it bears mentioning the limitations of the law.
It’s still entirely non-standard, and not explicitly protected under law.
By all means, push the bounds; and I would hope you establish legal precedent. However, there is little that offers prior circumstance; you are still arguing how things should be, rather than how things are right now. Because of that, courts are not a sufficient venue, it must be argued at the political level.
Spanish is my first language. Spanish defaults to masculine of words, but so do all Latin based languages. Here in the states we see Latinx. In Mexico and South America, “latine” is becoming prevalent.
Linguistically speaking, it’s absurd. Polls in the USA, where Latinx was invented by uncomfortable, uninformed white people to try and be inclusive, show that 93% of the latino / hispanic population either disapprove of or don’t care about it.
Edit: putting this up higher for visibility.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/11/901398248/hispanic-latino-or-latinx-survey-says
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/05/us/latinx-gallup-poll-preference-trnd/index.html
As someone with no skin in the game, I don’t understand why people don’t just say “Latin” when they’re speaking English. We already don’t use genders, and routinely ignore plenty of other foreign language rules like plurals (“a cannoli”, for example). I don’t think anyone is going to be confused and think you’re talking about the Italic people annexed by Rome in 338 BC.
How about we come up with a better term rather than use a stupid one that someone has to tell you how to pronounce.
It takes 10 seconds to learn its pronounced mix. Its not difficult in the slightest
I’m not saying it’s difficult to teach or learn, but if you first encounter it in a book are you going to know it’s pronounced “mix?” And if you hear is are you going to know it’s spelled “Mx?” You can argue difficulty all you want but if you have something that is spelled how it sounds and pronounced how it looks it’s still easier and there will be less confusion.
I don’t see anything stupid about this, but if you have better ideas, let’s hear them.
The better idea is not to make up terminology that only suits you and an exceptionally small minority and then expect everyone else to adopt it.
By all means, define yourself as you like - but don’t expect others to immediately recognise that definition without reasonable explanation.
This case has nuance. On the one hand, a teacher in Florida is not allowed to talk about gay people or anything about alternate genders, per state law. On the other, Federal Law states that no one can be fired over matters regarding sex. Federal law overrules any laws states make, hence the ruling in 303 Creative vs Elenis, however the question is what “sex” covers in the Federal domain.
To be fair Mrs. (And to a lesser extent Mr.) Don’t have an obvious pronunciation from the spelling either. You’ve just been hearing them said out loud for most of your life.
Fair, but they are also shorthand for words: Mister, Miss, Missus. All of which are pronounced as you’d expect.
Is Mx short for something? I’ve not heard so but that doesn’t mean it isn’t.
Apparently it’s short for “Mix”. I only learned that in this post, which suggests it’s far from established - I assumed it was along the lines of “latino/latina -> latinx”.
fake school upset by fake honorific
To a certain extent. How about profanities or protected titles (such as dr.) or another people’s identities?
We call people what they want to be called. (Credit for this to Charlie Worroll from Crimelines and other podcasts)
I agree.
That being said, how do you pronounce this? Is it Mix? Mixter? Mizz(that sounds too close to ms)
I am glad someone is calling the Florida school system on their bullshit. Being non-binary hard and being treated like the coping mechanisms you use for avoiding hating the experience of dealing with people and existing in your body are somehow a delusion, some sort of sexual kink or deliberately confusing is like trying to go about your day with weights strapped to you. It makes dealing with every social interaction so tiring. It really feels like everybody else in the room is obsessed with your sex organs and characteristics like complete perverts that they don’t see the question is about how happy you are and how you feel about all the people in your life and whether you feel anxious and isolated being around them or just comfortable and able to express your full range of personhood.
This teacher is standing up because they know there’s others much worse off who aren’t secure enough to do it. Pretty admirable I think.
