“Ma’am, is fine in a crunch Mr Kim. But, I prefer Captain”
Or something like that… Its early in the morning, and I’m not searching for the actual quote, just relying on my inner geek to help.
I’m all for everyone going one way and being call Sir, in a military context. Male and female alike.
I still don’t get why using ranks is co controversial?
We already do it for NCOs?
It only sounds odd to end a sentence with an officer’s rank because we don’t do it often. But for some officer ranks it’s common. ’ Yes Captain’ would roll off pretty easily because we’re used to hearing it on TV and from the Navy.
‘Yes Squadron Leader’ as an alternative to ‘Yes Sir’, or ‘Yes ma’am’ is perfectly fine. And then leaves gendered terms for those who prefer them. I can see some female officers being just as offended being called sir all the time.
Just normalise using ranks as terms of reference.
But if everyone is called sir then the ma’ams will think we are all male chauvinists, I will stick to my guns generaly those who make are fuss didnt get enough attention when they were a child. The genuine folk will politely point yoh in the right direction with no offence and still feel included in this mass needlessly complex world we live in
Personally, I hate staff and Boss is even worse. Sir is fine and as was told on the LGBT++ training a few weeks ago when this training happened, rank is fine.
On an aside, a recent update to sms there is now a field for gender pronouns. Mine was set to “He/Him” and it was not set by me. Shouldn’t the default be “Prefer not to say” and people choose themselves what to put on there and there system not assume.
Here is the official line:
No the parent service don’t have a policy, nor do we and actually don’t feel it needs a policy. In most instances use of rank and surname is absolutely fine, the individual, although non-binary, may have masculine or feminine pronoun choices (sir/ma’am). A common “accepted” term for schools etc… is Mx
Essentially, it’s a matter of individual preference. Sir, ma’am or rank.
If you don’t mind me asking. How would I pronounce Mx?
M X or Mix? Or some other way?
Usually ‘mix’
I think the problem is some RAF ranks are such a mouthful. I mean, ‘Captain’ or ‘Lieutenant’ is fine, but ‘Flight Lieutenant’ is already rather long and if I had to call someone ‘Air Vice-Marshal’ every 5 minutes it would drive me mad. And ‘AVM’ seems a bit chummy; I don’t accept ‘Wingco’ except from my equals or betters…
PS and I know we have very few but imagine if your boss was a Marshal of the Royal Air Force!
I don’t think we have any?
It is a feature, but I think it’s just down to usage. calling a WO ‘Warrant Officer’ is pretty standard.
Just talk like a TV Sergeant from WW1, never pronounce half the letters and you can get Flight Lieutenant down to about 3 syllables pretty easy, whilst also sounding efficient and enthusiastic.
Use rank - job done.
“I’ll get the recruits ready for you now Flooey”
If someone called me that I would probably burst out laughing 
Hard to give someone a telling off and try and act serious when you are smirking.
But since we are all grown up volunteers…
Surely the Sir/Ma’am/Rank etc is only used when we do the formal dress up bit in front of the cadets? So should be plenty of time before that to sort out any potential issues whilst we have an adults only chat
It’s up there with ‘Sarnt’
Our old Wing WO was great at this, strong Bristolian accent, most letters optional.
This. Why the need to re-invent the wheel here?
We recently had a transgender member of staff MtF, who preferred to be addressed as ‘staff’. It took the cadets a small minute to adjust but it works well for us now.
Worms, can open, for the use of.
I think I’ve said it here before, this is also my take.