"Well, don't you think you'd be more comfortable using other pronouns? I mean, 'it' is used for things in this language, not people."
This was coming from a human from Preservation, who'd been born here and raised here, so you could see why Murderbot had been so skeptical/resigned about Preservation's Super Totally Awesome For Real so-called "Equality between Bots and Actual People™".
The human in question was sitting in the front row of chairs in front of the stage, wearing a multi-piece outfit of grey, orange, and white, with long pant legs but sleeves that cut off at the elbow, a very wide belt, large, red-tinted glasses, and a wide-brimmed silver hat.
Why, exactly, had Murderbot agreed to put up with this shit, again? Oh, right, to fight for that so-called equality that apparently already existed, that totally didn't need to be fought for, or anything, because things were as good as they needed to get, bots already had equal rights (no they literally didn't), they didn't need any more, and constructs certainly didn't need any rights. Totally. For sure.
Murderbot had to put up with this shit now, so other people who came after it wouldn't have to. It was for the greater good of all society, and totally admirable and awesome and selfless and blah blah blah.
What it was was obnoxious and infuriating and exhausting, but at least it was getting paid for it.
Oh wait, just kidding, no it wasn't! Mensah hadn't been able to convince anyone in the stupid government she was no longer a part of that this Q&A session was a real job/public service they were performing, that everyone involved should be fairly compensated for.
More than half the people in charge of the government still didn't even want it here, there was no way they were going to fund the public outreach programs designed to get more people to welcome constructs to their stupid planet.
The fact that it had to do this for free was just adding insult to injury.
It was one thing to talk to Dr. Bharadwaj in the privacy of her office. Murderbot liked her. She was smart, she was funny, and it didn't have to explain every single detail of something for her to get it, and she didn't ask it absurdly stupid questions or try to demean it.
It was another thing entirely to be sitting in front of humans on camera letting them ask stupid questions and having to put up with their bullshit when they refused to accept its answer.
Thankfully, Murderbot had its drones, so it didn't have to worry about meeting this idiot human's eyes as it said flatly, its voice carrying throughout the room thanks to the sound amplifier clipped to its ear and down to its jaw, "I thought bots here on Preservation /were/ considered people." For now it was going to ignore the main part of the question, because this was just too annoying to ignore.
Just to be petty, it tapped 9JX on the feed a moment ahead of time to give it warning, then added outloud, "Hey, 9JX, aren't you a people?"
(Humans, it had learned after doing one of these interview panels with 3.14, a bot possibly even more determined to be obnoxious to humans than Murderbot, fucking hated it when you said 'a people' instead of 'a person', so, following 3.14's example, Murderbot made sure to purposefully say it this way whenever it could, just to piss the annoying humans off.)
9JX its current 'team mate' for this panel, being the representative for the cargo haulers. It had been sitting over on the other end of the stage, waiting patiently for questions aimed at it, that didn't seem to be coming. All the questions up until now except one - - (did you get to pick your own paint color? Yes) - - had been for Murderbot alone.
9JX was built to lift and transport large containers outside the actual dock, so it was smaller than most of the cargo hauler types Murderbot had seen in various ports, but it was still bigger than a human or a construct, and designed with functionality in mind, not aesthetics or appealing to human sensibilities.
Unlike constructs like Murderbot or other humanoid bots, it didn't have any eyes, or anything remotely resembling a human face. It looked more like a vehicle than a person, and for a lot of humans, that was enough in their minds to qualify it solidly as an object, instead of a person. Even though they were the one's who'd given it intelligence in the first place. Because humans were fucking stupid.
(Like, it's not like you can /accidentally/ invent artificial intelligence. It requires a lot of technical skills and expensive materials and blueprints and all this complicated shit that it just wasn't possible to do /by accident/. It wasn't a twelve step process. It was a five thousand step process at minimum. No human had ever sat around and just /accidentally/ built an artificial intelligence.)
Anyways.
9JX had decided to have speakers installed specifically so it could talk to humans without being connected to the feed, since it thought it was distracting. (Which sounded unbelievable to Murderbot. How was it possible to function without constant access to the feed? 9JX had the opposite question for it - - how can you function with all those distractions racing around at all times?)
9JX said in the voice synthesized for it specially from multiple donated human recordings, "Yes, I am a people. That's why I'm sitting here, after all." (Yes, almost all the robots were in on the running gag. Turns out they were actually funny when you were part of the joke. Especially when the joke mad obnoxious humans mad.)
"And aren't your pronouns it/its?" Murderbot asked.
"Yep. They're fun, and I picked them out all by myself." It was true - - 9JX had been assigned he/him pronouns upon construction, and had used those pronouns for the first thirty years of its life, until it decided to change them. It continued, "I guess you could say I'm something of a trendsetter."
