@sj_zero >The way to actually do that is to have social rituals that separate out this piece of your life. So you can have a discussion with someone and if they aren’t initiating the social rituals, you’re safe to just treat them like another human being
This is why I like the return of forbidden language. Hearing a guy at work call someone a "gay retard" is a signal that he's a real person. Obviously the person is neither gay nor retarded, so the signalling works. When people joke that the return of those words is a sign that "nature is healing", they're only half joking. Also noteworthy that those were both 90s slang terms, a safe step back to before everything went off the rails.