7 ms·

I'm from a part of the US where "guys" is used as a gender neutral collective noun. My mom and grandma would call out "guys, dinner is ready!" to the whole fami

• giraffe_lady 3y ago
  I'll buy this when I hear a straight man talk about the guys he's dated. A thing that I have still never once observed.
  • nkuttler 3y ago
    Here's a shocking concept: language has context.
    • woodruffw 3y ago
      The person you’re responding to is providing an example of context-sensitivity.
      • dingnuts 3y ago
        The person he's responding to is choosing to be obtuse in order to police other peoples' language based on rules derived by their political ideology, and does not care about context I wish you guys could understand that
        • woodruffw 3y ago
          "Context for me but not for thee" is not a principled argument. The rest of the comment is speculative: you don't know anything about their politics, or have any reason to believe they're being obtuse.
  • GunnarSturla 3y ago
    I don't think this example counters the gender neutrality of "guys". Have you ever observed a straight man talk about the people he's dated?
    • giraffe_lady 3y ago
      Yes.
      • Volundr 3y ago
        It's an interesting bit of context. I also grew up with guys as a generic plural, but it's not really generic, rather it's a mixed group plural. It would feel just as natural to say "the people I date", as "the women I date", but never "the guys I date. Even that's a weak rule though. For example if a girls soccer team performed really well you might hear someone say "those guys really gave it their all today" (though I'd say this usage is mostly dead, I don't think I've heard it this way in a long time), but never "THE guys really gave it their all today". I'm sure some linguists have studied this and have a term for this kind of thing.
    • EricMausler 3y ago
      If everyone I dated were in a room, then I, a heterosexual male, very much might address that room as guys. As in, "hey guys, what are you doing here?" I absolutely would not say "hey ladies" It would feel too formal to say "hey everyone" "Hey people" would be awkward "Hey you all" eh It might be better to leave it at "hey" It might be best to just say "bye"
  • knjnppp 3y ago
    Glad it's not up to you to "buy" the words I choose! My region uses "you guys" for the you plural in English, too, and you petty speech totalitarians didn't show up until I was grown so even though I now live in a region that says y'all and even prefer it, when speaking I form sentences in my native language too quickly to catch myself every time I use my native term for you plural But you and your language policing petty authoritarians would have me sent to the gulag for your ridiculous overly academic context ignoring willful and politically motivated misinterpretation of my diction Screw you!
    • uv-depression 3y ago
      Oh my god you are being so dramatic. Someone says something you disagree with about whether a term is gender-neutral and you're suddenly talking about "speech totalitarians" and authoritarians and gulags. Get a grip.
  • wl 3y ago
    "Guys" tends to be neuter in the second person and masculine in the third person. In any case, I think your example works better with a bisexual speaker. A straight guy would probably use more specific gendered language rather than a neuter construction. A bisexual person using "guys" to refer to the men and women (s)he has dated would be an example of a third person neuter usage—which I also think would be quite rare.
  • gameman144 3y ago
    There are lots of languages where the gender-neutral term and one of the gendered terms are the same. Consider the Spanish "ellos", meaning either "the masculine group" or "the masculine and feminine group". The word "ellas" denotes a feminine-only group. It seems very reasonable that "guys" could function similarly in English. Moreover, I might not say "the guys I've dated" as a straight man, but if all the women I've ever dated were talking together in a room, I wouldn't bat an eye asking "what are you guys all doing?". Similarly, I wouldn't say "all the folks I've dated", but I might say "good evening, folks" -- the word is a misfit solely because of the idioms and context, not because the word is inherently communicating something else.
  • malwrar 3y ago
    I haven’t used “guys” in that specific way, but I’ve definitely called my various female partners “dude” before. Language is fluid etc.
  • VancouverMan 3y ago
    A nuance of that usage of "guys" to refer to a group consisting of both men and women is that the group of people being referred to is typically immediately present in some way. Like in those earlier examples, the people are probably all within the same house/yard at the same time when they're called to dinner, or they're all using the same online discussion forum at about the same time. When discussing multiple individuals with significant time and/or distance separating them (like the people somebody has dated over the span of years), a more specific term like "men", "women", "men and women", or "people" would likely be used instead.
  • BasedAnon 3y ago
    Why would they use it to refer to a group of exclusively women? 'guys' refers to a group of men or a group of men and women, not to a group of women. Is that so hard to understand?
• that_guy_iain 3y ago
  When non-native English speakers are taught English, they are taught that "Hey guys" is gender neutral. So you'll meet lots of non-native English speakers who will be completely shocked at that it's not. I have so much fun joking with some of my women friends that they're sexist because they're using "guys" instead of "folks". To me, it's one of those things where someone is always going to be awkward and say "that doesn't include me". They may jokingly say something but some take it as a personal insult and just assume the other person is being sexist. While I always use "folks" just to avoid the hassle, personally I wouldn't be too bothered if the people who take "Hey guys" as a sexist insult don't talk to me.
  • nkuttler 3y ago
    The fact that it was white people bullying people from all over the planet only made it worse.
    • ZeroGravitas 3y ago
      I've noticed that white people as a group regularly get abuse in anti-woke HN threads. Seems bizarre to me. I guess it is some kind of "gotcha", intended to undermine "woke" people but it seems a bit self-defeating. "White people are so racist they're even racist when they're trying to be non-racist" seems more woke than anti-woke to me, but that doesn't seem to be the intention.
      • woooooo 3y ago
        It's specifically the phenomenon of rich 1-percenters trying to cancel each other that's grating. Is there injustice in the world? Clearly. Are these people insufferable? Also very much yes. In the tech context specifically, we are very international in a way that doesn't map to US culture wars, which makes the white woke people look even more out of touch with reality.
      • klipt 3y ago
        And of course, complaints about white people are one of the things that wouldn't be punished under these code of conducts despite the "no racism" clause, because they're usually not evenly enforced.
• deleted 3y ago
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• tjpnz 3y ago
  I work in Japan - naturally I've Japanese colleagues, and a significant number from other Asian countries too. The "you guys"/"hey guys"/"that guy" thing is practically universal. The idea of a native (probably white) English speaker lecturing them on it being sexist or non-inclusive is repugnant to the extreme. At that point they've lost the argument, and can frankly get fucked.
  • colpabar 3y ago
    > The idea of a native (probably white) English speaker lecturing them on it being sexist or non-inclusive is repugnant to the extreme It really is amazing how those people don't see it that way and instead think they are really helping anyone. English was forced on a lot of the world. Now it's sort of happening again, in a different way and with infinitely less violence, but the justification remains the same: to civilize the savages.
  • bananashazama 3y ago
    To what Japanese phrases are you referring? Most of the various phrases I'd expect to use to refer to a group (minasan, [name]-san-tachi) are gendered at all in typical use, and the ones I can think of that are gender only one member of the group (e.g. kanojo-tachi to refer to a group including one known female). And it's not like Japanese doesn't have similar sexist norms baked into its own vocabulary either (if anything, to a rather greater extent than English). No, an everyday modern speaker probably doesn't mean anything by the fact that it's danna-sama but oyome-san, or the fact that formal speech (as one would use with a superior) is read as feminine-coded in casual contexts. But that doesn't mean there's not something behind those norms, either. Whether the lecture is counterproductive is an entirely different question to whether the usage is sexist.
• Anthony-G 3y ago
  Another data point: I’m from Ireland and grew up in the 80s. For as long as I remember, the plural form “guys” always referred to groups of any gender. I’d be just as likely to use it to greet a female-only group of colleagues as a mixed or male-only group of colleagues.