I've referred to entirely-female groups of people as "you guys". It seemed like a better bet than "hey ladies", and I'm not southern enough to pull off "y'all".
I'm not southern either, I'm from Central Florida [0] and we use Y'all often. I believe in your ability to use Y'all too! Embrace Y'all :)
[0] There's a joke in Florida that the further north you go, the more south you are. The further south you go, the more north you are. It's 100% true too.
It is only once I hear y'all from woke people that I start to understand why people dislike so-called "cultural appropriation". It is cringey and weird-sounding to me. And also if you were to speak to these same people saying "y'all" in any southern accent you would be seen as uneducated.
referring to a group of females as "you guys" has been the best way to express non-sexism through the 2000s in my view. It's like brazenly saying, "I refuse to make anything of your gender, nor would I think your gender means I should hold a door for you, because again I'm not even thinking about the existence of gender." If we lose that usage, I'll be culturally lost and disoriented.
Y'all is usually positive, but can be negative "What on earth did y'all do now?!?", and "you lot" leans negative, but can be used positively "Alright you lot, lets get it done".
Tone of voice is extremely important in both examples.
And you’d be surprised at the number of people who (validly) don’t like this but won’t speak up about it. I know women in tech who tell me this exact behavior feels constantly degrading and makes them want to leave tech. There are alternatives in English other than y’all, such as “team” or “everyone” or “all”.
I've been wondering what would happen if the same political correctness ever came to Spanish. Every noun is gendered, usually according to whether it is associated with males or female roles.
The term doesn't even have a broadly accepted spanish pronunciation yet!
I think the term exemplifies the issues that occur when (especially white) "diversity professionals" are given institutional power to speak on behalf of racial groups they are not a part of.
I'm happy to refer to individuals who identify as latinx as such, but I think it is wildly presumptive and slightly offensive to assume this form should be preferred in general when the Latino community has not yet accepted it. Something about the academic/professional class in America defining the term for a diverse group of people spread over multiple continents rubs me as off-putting and ironically colonialist. (But I'm a white dude, so my opinion doesn't even matter and we should all happily use whatever term becomes accepted by the Latino community)
Latine seems to be gaining some steam as well, and makes a lot more sense: -e is the gender neutral suffix in spanish. However, it is still not broadly accepted (as can be seen in this comment section)
Latin would be ungendered, but it's been said for years by all sorts of people so it doesn't serve the cultural signalling purposes to show that you're enlightened. Gotta use that x to demonstrate your tribal allegiance.
Latin also doesn't imply "of south or central America" in the way latino/latina/latinx/latiné (which is the other approach that's gender neutral and easier to pronounce that I've seen) do. Latin implies, at least to me central European, old and vaguely Italian, as opposed to Latino.
You could also use "Latin American", which may also work, but historically Latino/a have been preferred, possibly since "Latino" is a lot easier to say than "Latinoamericano".
The question is, preferred by whom? Most Hispanic people use "Hispanic", and almost all of the remainder use "Latino". The other terms are fashion statements to show that the speaker keeps up with new intellectual trends, so they lose preference whenever they become too well known; you can date groups like fossil records by seeing whether their name uses "Latinx", "Latina/o", "Latin@", or "Latin".
I think phrasing it as 3% is a little misleading. Another way to view that same study is roughly 15% of Hispanics (and 21% of Hispanic women) who have heard the word have almost immediately adopted using it to describe themselves. That gives a slightly different picture on its adoption.
I did some quick searching and couldn't find parallels for adoption rates among other groups for new terminology. For example, the Black community has gone through several different self identifying nomenclature changes over the years. Were any of those changes immediately and universally accepted within a handful of years? My guess is probably not.
And what about the remainder that hear it and reject it? Are they not considered?
I'm Latino myself and I find that almost no one that actually speaks either Spanish or Portuguese (or another language commonly spoken in Latin America) as their first language adopts it. The few I've seen adopt it at those that are born and raised in the US and have relatively literal cultural connection to the country of their ancestors.
