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I'm not sure I agree in this case. The Oxford English Dictionary gives ones of the definitions of guy as 'people of either sex' [0]. There's value in defending

I'm not sure I agree in this case. The Oxford English Dictionary gives ones of the definitions of guy as 'people of either sex' [0]. There's value in defending this meaning, and not running away from it because it could be misinterpreted. This is similar to how geeks like to defend the positive definition of 'hacker', rather than avoiding it. To be clear: I'm not trying to minimize the feelings of women or other marginalized communities. Rather, I'm just saying that one way to respond is to aggressively 'colonize' words so that a positive meaning becomes the dominant meaning. [0] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/guy http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/guy

vacri 13y ago
I agree with you on the usually dual-gender definition, though it's not always seen that way. I'm saying that it scans oddly to highlight a term and justify it, rather than alter it. If you think your terminology is going to cause problems, then rephrase yourself, don't justify keeping it as is. I didn't really mean for my criticism to end up talking about further gender issues - it's really meant to be a comment on better communication. I was reading the submission about topic A, then hit a parenthetical remark that is justifying an orthogonal topic B, then back to topic A again. It doesn't scan well.
- panacea 13y ago
  What do you mean by 'it doesn't scan well'?
  - vacri 13y ago
    The flow of the paragraph isn't fluid. One concept doesn't flow into the next concept and/or it reads awkwardly.
britta 13y ago
The meaning of "guys" (as "men" or "people of either sex") depends a lot on its context and a lot on the person reading the words - here's a survey with some examples: http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/27/guys-guys-guys/ http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/27/guys-guys-guys/ (But a moderation note probably isn't a great place to try to shift interpretations of words.)

vacri 13y ago

I agree with you on the usually dual-gender definition, though it's not always seen that way. I'm saying that it scans oddly to highlight a term and justify it, rather than alter it. If you think your terminology is going to cause problems, then rephrase yourself, don't justify keeping it as is. I didn't really mean for my criticism to end up talking about further gender issues - it's really meant to be a comment on better communication. I was reading the submission about topic A, then hit a parenthetical remark that is justifying an orthogonal topic B, then back to topic A again. It doesn't scan well.

panacea 13y ago
What do you mean by 'it doesn't scan well'?
- vacri 13y ago
  The flow of the paragraph isn't fluid. One concept doesn't flow into the next concept and/or it reads awkwardly.

britta 13y ago

The meaning of "guys" (as "men" or "people of either sex") depends a lot on its context and a lot on the person reading the words - here's a survey with some examples: http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/27/guys-guys-guys/ http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/27/guys-guys-guys/ (But a moderation note probably isn't a great place to try to shift interpretations of words.)