Mx for intersexed people?

Benjamin Barrett gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM
Mon Sep 17 02:49:39 UTC 2007


Laurence Horn wrote:
> At 4:59 PM -0700 9/16/07, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>
>> I thought Mx. was for use when you don't know if the person is male or
>> female. Wikipedia doesn't provide that. It says:
>>
>> Mx (an ambiguous gender title) See intersex, androgyne or genderqueer
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mx)
>>
>> Have I been using this incorrectly?
>>
>
> Well, x could be the unknown (as on your reading) or Mx could evoke
> 'mixed', 'mix-and-match', or whatever.
I use this nearly exclusively for the translation of discovery documents
as the translation of the Japanese name suffix -san, meaning Mr./Ms.,
when no first name is given (which is usual) in the documents at hand.
If the intersexual use is near-universal for Mx., I need to quit using
it and revert to the clumsier Mr./Ms.

BB

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