If Spanish or Portuguese are truly your native tongue, Latinx feels incredibly awkward. Personally, I'm uninterested in the opinions of those who aren't native speakers of one of these two languages when it comes to using the term Latinx or not.
>And what about the remainder that hear it and reject it? Are they not considered?
I don't know how you got that from my comment. I am not advocating for Latinx as the one and only descriptor. I am simply pointing out that it is being adopted quickly considering how recently it entered the lexicon.
>I'm Latino myself and I find that almost no one that actually speaks either Spanish or Portuguese (or another language commonly spoken in Latin America) as their first language adopts it. The few I've seen adopt it at those that are born and raised in the US and have relatively literal cultural connection to the country of their ancestors.
>If Spanish or Portuguese are truly your native tongue, Latinx feels incredibly awkward.
I can't deny your experience, but I will simply say the numbers from that survey do not agree with your conclusions. The percentage of people who adopt Latinx actually grows for people who use Spanish more. The rough adoption rates are 10% for English dominant speakers, 14% for bilingual speakers, and 29% for Spanish dominant speakers.
>Personally, I'm uninterested in the opinions of those who aren't native speakers of one of these two languages when it comes to using the term Latinx or not.
I don't think this type of gatekeeping is productive. It is meant to be a ethnic identity. Anyone of that identities as part of the group should have an equal input on the naming conventions. I'm not aware of any other ethnic group in the US that is defined by different names depending on their native language.
From a data science perspective, I'd argue that "a (sub)demographic exists where >50% of people who have heard of the term use it to self identify" could be a good indication of when society should interpret a term as "meaningfully prominent". It looks like there is no demographic which exceeds a 30% proportion of heard to using Latinx.
I wonder if the term reaches this proposed 50% threshold within the college-educated LGBT 18-29y/o Latino/x/e population.
A few Hispanic that were also LGBT started Latinx. LGBT Hispanic are not some hivemind borg and when people state "LGBT Hispanic people did X" it eliminates the agency of all the individuals who are both LGBT and Hispanic.
In Spanish? I’m having a hard time imagining how a word in Spanish would sound with an “X” at the end. “Latine” seems easily pronounceable but I’m not sure what the point of adding the “e” is. It’s not like that vowel signals gender neutrality in any consistent manner in Romance languages.
Spanish speaker here. X after N is basically non existing in Spanish. Most people who don't speak other languages will struggle pronouncing that. Spanish speaking woke-alikes use "e" or "@", or unnecessarily repeat the words in both genders.
Also in Latin(American) includes Portuguese and French speakers. Limit it to Spanish language/culture/heritage would be Hispanicx, which is also nonsensical, especially because I just made it up.
But I'm just a person who speaks Spanish, French and Portuguese, so take my word with a grain of salt.
Latinx is pronounced the same in English and Spanish. It being unusual for Spanish is why Latine is more popular in countries with less English influence.
Nothing signals gender neutrality. That's why people made something up. e is a simple replacement for a and o and sounds more natural than i or u.
Way more Latino Democrats watch Fox News than listen to NPR: https://images.app.goo.gl/kpSgBJpsvVGTqPNC6. I suspect the third of Latinos who voted for Trump listen to NPR at even lower rates.
The point is that typical Latino people aren’t in the NYT’s and NPR’s target audience. That’s why those outlets use terms like “Latinx” that polling shows are unfamiliar to most Latinos. (I’m using the example of Fox News just as the banana for scale, so to speak. If you have a preconceived view that people of color who watch Fox News are relatively rare, ones who read the New York Times are rarer still by a large margin: https://images.app.goo.gl/vgyXCnAoS8TdPYU3A)
I had the opportunity to ask a very social-justice-minded friend of mine how custom pronouns and genders could possibly work in Arabic, which has many deeply integrated rules on gender modification of words. Adjectives, verbs, and pronouns all change depending on the gender of the object. Her response was that the language must be changed to suit the preferences of people with nonstandard genders.
