driving practice #22: I'm good at k-turns now?

[hermionesviolin]

FCS-Ian and I were gonna go driving yesterday before church, but after much back and forth we ended up rescheduling to 7:30pm tonight. Now that it's still light out at that hour, it works well (after his kids are in bed, etc

Comments

[vantiri]

By the way, Sir (no idea really what your gender really is, so I'm using the default English gender setting of the Masculine), Happy Birthday, and congradulations on your driving course you're taking.

Sincerely sorry for going off-topic, but I couldn't find the ability to message you on your LJ homepage.
Signed:
Vantiri.
P.S. Sorry to have to do this this way, but, again; Happy Birthday!

[hermionesviolin]

Thank you -- though I don't actually know who you are or why you're following my LJ.

My name is Elizabeth, and I use she/her pronouns and don't need an honorific/title.

While it's true that English persists in the using the masculine as a generic in some contexts (e.g., many people think of "mankind" and even "all men are created equal" as encompassing more people than just men) things like "sir" still feel very gendered to the recipient, so I would recommend just saying "hello" or similar and avoiding the whole Sir/Madam/etc. issue (especially since people only use such honorifics in very formal situations).

P.S. If you want to LJ message someone, you can use http://www.livejournal.com/inbox/compose.bml and just insert their username in the "To:" field.

[vantiri]

Thank you for enlightening me better about you, Elizabeth

[hermionesviolin]

Hi, Vantiri.

Thanks for the explanation as to why you're following me. (I genuinely had no guesses as to why you were following me.) I barely write/post any fic these days, and when I do I usually post directly to AO3, so you're really not gaining anything by following me here on LJ, but I'm flattered by your compliments.

As a native speaker of English, who spends most of her life around other English speakers, I can assure you that many people do NOT think it's polite to use the masculine form when you're not sure and instead think it is most polite to not use any gendered references until you know how the person identifies/what terminology they use.

I was/am not angry at you, just offering (1) clarifying information about myself, and (2) a recommendation for interacting with Internet strangers in the future.