0:12

It's Tuesday night at the Royal

0:14

Vauxhall Tavern and the house

0:16

is packed for bar whatever. A

0:20

queer cabaret night in South London. On

0:23

stage is Michael, the MC. Pink

0:27

dress, big heels, even bigger wig.

0:33

And we're here to talk with the crowd about

0:35

words. One word actually, mucks. Oh,

0:38

oh my god, I don't know, I can't count. Me and my partner both use mucks. At least

0:40

five or six people in my mind. A couple people

0:43

I know in their own head, they feel that

0:45

way. There's

0:53

so many people to count. I don't think

0:56

it's become more popular, I think it's become

0:58

more known. If

1:02

mucks isn't that known to you, if

1:04

you're wondering how to spell it, how

1:06

to pronounce it, what exactly it means,

1:09

well, you're not alone. From

1:13

Quiet Juice and the Linguistic Society

1:15

of America, this is Subtitle, stories

1:17

about languages and the people who

1:19

speak them. I'm Patrick Cox. So

1:22

this word mucks, spelt M-X,

1:25

it is more widely used in the UK

1:27

than in the US. It's one of several

1:29

words in use right now. Some will stick,

1:31

some won't. Words that

1:34

may just help us resolve a

1:36

struggle over gender and sex and

1:38

language that goes back centuries. We

1:46

have two people reporting this episode,

1:49

Leo Hornack and Nina Porzuki. Here's

1:51

Nina. Mix

1:53

isn't honorific like Mr., Mrs. and

1:55

Ms., but it's designed to be

1:57

gender neutral. And over in the

1:59

UK... is

4:01

that it tells you nothing about

4:03

a person. It doesn't tell

4:05

you their gender, it doesn't tell you their marital status,

4:07

it doesn't tell you whether they've got

4:10

any particular qualifications or not. In

4:12

the widest possible sense it is for everyone.

4:14

So how do you pronounce it? Mux or

4:16

mix? Yeah, there

4:19

is no standardised way. It's one

4:21

of those things where the world

4:23

keeps changing and different people

4:25

say things in different ways. You might

4:27

hear us use mux and mix

4:30

interchangeably throughout the podcast. It's fair to say

4:32

that mix is having a moment here in

4:34

the UK. Shae's been tracking

4:36

its rise in Britain over the last few years. Several

4:39

banks have adopted the prefix. I think about

4:41

half the banks, the

4:43

large utility companies, certain

4:45

parts of the National Health Service, the

4:47

Royal Mail now recognises it, and

4:50

in 2015 the British Parliament even

4:52

voted to allow MPs to use

4:54

the title. Though none of them have

4:56

yet done so. Mix even entered the

4:58

Oxford English Dictionary that same year, 2015.

5:02

If mix sounds a bit foreign to your ears, Shae

5:05

admits this gender neutral language is

5:07

relatively new. Shae only

5:09

started using it themselves in 2010.

5:12

But it makes a huge difference to people's lives.

5:14

You suddenly got people going, oh my god,

5:16

this explains how I've always felt. As

5:19

soon as the awareness is raised, then people