It really feels sometimes that this is a sort of soft English imperialism, forcing other languages to the margins by making their use "impolite" to the global audience.
I find it hilarious (and sad) that I'm being downvoted because women have told me that they don't like being referred to as a guy when they're not one, and its one of the many ways that the 'default male' attributes of tech take a toll on them.
Another personal anecdote, but not only do I consider "guys" gender neutral, but I found it kind of alienating when a few people clearly stopped saying "guys" shortly after I joined the team. I was the only woman on the team that summer (internship), and I think they were just trying to be nice, but I don't like when attention is called to gender in the workplace. The more (actively) aware I am of being "different", the more it impacts interactions.
I don't doubt that some people think the way you're describing, but it just seems to me that complaining about gender-inclusive "guys" is the exact mirror of complaining about AAVE. It's extraordinarily exclusive to say that you can't be comfortable unless everyone talks the same way you do.
Not at all -- you're using a very specific word to refer to someone that they could consider inaccurate. If in AAVL there's some word that would refer to me as a woman or straight or a diff identity than I have, I wouldn't like that very much.
The problem is that "you guys" simply does not contain an assumption of anyone's identity in my dialect. Both women and men in my circles use it freely regardless of the group's gender balance. So when I hear someone say that "you guys" doesn't respect their identity, it sounds to me like saying "y'all" or "everyone" doesn't respect their identity - it's hard to wrap my mind around what such a claim could mean.
I don't know that I've ever heard someone say "guys and gals" outside of TV.
It's easy for me to understand that some people use "guys" in a gendered way, but I don't see what that has to do with people like me who don't. The argument seems to be that their dialect is "normal" and everyone else has to learn to speak like them, which sounds terribly exclusionary.
I'm pretty confident they would not. I've often asked for such courtesy with regards to terms like "male privilege", and the most courteous responses I've ever gotten are attempts to educate me on why the term is not meant to be offensive, much like the response I've offered here. (The most common responses are along the lines that my discomfort is the whole point of using the term, so I'm sure you can see why it's hard to believe there's any symmetry here.)
How does the definition of male privilege differ in your respective dialects? What is your dialect's inoffensive term for what they mean by male privilege? Or is it the concept that offends you?
I have no objection to claims like "Men have gender-based advantages in many things" or "Women face many problems which are hard to understand when not experienced daily". The problem with the term "male privilege" is that it comes across to many people (including me) as a sort of attack - it seems to suggest men should feel embarrassed or ashamed about their gender. (And this isn't just some crazy scenario I made up - I've heard mainstream figures say they're embarassed to be men as many words.)
What I dislike about things like male privilege is it points the spotlight away from women and ways they are unfairly treated to men.
To me it feels likeanti-colonialist rhetoric perversely applied to gender relations. When you comment on colonialism it makes sense, I'm using a f'ton of resources from say Africa that saps that live there aren't allowed to. But for gender relations, it's not a zero sum game.
I don't feel like I've ever satisfactorily understood why it feeling degrading to them is of greater weight than the degrading feeling of being told that your natural pattern of speech is forbidden.
leave tech because of a gender neutral saying and no ill intent whatsoever?
that's ridiculous, honestly. it's just an example of how people can always find a reason to play the victim. you don't have to play along and reinforce victim mentality.
But "guys" is not the plural of "guy" in many regional dialects of US English. It is specifically gender neutral, and used by women to speak to a group of women -- e.g. a girls' soccer coach saying to her team, "Let's go guys!"
Can you expand on why y’all makes them feel degraded? Y’all is often used to convey a feeling of warmth towards the addressee or express familiarity, which seems the opposite of degrading.
