4 ms·

"Not having to explain why the term "gentlemen" doesn't include you. " - So no "Hi gentleman", fair enough "# Listening to speakers refer to an inanimate softw

"Not having to explain why the term "gentlemen" doesn't include you. " - So no "Hi gentleman", fair enough "# Listening to speakers refer to an inanimate software construct as "this guy" without getting distracted. " - So no "Hi guys", fair enough "Not being the special case ("hi guys and girls, I guess, too, if you want to get really technical about it!!") " - So no "Hi guys and girls", err..

rw140 17y ago
You could try 'Hi, everyone'. I suspect it depends on who you have in your audience. Personally the special case irks me more than a general 'Hi chaps', or 'Hi guys'. It simultaneously singles me out and wastes my time. I wouldn't generalise too far off this list, though. It looks like an amalgam of things that annoy different ladies. I only picked out 5 of them that I agreed with.
enneff 17y ago
"Hey everyone!" "Hi!" "Good morning/afternoon/evening/day!" "Hello!" "Greetings!" etc... Although I say "Hi Guys!" sometimes when greeting my wife and daughter, so I don't really see what's so offensive about it.
tim_chevalier 17y ago
The second point was meant to be about inanimate software constructs: for example, "This guy jumps to that guy without pushing a new stack frame." The difference between "hi guys and girls" and "hi guys and girls, I guess, too, if you want to get really technical about it!!" is that the second sentence goes out of its way to call attention to the Other-ness of the marginalized group. But why not circumvent the issue entirely and use a gender-neutral term like "folks", "everyone", or (depending on the formality of the occasion) "distinguished colleagues"? It perplexes me that people who have no trouble writing a compiler or debugging device drivers apparently find it so difficult to phrase a simple sentence in a way that doesn't exclude anyone.
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  I see your point but guys has come to become gender neutral. Sure a guy is still male but "you guys" is anyone.
  - tim_chevalier 17y ago
    On this point, I recommend Douglas Hofstadter's "Person Paper on Purity in Language": http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html Hofstadter makes the same point (that words that claim to be both gendered and gender-neutral are never the latter) in a less snarky way in Chapter 7 of his book _Metamagical Themas_, entitled "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness". You can find it on Google Books.

rw140 17y ago

You could try 'Hi, everyone'. I suspect it depends on who you have in your audience. Personally the special case irks me more than a general 'Hi chaps', or 'Hi guys'. It simultaneously singles me out and wastes my time. I wouldn't generalise too far off this list, though. It looks like an amalgam of things that annoy different ladies. I only picked out 5 of them that I agreed with.

enneff 17y ago

"Hey everyone!" "Hi!" "Good morning/afternoon/evening/day!" "Hello!" "Greetings!" etc... Although I say "Hi Guys!" sometimes when greeting my wife and daughter, so I don't really see what's so offensive about it.

tim_chevalier 17y ago

The second point was meant to be about inanimate software constructs: for example, "This guy jumps to that guy without pushing a new stack frame." The difference between "hi guys and girls" and "hi guys and girls, I guess, too, if you want to get really technical about it!!" is that the second sentence goes out of its way to call attention to the Other-ness of the marginalized group. But why not circumvent the issue entirely and use a gender-neutral term like "folks", "everyone", or (depending on the formality of the occasion) "distinguished colleagues"? It perplexes me that people who have no trouble writing a compiler or debugging device drivers apparently find it so difficult to phrase a simple sentence in a way that doesn't exclude anyone.

nopassrecover 17y ago
I see your point but guys has come to become gender neutral. Sure a guy is still male but "you guys" is anyone.
- tim_chevalier 17y ago
  On this point, I recommend Douglas Hofstadter's "Person Paper on Purity in Language": http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html Hofstadter makes the same point (that words that claim to be both gendered and gender-neutral are never the latter) in a less snarky way in Chapter 7 of his book _Metamagical Themas_, entitled "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness". You can find it on Google Books.