New York subway announcements are going gender neutral!

[thewayne]

This I think is very cool and quite awesome. They'll be saying 'Passengers, riders, everyone' instead of 'ladies and gentlemen'.

That stands in sharp contrast to what I experienced in Washington, DC last month. The canned announcements was constantly talking about 'customers'! Now, yes, everyone on the train paid to be there and were, by definition, customers. But it sounded so crass to not be referred to as a passenger. It sounded really weird. It makes me think of the depersonalization of the work force when we added Human Resources instead of Personnel or Employment Services.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nyc-to-make-subway-announcements-gender-neutral/

Comments

[moonhare]

At work we call the public "patrons." Where my wife works it is considered pc to refer to customers as "guests."

[silveradept]

I'm pretty happy about the announcements going gender neutral. That's enough variance in identity and expression that keeping a binary just wasn't going to work