Well, let me pick those apart. 1) By-and-large, I do call people by what they want to be called, but by-and-large, I have few ways of knowing before we've inte

Well, let me pick those apart. 1) By-and-large, I do call people by what they want to be called, but by-and-large, I have few ways of knowing before we've interacted. Over email, I typically mirror whatever they use (if they call me with a title, I use that back; if they use first name, likewise). In person, I mirror what their colleagues use. Of course, that's imperfect, since we're in different places in the status hierarchy and have different levels of familiarity, but it's the best heuristic I've found. But just because I do that, I won't fault others for not doing it. Lack of access to cross-cultural education is common. I accept whatever people call me, so long as the *intention* isn't to be insulting. 2) Real and perceived sexism and racism cause the same level of harm. There's a lot of both -- I'm not downplaying real sexism or racism -- but if people aren't given cross-cultural tools, there's a lot of unnecessary harm as well. If a British woman/minority/etc. comes to the US, is called by her first name, and believes she's placed at lower status due to her gender, real harm is done, unnecessarily. And if an American women/minorities/etc believes everyone in Britain is stand-offish, similar harm is done. I see this sort of dynamic playing out over, and over, and over across virtually all cultural pairings. 3) I didn't actually follow the "fracas over Dr. Biden." Most news gets paid by clicks, and most fracas become much greater than they are. The right runs articles cherry-picking left-wing wackos, and vice-versa. I'm not going to alter my opinion over a fracas. Getting back to hierarchy, for the most part, I actually think it's better to leave up to the person higher in the hierarchy to adapt (which, in my current job, is usually me). Right now, the First Lady is just about as close to the top as it gets. If she goes to a progressive elite universities, she should go by "Jill." If she goes to Britain, she should use an honorific or three. I think most African American communities might go with "Dr. Biden." And so on.