I'm not saying y'all does, I'm saying 'hey guys' does when they're, in fact, not a guy. Or a least for some. I also know women who aren't offended by it and we've had explicit discussions surrounding it. But being more thoughtful doesn't seem to hurt anyone when there are more inclusive terms you can use.
I can tell you as a gay man I appreciate when people ask about my partner (gender neutral) versus default to wife. Am I offended by it? Not really, it's right 90% of the time. But it's nice that people are considerate of other options when they don't know themselves. And you don't know that I'm gay by looking at me. Many women you do know they're not a man, so you would already know that you're using the male pronoun as default for all people when you could be more contextual to the situation (and avoid pulling the entire history of male-dominated societies and language with it).
The problem I have with the word "partner" is that it is ambiguous -- it could mean life partner, sexual partner, or business partner. Honestly I wish there were another commonly accepted word I could use to avoid the ambiguity. "Spouse" comes close (if the couple is married) but there isn't a in well-accepted gender-neutral term for the other member in an unmarried pair. "SO" (significant other) comes close, but often I have to explain what that means, so I can't consider it well-accepted. And people seem to associate "partner" with sex, so if the couple is remaining chaste until marriage, using "partner" can be offensive. Sigh - English is hard.
"Partner" is a mostly term used with gays. straights many feel strange to apply this term to husband, also wife. Can someone not simply ask about "spouse"? There previously exists term without gender for such persons.
"Spouse" implies marriage. "Significant Other" is a common safe bet, but is a bit too much of a mouthful IMO.
I've seen "partner" being used in reference to hetero relationships more frequently in the last decade, and think that's probably a good development. "Boyfriend" and "Girlfriend" sounds a bit infantilizing to me when used in reference to adults.
My wife and I still call each other boyfriend/girlfriend, but we are old fashioned. We like it because we are an dating (each other), even though we are married.
One argument in favor of using partner is that boyfriend/girlfriend is ambiguous. My wife often refers to her close female friends as "my girlfriend", even though they are clearly not dating each other. It occasionally causes some confusion with people a generation older than us who aren't familiar with that usage.
Partner/spouse/significant other... doesn't make a difference which one to me. I just picked that one at random. The fact that people create space for me not to have a wife is what I appreciate.
So as a married man, I use partner: it fits with my understanding of marriage, we’re partners, we both have a hand in managing a household. It feels good to say.
The correct form is "folx". Spelling words with an "x" is more inclusive toward marginalized groups, particularly LGBTQIA+, despite there not being an "x" in there. See also womxn, Latinx, etc.
Twitch received quite a lot of backlash two days ago for using the term womxn. The sentiment was that it isn't inclusive and is instead transphobic, because it separates trans/non-binary women from other women.
There are plenty of other alternatives (folk, team, mates, friends, pals) - please realize there are a lot of women who are bothered by it and don't feel they can speak up about it.
You really are pushing the idea that all conversations should be altered so that no one is offended, for any reason however silly, ever. Because if they say it's offensive and attributes it to their identity, one cannot argue back.
why is it so hard to respect what people want to be called and referred to as? It's no different than someone with the name William wants to be referred to as Will, but you stubbornly keep referring to them as William because its their legal name and i can damnit!!!! Just acknowledge it and move on with your life.
When I was a kid, I couldn't pronounce R's and used to be teased endlessly. Should I demand words with r be banished because they made me uncomfortable? I didn't even know that was an option.
I'm not sure this is the hill I want to die on, but where is the line? How few or many people have to feel a certain way to effect change?
i'm not sure how this is the same as asking "please call me x", "please refer to me as his/her/them" compared to "i'm not going to say your name because i can't pronounce it" ?
This is under a thread of using "guys", which is what i'm specifically referring to, nothing else. Its common use, and dictionary definition even, is a nonderogatory nongendered word. So I personally feel taking it as gendered or as disrespect is disregarding the meaning of the word, and asking me to accept whatever yours is. Just as me asking nobody to use r words is asking the world to comply with my preferences.
