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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/Alternativebe1 on 2023-08-24 12:10:06.

I’m [24/f] a vegan, I’ve been eating tofu and incorporating in into different dishes daily for years. I’ve learned during that time that “tofu” is a cultural food in many cultures that actually call it “tahu”. One of my friends, Alex [24/f], would ask me (it always seemed she was joking) to call tofu by the right name, tahu, almost everytime I mentioned tofu. It started getting annoying and I would just outright ignore her “jokes” and not even respond anymore.

A while ago, the same thing happened, but this time she got mad when I decided to completely ignore her and continue talking about what I was before she interjected. It was a long-drawn-out argument but basically, she said I was being disrespectful. I said I was calling it by the name that’s well-known and is written on 99% of the packages I buy and see at different stores.

She said since I’m not friends or spend much time someone who is actually from a culture that calls it tofu, I should call it tahu because I’m closer to a person, her, who calls it that. I thought that was just dumb and told her that. It seems so silly to have use the word tahu and then have to explain it to people as “it the same thing as tofu”, instead of just using the word that most people are familiar with.

I also said it would be a hassle and hard to suddenly call it a different name. This is where my other friend decided to interject and say “you easily managed to refer to me as “they” instead of “she”, you can do this this too but you’re clearly just being stubborn”. I was kinda shocked and even said that her pronoun change is more of an issue than this tofu issue. She said it is similar even if it a lesser issue than pronouns because it shows that I don’t respect Alex.

My two other friends who were there during this are on my side, but refused to defend me directly during the argument. They both say I’m right but one of them asked me to just apologize to Alex and try to call the food tahu, at least around her because it was clearly something she was sensitive about. I honestly would do that and keep the peace if I knew she truly cared about this, but I feel like this is some weird attempt to try and control and police me and I’m worried if I do what she asked me, she’ll just continue to ask unreasonable things of me and try to make me out to be the bad guy like she is doing now.

On the other hand, she is the only one in this group that is from a different country while the rest of us are American (3 white and 1 black) so maybe I’m missing something and just being an ignorant asshole? So, AITA for refusing to call tofu by tahu instead?