Just looked it up and the entire first page of searches is about how ‘guys’ is masculine and insensitive to women. I disagree. I think the masculinization of the term is like an unneeded extra filter placed over ‘guy’ but the term itself is innocent. Guy Fawkes was a real person. He did something that caused him to be a symbol of the common person. There is nothing gendered about that. It’s the patriarchal culture that then assumed ‘common person’ refers to males. When I think of Guy Fawkes, it is his actions, not what’s in his pants, that is important. So, while there are many needlessly sexist and sexual phrases in English, I do not view ''Guy" as one of them and, instead, view it as a victim of the patriarchy just like you and me. It isn’t an inappropriate phrase to change or remove, it’s one to reclaim for all people; which is exactly in the spirit of the symbol of who Guy Fawkes is.
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“Geese” is ultimately gander neutral.
daaaad, you promised you’d stay off the fediverse!
Guys will not be neutral until a man can say he fucked two guys last night and mean women.
Guys implies social distance. Once you’re fucking those ladies, they’re officially your bros.
I think the difference here, is that you’re not talking about a collective, but instead two different individuals. I agree with OP on this one, and I think “guys” can refer to a collective of humans.
Is it right? Probably not. Do I think of just a bunch of men when someone says “come on guys”? Not really.
If it refers to all genders in some contexts, but only to men in others, then it isn’t gender neutral.
It isn’t gender natural only in some cases
Waitress is only women, but waiter can mean either.
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Same for dudes.
“Y’all” is better anyway. And that’s from a damn Yankee. (Well, New Englander).
I tend to prefer “Folks”.
I once worked with a woman who transitioned. She asked us to try not to use the phrase “guys” because she worked so hard to not be called a guy. Took me weeks of screwing up, but I was able to switch from “guys” to “folks”. I no longer work with her, but have continued to use folks as it feels more inclusive.
Y’all rolls off my tongue more smooth.
How about a portmanteau of y’all and folks:
Y’olks.
“Peeps” works too!
As someone who’s started to embrace it more recently, there’s nothing as satisfying as throwing out some monster like y’all’dve.
Y’all’re embracing pure beauty
Ha, I’ve said y’all’done several times.
“Yinz” if you want to be sophisticated.
I have donuts as to whether 90% of U.S. folks would know what that is.
Yinzers know.
Nope. Pittsburgh yinz is less sophisticated than the victorian English y’all.
Guy comes from the burning of Guy Fawkes effigies on Bonfire Night. They would create these dolls of Fawkes where he was shabbily dressed and burn him for his prominent role in the Gunpowder Plot. Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder plot was not because he was an everyday man. He was trying to return the crown to being part of the Catholic church.
In the 19th century, the term guy was used to refer to a poorly dressed man. Eventually, his image changed as a freedom fighter and some, particularly Catholics, saw him as a hero in the 19th century.
Guy goes back at least a millennium and was always a male name. Its hard to know for sure, but it probably was the word for wood.
I don’t know if this unpopular, it’s just a contested opinion. Growing up, it was used either presumptively that masculity is the default or gender neutral. These debates are one way language changed. I don’t know why people care as much as they do. Society literally doesn’t fall apart because words change their meaning.
i prefer history how i envisioned it having done no research and instead making up things that seem plausible.
Don’t we all. Thats a picture of me and the neighbor kids playing dolls.
At the end of the day, we use language to communicate ideas to other people. So imo you should just use another word, because if a majority of people think that “guys” is not gender neutral, even though you think it is, the best thing for others to understand you better is still to use what others would consider a gender-neutral word.
Don’t focus too much on language itself, put your focus on letting others understand you. If people are bothered by a word, just use another one, unless that word is actually necessary for what you want to communicate.
Be the change you want to see. If you don’t like it chose a different word, otherwise if you do work against the current/stream. Language and communication are always changing. Good luck out there!
a majority of people
I wouldn’t go that far
This is the way, my dude.