I'm not going to argue right vs wrong or with you directly, I'm just explaining my comment and thought process.
It's the same argument thou - when you refer to a person/group of people you imply a lot about them with the word you use, men/children/kids/elders/americans/whites/ect - guys is no different to a lot of people as its so easily taken as gendered, and if said people don't want to be referred to by guys why not use a different one?
and fwiw the first definition for guys/guy in most dictionaries is "a man".
Because it is exhausting, and constant, and I believe rife with the chance at abuse in bad faith by those who want to feel constantly relevant and woke by redefining the lexicon.
your comment comes off as very condescending - you could have left out everything after "bad faith" and made a better argument - ever think how exhausting it is for people on the other side day in and out? and your complaining about having to not say a couple words? it's literally the least you can do and one step removed from doing nothing.
The name William has no commonly accepted or used meaning apart from as an identifier. I have no problem calling anyone by whatever identifier they choose, so long as they aren't asking me to apply an incorrect definition to that word.
The OED defines "guys" as a word used to refer to a group of people (male, female, or mixed). So if you ask me to not use a word because you refuse to accept its definition, that's very different to asking me to not use a word that is purely an identifier.
The first definition of "guy" in most dictionaries is "A Man", including the oxford english dictionary so while common use is that guys is genderless consider maybe it's not as clear cut and dry as you would like? And there is a reason why it's becoming an issue (the women and non binary folk who don't like it finally feel like they can speak out against it?)
And if you do a dictionary search for "You Guys" you get:
"used in speech and informal writing to refer to or address two or more people"[1]
which seems to imply that it is a gender neutral phrase, despite what the definition for "guys" is. Words can have wildly different definitions depending on the context in which they are used.
I can't say I agree with your reasoning of why some people think this type of thing is an issue. Also, your screenshot—I’ll assume unintentionally—has the plural definition hidden.
I'd really encourage you to take a step back here and think about how you'd react if it was your speech being policed. Imagine someone sent you an email declaring that the words "pop" and "soda" are exclusionary to Southerners, and from now on you need to refer to carbonated soft drinks only as "coke". It's an easy one-word substitution - would you do it?
What makes you think their speech isn’t policed as well? Is your victimhood that ingrained that you believe the other side doesn’t play by the rules, they’re only out to get you?
I assure you the “woke left” polices their own —- it’s a constant source of tension between unity of political power and unity of beliefs.
I'm sure the groups you're calling the "woke left" have intramural disputes about what's right to say. But I'm also quite confident that they have no general interest in making people comfortable. Indeed, most argue that people who don't think like them should be uncomfortable, because that discomfort will help enact social changes they'd like to see.
> because that discomfort will help enact social changes they'd like to see.
Yes, and they completely miss the fact that when other people make them feel uncomfortable, they don't respond by falling in line with the majority way of thinking, but instead react by becoming more radical or even violent.
I don't dispute the logic of people wanting to change an unjust status quo, I'm just trying to see the bigger picture, that the side supporting the status quo is worried that certain changes would cause society to degrade or become unstable.
There probably are cases where making people feel uncomfortable does lead to them changing their minds and accepting the position of the person making them uncomfortable, but I think the assumption should be that supporters of the status quo will just become more entrenched if they see people trying to make them uncomfortable, just as those working against injustice can become more committed to their cause when they face opposition.
I would prefer to identify as male. I don't want to be trans, I don't want to be cis. I just want to be a male, and _ANYONE_ who wants to join me is welcome.
trans- is a prefix that means on the “opposite side of.” And so that’s where transgender came from. But then people wanted a term for people who aren’t trans and “not transgender” is awkward. So people looked and found that cis- is a prefix that means “on the same side of” and just went with that. Kinda clever honestly.
I am agreeing with you in this problem. I have a large dislike for this term. The gays pick so many words on how to say about them. And we then get word placed on us. Also word that I heard only in derogatory contexts as to this day.
