Phones are often used for small amounts of time as people pick them up to reply to a message, browse the web for a bit or watch a video.

Haha… Yeah… Me too… I definitely don’t just have it in my hand while I look at it for 12 hours a day. Nope, not me.

Well, to make a more serious comment instead of just quoting an old song from an old movie, it’s definitely most important to call people by pronouns that they prefer. That’s the number 1 priority.

That said, I have some trans friends who don’t like gender neutral pronouns in general. One in particular has explained how much she has gone through to be able to identify as a woman, and using “they” instead of “she” makes her feel like she still isn’t a woman.

So the real answer is there’s no one word that will make everyone happy. They best way to do that is to ask people the pronouns they prefer.

Dude.

I’m a dude. He’s a dude, She’s a dude. We’re all dudes.