Livre d'Or

*thumbs up!* No worries. I'm ASD enough that I miss cues and long experience has taught me that if I'm unsure, the worst case scenario if I acknowledge where I might have screwed up when I haven't is kind people apologizing at each other, whereas the worst case if I don't is me trampling over everyone's toes.

And yeah, language is . . . difficult. And sometimes there's almost no acceptable solution, because, well. The way-way-way back etymological root word for the English "bad" is "womanish man." When I look at that kind of thing I just end up having to laugh so I don't hide under the bed for the rest of time.

Which doesn't mean that trying to figure out how to use language in the least harmful way is pointless at all, it's just . . . sometimes one makes the best of a bad deal because there's no other option.

For me "decent" works because my experience of its use is pretty ungendered - even if it's used in a prudish way a man without his shirt on is no more "decent" than a woman is, if that makes sense, so that wherever the bar for "decent" is it's applying the same to everyone and it's a succinct way of saying "the bare minimum of acceptable and non-harmful behaviour that considers everyone as being basically human". But it's also flexibly relative, not absolute - sometimes the decent thing to do is A and sometimes it's B and that'll change with circumstance.

It's not perfect, but.