Even if I loved the company, this would probably be a tipping point of some kind. Hypothetically, if I didn't quit in a comparable situation, I'd gradually resent the company to the point where I'd become sufficiently unproductive enough to be fired. How are you thinking about it?
Yikes. It's a bold move to compare a colloquial casual term to literally the most foul term in American history.
It's absolutely a matter of principle, which I don't think is a surprise to you. I find that it's common to conflate refusal to oblige what amounts to policing my ability to communicate, with refusal to oblige someone's request to be addressed a certain way. One is just a matter of retaining my right to decide for myself how I communicate, but I've never had the right to say anything I want and have it not be capable of being interpreted as rude.
The thing is, you don't get to decide objectively what is wrong and right, or what I find difficult to fluently introduce into my vocabulary. A business kind of does, in so much as they can keep employees, but generally we've accepted a high bar for that, largely relying on subjectivity rather than them deciding to legislate bad words for adults.
You can't just decide that a term is objectively sexist or a personal attack, and "I really doubt" arguments aren't convincing, evidenced in part by you already implying it's anti-woman.
edit: I'd add that I'm not particularly attached to specific phrases like this, it all depends on circumstances and context, and a matter of what would make me start thinking about a change. Generally, I do think about how I'd address a group of people, because some opt not to use this or that, and it's best to find that comfortable common ground, and if you're speaking with customers I could probably more easily grasp a business wanting to pick the safest option, especially if it's likely to make it's way onto Twitter when my barista commits a faux-pas. If I worked at Reddit when they implemented their new policies for example, I'd probably start looking elsewhere. Pick your battles, and not every fight is worth your job. But if my company decides for me that this isn't an interpersonal issue, and I don't get to make these choices for myself, but that it's by definition hate speech, then maybe I'll go work on a farm or whatever you'd have me do. One that butches animals for mass human consumption; I hope that's ok ;)
In a thread full of bad takes you are right at the top. Comparing someone throwing out a completely friendly "hey guys" to a group that has both males and females is no where close to the same fucking galaxy as using a racial slur.
If it’s not that hard as you say, then it’s not that hard to accept that these are just sounds coming out of a bag of flesh trying to get your attention, instead of inconveniencing the entire world of English speakers to keep a fragile ego and identity placated.
This feels pretty extreme. I was raised in the Midwest where everyone calls everyone 'guys.' Even if I could successfully stop saying it...why? It's very obviously meant with no ill intention.
The modern far left understanding is that intention doesn't matter one whit. Only outcome does. And if the outcome is that someone was offended, the only valid reason is that you are a bad person and should be made to feel bad -- ideally, as publicly as possible. Of course, this is only true if the offended party falls into one of a number of sanctioned buckets.
One of my favorite quotes, because it was so eye opening to me, was along the lines of "we judge ourselves by our intentions, but others by their actions."
I realized how true and unfair that is, and tried since to understand intentions before making judgment.
Frankly, anyone who tells me that is wrong will never convince me. Maybe I don't fit in this world anymore.
It's the purest of narcissism. When you say "intent doesn't matter", what you're actually saying is "you don't matter. The only thing that matters is how I feel about it". It's a manipulative trick used to invalidate everyone's feelings except your own. I'd expect it from a child, and it astonishes me that grown adults can't see through it.
I came to the US at 20 and was surprised girls used guys to refer to other a group of girls. I stored it like that and sparingly used it and nobody ever got visibly offended but now I can’t be certain. Now i have to erase it from my informal repertoire lest I offend someone or even worse get sued or something. As I i got older I find it hard to change these autopilot things. Again, I am not wishing to degrade anyone but am afraid someone will punish me for it. There are other examples that I could probably have a hard time unlearning as well and this only gives me more anxiety everytime I open my mouth in public. Im lucky Im somewhat a goofy person and blunders are forgiven easier but in these times one never know. Some anxiety is unavoidable these times and frankly I think this is a force that will drive groups of people apart
I've been trying to stop saying "you guys" to refer to groups of people because while I don't mean any harm, it's really not a big deal to prevent some potential discomfort to someone.