Also true, considering 9JX was one of the oldest bots on Preservation that was still functioning. It had been part of the original doomed colony, and had been packed into the rescue ship just like everyone else. It was starting to wear down in its old age, but the humans and other bots did everything they could to keep it in good repair.
The good part of that story was that it had convinced humans to let bots change their pronouns. The bad part was that humans had started deciding that 9JX using it/its pronouns meant all bots should use it/its pronouns. Even though some of them didn't want to, like Nehir, or Delta, or 4528B-I, or other bots whose names Murderbot hadn't bothered to save to its long-term storage.
Lots of bots on Preservation had pronouns other than it/its, but most of the humans refused to use those pronouns for them, instead just pretending that all robots had the same gender (aka no gender), so therefore all bots should all use and be happy with the same pronouns.
That wasn't how this worked, at all.
Murderbot liked to think of its gender as indeterminate, or not applicable. That had to do with multiple things, including its asexuality, aromanticism, and aplatonicism. It wasn't attracted to anyone, not bots, not humans, not other constructs, in any way, and didn't want anyone being attracted to it, either. That would just be gross. If someone held up a list of genders they were attracted to, in any way, Murderbot wanted to be excluded every single time.
But that wasn't how it worked for all robots, all constructs, or even all SecUnits. Murderbot couldn't even imagine being sexually or romantically or platonically attracted to someone, but that didn't mean other people were lying when they talked about their own experiences.
(Yes, Murderbot had been horrified and disgusted beyond words the first time it learned of a construct who felt sexual and romantic attraction to other people, including humans. Yes, it had made a total jackass out of itself by being a bigoted asshole to them about it, treating them like shit and ranting about how they were just doing this to appease humans and making humans think they could just have sex with any construct they wanted. Yes, it regretted every fraction of second of what it had said and wished it could wipe the incident from its memory. But it wasn't going to do that, no matter how ashamed it was, because it had been one of the most important learning experiences it had ever had in its existing memory.)
The human - - this time Murderbot did check the feed tag, and saw their name was Fiscal, their gender was Neutral, they used the honorific Vr./veyir, they were married to three partners, had as many kids, had a pet yellow-tailed phoron, and their pronouns were they/them/their/theirself (singular) - - was rolling their eyes and making an exasperated huffing noise.
"I wasn't talking to the hauler bot, I was talking to you." They said scornfully, doing their best to stare directly at Murderbot's eyes in that obnoxiously intense way some humans just love to do for some reason.
Well, they was staring at Murderbot's opaque faceplate, but didn't realize Murderbot had its eyes closed, watching the scene only through its cameras from the drones it had scattered around the room.
Having your face hidden fucking rocked. Murderbot couldn't believe it had gone so long pretending it was fine with letting humans see its face all the time. Talk about a nightmare.
"And what makes me different from a hauler bot?" Murderbot asked, in the tone of voice it reserved for when humans were being fucking stupid and it wanted to let them know that without actually saying it. It was also using the trick it'd learned from ART - - make the person you were arguing with spell out their own stupid ideas for everyone to hear, and maybe they'd realize as they were verbalizing it just how stupid it was.
Fiscal, though, didn't seem to realize how stupid they was being, since they said, with no hint of irony or self awareness or embarrassment, "You look human, so it's different. You're more of a person, so it's not right to call you an it."
So this idiot was literally admitting they didn't think bots were people. Murderbot hoped all the fancy government workers who'd refused to fund this little get together were crying over how much their supposed little utopia was failing on its most basic advertising principal.
"I'm a person whether I'm human or not, whether I use it/its pronouns or not." Murderbot said, keeping its voice level through a mixture of resigned boredom and a supreme will of effort, "9JX is a person whether it looks human or not, and it wouldn't be more of a person if it started using other pronouns."
Fiscal folded their arms across their chest, looking stubborn, like they was in the right, or something. "It's not right, I'm just not comfortable calling you an it, it's dehumanizing. You're a person, not a thing. Why don't you try they/them pronouns? I'm sure you'll find people will treat you better if you use them. Using it/its just gives people an excuse to treat you like a bot."
Yeah, Murderbot hoped everyone on Preservation was enjoying this.
Through one of the drones it had assigned to Dr. Mensah, it could see her dropping her face into her hands at her desk. One of the government officials was sitting in the chair across from her, (Keane, the same nonbinary human Murderbot had met the last time Mensah tried to set up funding) vis mouth open in unabashed shock and horror at the dual-faced display screen on the desk in from of vem. Clearly, ve hadn't expected the public's perception of bots to be this far from the ideal they all prided themselves on.
The look of horror on vis face was almost worth the hassle of doing all of this for free.
And who knew, if this fucking bigot kept talking, maybe the government would be ashamed enough to pay them all in retrospect for subjecting themselves to the bigotry in the first place.
Well, a murderbot could hope.