I try to use peeps or folks to be safe.
I use y’all, and I’m not even from the south.
I agree. Have seen tons of woman use that way as well
Is it gay to fuck guys?
Only if they’re not gender neutral
I’ve never minded being lumped into “you guys” and I’m a trans woman. But there are trans women that do mind, so I’m not gonna argue or anything if they tell me they don’t like that term.
That being said, it does feel weird. Like having a problem with the term “mankind”… Like, I get “man” is a masculine term but nobody means “men” when they say “mankind”, you know?
Once upon a time “man” simply meant “human”, “wer” and “wif” being the gendered (adult) words, “man” underwent semantic shift while “mankind” didn’t. I guess increasing misogyny due to Christianisation is to blame.
i have a problem with ones like that lol. And ones like there being craftsmen but not craftswomen. i often make huge deals about it lol
I try to be cognizant of my crowd and I have found using Folks is a better wording.
I have an aversion to folks. It’s too colloquial. If I don’t know you and don’t associate with you don’t lump me in as one of your folks. Folks implies familiarity. Use people. It’s neutral. Just my take, one thing that strongly came out of the mid to late aughts used a lot by Bush and Obama that I really disliked in their communication. My folks are my parents/family. Your folks are your parents/family. “Folks” in general feels slimy like you want to be my family but are just a con man.
hmm good to know. Most people use Guys and I don’t like to use that in mixed company. People seems a bit pointed to me. too much like “You People” which could indicate a specific ethnic group. I will have to think on it. May I use Peeps and refer to everyone as sugary treats no on eats lol.
People feels too impersonal and just isn’t ever how I speak. It feels like I’m an alien saying, “hello fellow humans. Let our human group commence the socialization!”
People argue too much about definitions instead of just asking the other party to clarify when they’re using a slightly different definition.
Context is also very important.
Reclaim all you want, while respecting people’s boundaries.
Comrade.
I agree with you in principle but in reality it’s a changed word that I’m trying to remove from my vocabulary are replace with y’all.
Yup. Agree or disagree, it’s meaning has shifted. Language is an ever evolving thing. Computer meant something different 100 years ago. We didn’t have the term fiber optic. There’s always things that change.
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I think it’s pretty genderless, just because I’ve heard enough women use it about women or mixed groups. You can always use his surname instead, just update a bit to modern pronounciation, call everyone: Fuck, Fucks, Fuckers. I think that solves it.
Calling everyone “homo” is another good one.
Some languages like French use “ils” for mixed groups (same as male groups). But others like German use “sie” (same as “she/her”). Plurals in german, I think, usually become feminine (die Manner) - although German has many other gender-bending cases that I can’t begin to understand. I’m sure there’s lots of other languages that have a million other features/inconsistencies/expressions of patriarchal domination like this.
But others like German use “sie” (same as “she/her”). Plurals in german, I think, usually become feminine (die Manner)
Quick note on German grammar: That’s not feminine, it’s just a plural. “sie”, “die” etc. aren’t feminine prepositions or articles, they happen to be the 3rd person feminine article, and nominative singular articles among many, many other things. When you’re talking about “the march of the women” (der Marsch der Frauen" then women don’t become male, they become genitive (whose march? theirs/hers)
Also calling Indo-European noun classes genders was a mistake from the very beginning. IE languages do tend to have three noun classes and will sort “man”, “woman” and “thing” into different ones, and refer to individuals using the first two classes, but that’s all there is to it. Noun classes are about ease of reference, in German you can say “the pen and the newspaper are on the table, I pick him up” and it’s clear that you mean picking up the pen because newspapers are “female”. Tables are also male but picking up the table doesn’t really make sense in context. Swahili in contrast goes all-out and has 18 noun classes, “person”, “people”, “group”, “groups”, “animal”, “tool”, “tree”, “abstraction”, “position”, and more, but no gender to be found there.