I think it's really hard to understand gender dysphoria if you haven't been through it. I haven't, but if I can prevent reminding them that some people don't see them as the gender they see themselves, I should make the small effort.
Having one of my direct reports mention that they are trans and that using "guys" to refer to the team made them feel left out was really all it took... you have to take people at their word at some level and "consider alternatives to 'guys'" is a pretty minor ask.
I've heard people say it's racist for white people to say "y'all" too, since black people say "y'all" therefore it's cultural appropriation.
Nevermind that "y'all" is common among white Southerners (where do you think African Americans picked it up from?). Why let facts get in the way of your attempts to control people?
Lot a job over it. Did everything I could to be polite, but was not going to use weird terms. Never mind they were biggest bunch of bigots I’ve ever seen.
Most here seem to disagree with you, and rigidly believe that "you guys" should be the way to address girls. They're not willing to be flexible and accommodating of "others".
Being from the UK (living in the US now), I've never used the term 'hey guys', with my English accent it would sound like I'm being a fake or trying to hard to be hip.
Likewise, there's not a chance in hell I can pull off "hey y'all", well maybe if I was wearing a cowboy hat... :)
In any case, I use "Hey peeps..." (peeps -> people), which doesn't offend people (afaik).
Really? I'm from the UK and I find "hey guys" and "you guys" to be quite common there. Maybe it's a generational thing - I'm sure it's something we picked up from the U.S..
The idea that it's sexist or problematic to address a mixed group as "guys" doesn't quite seem to have crossed the Atlantic yet, but I'm sure it's coming. The U.K. is never too far behind American cultural trends, especially the insane ones.
That's the beauty of language. We can choose our phrases and words, influenced by the people of our geography. You are free to choose peeps, and I am free to choose guys, until there are laws against it (coming soon, I'm sure).
Someone can also choose to be offended or not. Apparently this has been forgotten in modern times.
Well, we’re not allowed to use “hey guys” anymore or anything which refers to the gender of someone in whole or individually. So..to keep my job: “Good Evening, Colleagues!”
ya'll, folks, people, team, everyone, friends, pals, peeps, chums, gang, squad, crew, mates, peers - i mean c'mon, there are just so many non-gendered ones out there to pick from (and inb4 "but guys is not gendered!!" - how do you explain the phrase "guys and gals" then?)
"guys and gals" explain in way same as "cow" refer in technical for woman bovine but in usual term to any bovine. Either woman or man bovine is "cow" in group. Unless archaic "kine" I have not ever heard used in speech. Also "duck" is refer for man and both woman water fowl. Drake correct word for man in the species.
USA in itself has many microcosms of culture, it's not one homogeneous clump. The fact that your company is USA based offers no indication of the cultural backgrounds of people working there.
You can try to homogenize language and culture to suit your own sensibilities. Since I view "guy" as a gendered term, then that's clearly the only acceptable definition and interpretation of the term. Other people's usage is obviously problematic and I want to compel them to change their language to meet my requirements and sense of acceptable terminology.
Alternatively you can embrace the fact that people's language is their own and acknowledge that the person's intent here does indeed matter. You don't need to adapt the same language that they use, but you could be mindful that people speak differently than you and that your discomfort with terminology is sometimes maligned.
Yeah it’s region dependent. In the Midwest it’s super gender neutral to the point where people will “hey guys” or “hey man” to refer to women. Really really jarring.
So a because a term in one language doesn't have one to one translation with the exact same connotations in another we have to make up a new term? Seems more like a this would simply make the case for folks to become a loan word rather than creating a new term altogether. there are many words in other languages that don't have a direct translation to a English term we don't make up a new word in those cases.
