Reply to Do you tolerate strangers calling you “sweetie, doll, dear” etc

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Some of you have no nuance.

I have known drag queens, flamboyant gay men, and very effusive and charming older women who call everyone "doll" and no one is ever offended. Also "beautiful". Even though if my male boss used those to describe me at work I'd report him to HR. So it's extremely context dependent.

Women over 60 I give wide latitude towards. My mom calls a lot of people sweetie and dear. She's 75. There actually is a sexist element because she's more likely to say it to kids or women, but not men. However she is also more likely to use them with people she really likes. So it's complicated. I'm not going to go correcting a 75 year old woman who has been through a lot on something like this. Whatever.

Southerners do this and it's cultural. How mad do you want to get? I honestly think some southerners cannot stop doing it. They've heard people talking this way since they were born.

People who work in customer facing jobs, especially if working for tips, probably do this to try and ingratiate themselves. If it offends you, I guess that sucks for them. But I really don't think they are doing it to offend -- they think people like it. And the truth is, a lot of people DO like it and maybe talking this way increases your tip and makes you seem friendlier and more welcoming, in which case it is just logical that they would ignore the probably less than 5% of people who might be offended. They are just trying to make a living.

Getting mad about these terms as a general rule seems silly to me because it's obviously more complicated than just deciding everyone who speaks this way is a raging misogynist who is out to get you. [/quote]

You sound like you are reading a lot into and getting very invested in people simply having a preference as to how they are addressed. I don't like being called hon or doll or darlin. When it's come from a man, it always made me feel uncomfortable. I didn't think about it as them being "a raging misogynist" - I just didn't like it. From an older woman it usually doesn't bother me, but if asked I would say I would prefer they not use any of those terms. Of course, I can't control how strangers address me, but since this topic was brought up here, a I'm not afraid to say I don't care for it. Why do my preferences bother you so much?[/quote]

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