Honorifics, Terms which show or confer Respect,

Are matters of life and breath to three sorts of people: Aristocrats, Snobs and Transsexuals. Aristocrats, of course, actually deserve, or have inherited, the honors we accord them. Snobs pretend or wrongly claim to deserve them. While transsexuals are pretending, or wrongly claiming, simply to be something they're not and never can be.

But the question is ¿How does one get on, socially, with all these real, and spurious, claimants on our respect (the respect we normally grant persons and things)? And the answer is, the same as we get on socially even with our less demanding acquaintances: Smiling, in the first place, a polite smile (which is not a smirk, and more with the eyes than the lips), and looking whomsoever we are conversing with firmly in the eye--and keeping to the matter at hand, whatever that matter might be--we use the polite, neutral "you" when addressing someone in the second person singular, and "you guys" in the plural.

Meantime, I will ask all you trans people, of whatever gender you consider yourself to be, please to use the stalls, in whichever of the sexes' designated restrooms you deign to relieve yourself, and not the stand-up urinals. And keep your head down and don't talk to anybody.