Re: The difficulties of raising your kids to be properly homophobic

Lane wrote:
> On Jul 23, 9:43 am, Pat Kight <kig...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Blunt and Opaque wrote:
>>> Ann Burlingham <a...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, in article <u3am18mb9....@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
dixit:
>>>> In my experience, substituting one set of unthought-out, default
>>>> behaviors - like "call all people by their first names" in place of
>>>> "call all people by an honorific and their surname" - doesn't change
>>>> much behavior, while annoying more people.
>>> Amen!
>>> Far too many doctors offices (and I don't mean doctors -- I mean their
>>> office staff) presume to address me by my first name.  Which is *not*
>>> my use name.  And only highlights how much they don't know me.
>>> Addressing me as <honorific> <last name> would go a lot further with
>>> me.
>> Maybe it's the whole small-town thing, or the casual ethic of the
>> Pacific Northwest, but one of the first things the staff at my
>> doctor/dentist/veterinarian/etc. asked when I filled out the intake
>> paperwork is "what shall we call you?" And then they *remember*.
> 
> It only makes sense. So many people do not use their first name, or
> even their middle name. One of my closest friends just picked his own
> name, one that he think fits him better. He didn't change it legally
> but everyone who knows him calls him by his self-assigned name.

A dear friend of mine, with whom I lived for a while, goes by the name
Mickie.  It bears no relation to her legal name.  She was in financial
trouble then; when anyone answered the phone, if the person on the other
end asked for her by her legal given name, we knew it was no one she
wanted to talk to.

I, on the other hand, go by Michael anywhere and everywhere.  It's a
measure of how well someone knows me that they call me anything else, or
any variant thereof.

-- 
Michael Rosen