My parents raised me to always say “yes sir” and “no ma’am”, and I automatically say it to service workers and just about anyone with whom I’m not close that I interact with. I noticed recently that I had misgendered a cashier when saying something like “no thank you, ma’am” based on their appearing AFAB, but on a future visit to the store they had added their pronouns (they) to their name tag. I would feel bad if their interaction with me was something they will remember when feeling down. This particular person has a fairly androgynous haircut/look and wears a store uniform, so there’s no gender clue there.
I am thinking I need to just stop saying “sir” and “ma’am” altogether, but I like the politeness and I don’t know how I would replace it in a gender-neutral way. Is there anything better than just dropping it entirely?
For background I’m a millennial and more than happy to use people’s correct pronouns if I know them!
I don’t think that kind of thing is unique to the South nor its link to slavery. In a larger scope, it’s a deference to class hierarchy. George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia, talking about his experience in socialist Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War:
Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said ‘Señor’ or ‘Don’ or even ‘Usted’; everyone called everyone else ‘Comrade’ and ‘Thou’, and said ‘Salud!’ instead of ‘Buenos días’. Tipping was forbidden by law; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy.