This isn’t calling out Florida schools, this only calls out Florida employers. A teacher can be directed not to talk about gay in matters of education, and can be fired for not following such direction, but they cannot be discriminated against for their own sexual identity as a matter of their employment.
US law is shite.
A lot of people do not draw the distinction between talking about things in an educational context versus it being a way they express themselves for their own needs. Laws like this make people afraid to do so until it is contested because the act of contesting it is itself punitive. The cooling effect is implicit in the design of the law because it recognizes law removes people’s ability to support themselves in a society before it has a chance to be tested meaning only the secure of a minority under extreme fire can contest it and that means becoming very visible in circumstances where one’s safety often relies on being invisible.
This teacher is likely under extreme fire right now by a mob of people telling them they are a pedophile, delusional, harmful and trying to exploit every shred of exposed weaknesses to gendered nonsense one naturally lets be known when one comes out as non-binary.
Where legal protections are shaky schools will fire teachers under concerns for that teacher’s physical and mental safety if enough parents are valued at being a threat by feeling empowered by their interpretation of the law or the idea that a school is operating outside the law. Ultimately running a school is government money that needs to be paid so an employee going up against a school board for wrongful dismissal will not impact the individual school as much when the main currency for the school board employees is time and complexity of a bunch of individual parents suing because their little darling asked them what someone calling themselves Mx. means when they came home.
That’s a good point. Gorsuch’s surprising cross over to rule with the liberal justices in a recent supreme court ruling (Bostock vs Clayton County) allowed gender and sexual identifies to be protected by current federal employment law. The very logical conclusion that comes from, any discrimination on the basis of sexual or gender identity revolves around a person’ s assigned sex at birth, which is definitely prohibited, and you can’t discriminate on those things without it being an illegal discrimination test based on sex. Basically if you fire someone assigned male at birth for wearing a dress but not someone assigned female at birth for wearing a dress, this is sex discrimination, already protected by current federal law. Similarly if you’re firing a male for marrying a male but not firing a female for marrying a male, than that’s sex discrimination already prohibited by current law.
Unfortunately I don’t know if the current Supreme Court reasoning would extend the existing federal law to protect non binary honorifics, since the school could argue it would fire anyone using a non binary honorific regardless of that person’s assigned sex at birth. Though maybe if you could get the school to admit they’d allow a non binary honorific for an intersex individual that would open up the door for non binary protections too via current law? But this is why we need a real updated federal law explicity protecting against discrimination on the basis of sexual and gender identifies, including non binary identities. In the meantime the states that do have explicit protections in their state laws are going to be much better places for non cis and hetero people to work in.
Very interesting and informative, thanks.
We absolutely do need updated Federal law, discrimination in general should be simplified and more comprehensive. It’s somewhat strange that Title II doesn’t cover sex - I can understand why (eg women’s hostels only allowing women) but I feel this should be an exception to a rule, not an absence of any rule whatsoever. Title II already has an exemption for “private clubs” so it wouldn’t be that unusual.
Thank you for sharing how thus affects you. It’s important for people to see that this is affecting actual people and not some strawman concept they don’t understand.
It’s something even a lot of my friends don’t even really get. I ended up going to a Birthday party where across the street from the restaurant there was a 250 plus rally of anti-trans protesters with zero counter protesters. We didn’t realize the thing would be there. I ended up not being able to eat because the stress from proximity made me throw up everything.
I know we get called sensitive snowflakes but having that level of outright hate shoved in your face can easily make anyone feel very small and very vulnerable and at some level it’s visceral.
Not only that, but then have the hate be called “reasonable debate”
As if we aren’t actual real people that just want to exist in the world. It’s like you have to fight against the fucking river in making anyone even believe you that what they are seeing is hate, transphobia.
We’re simply not treated like real people in these debates, and it’s frustrating and exhausting. If they faced the same treatment you would bet they would protest severely.
But I guess that is also the case for cis women in the abortion debate. I guess the debate being about half of the population still isn’t enough for empathy.
