3 ms·

With the evidence being a survey done via Twitter.

• mpweiher 11y ago
  With the evidence being: (a) The same survey cited incorrectly by the person I was responding to as evidence that the usage was not OK and should be exterminated. (b) Webster's dictionary (c) http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11816/is-guy-gender-neutral http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11816/is-guy-gend... (d) http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2012/10/slang http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2012/10/slang (e) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.usage.english/ypCnmLdtiek https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.usage.english/yp... (f) http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/guy http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english... (g) my personal experience as a language user and linguistics student In all, if you want to avoid "guys" as an address, do so because it is too colloquial, which it might be, not because it is gendered, it isn't. And as I wrote in my article: be prepared to be courteous to your audience. If there are people there who will take offense, you may choose something different. But it's not you, it's not the word, it's them. Anyway: what is the evidence that it is not OK? Because it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the person wanting to prohibit/ban something, not on the person saying "do whatever you want, it's fine".