> Of concern with the term “folks,” for example, is that its translation in some languages is gendered, such as “la gente” in Spanish, which is gendered feminine (see also, phallogocentrism, Derrdiean, and deconstruction).
I'm guessing it's because that explanation still makes no sense at all. Of course "la gente" has a gender - it's a noun in a language where every noun has a grammatical gender. Any noun that you would translate into in Spanish would have a gender after being translated. This is something someone would learn about in the first day of class for any language with grammatical gender...
Also, it's ridiculous to imply that the English language, which already lacks grammatical gender, needs to modified so that a translator working with gendered language knows that a noun lacks gender. It's English - they already know that! Besides, the translators choose which word to use when translating anyhow. There's not like there's a strict 1-1 mapping of "folks" to "la gente". In some contexts, you would translate it differently.
It's just such an absurd claim, and it doesn't pass the sniff test at all.
> “folks” can’t be gender-neutrally translated in some languages (e.g. spanish) so folx is considered more inclusive
That makes sense to you? Help me out here, because I feel like I'm going crazy trying to understand this.
"Folk", is just an English word for "people". Isn't it just going to get translated into a totally different word in Spanish anyhow? Why would altering the plural spelling of an English word affect the translation of that word to another language? The meaning wasn't altered by changing spelling. It was gender-neutral to begin with.
This is why so many people just can't take this stuff anymore. It never ends. Someone is always going to be offended. That's the world we live in. I know of people who are offended by my mere existence. Shall I submit to their preferences as well? :)
Probably women feeling excluded by the use of the inherently gendered term "guys" and the refusal of men to stop using it/brushing off their concerns/not feeling comfortable bringing it up.
I don't know where you're from but where I live "guys" is a completely neutral term for any group of humans. My wife used it today on a call to three other females.
It’s really region dependent. But since “girls” definitely isn’t gender neutral to you all you have to do is reverse it to understand the potential awkwardness.
Imagine you took a job somewhere where in their region your field was overwhelmingly female dominated and “hey girls” was considered gender neutral. And you already felt pretty excluded being the only guy on the team and one of less than 10 guys in the whole company. And they’re not purposely excluding you but they didn’t even think that having outside of work team bonding of getting mani-pedis might be uncomfortable for you. Or the fact that all their reaction gifs and references in Slack are of girly shows you’re never seen. And so the fact that at every Zoom call, every company wide meeting it’s “hey girls” just reminds you of how excluded you already feel. So you being it up and ask them to maybe use a different phrase that is a little more gender neutral to you and they brush you off, say that “girls” IS gender neutral and that it’s not their problem.
I don't need to reverse it to imagine it - I'm a woman who has worked on teams that were otherwise all men, and I've never once felt excluded by a "hey guys", or even "hey dudes".
You know what does feel super awkward though? When someone says "hey guys" in the chat, and then immediately trips over themselves to "correct" themselves, because they're afraid they've hurt my feelings or that they will be called out for uttering "wrongspeak". It's absurd to assign ill-intent to someone for simply using a slightly different dialect of American English than yourself. I'm from the south, so I say "y'all", and nobody gives me a hard time over it.
Also - who cares if your coworkers have different tastes in things than you do? You're not at work to talk about TV shows or trade gifs. The whole "you should bond with your coworkers like they're your friends" thing is a toxic myth that companies promote for purely selfish reasons.
I’m in the same boat being form the Midwest so I just think it’s funny at this point — “good morning guys… uhh and lady.” But I empathize with my out of town coworkers for whom it’s really jarring so I picked up folks or peeps. I’ve never thought anyone using guys was being malicious just that some people feel more included with a different word. Like it was basically no effort for me to switch and made someone else feel just a little bit better I hope.
And It doesn’t really bother me that I don’t have many boyish interests and so my entirely male rest of my team don’t talk to me very much about TV and movies or their hobbies but I still make an effort to be their friends because like we’re a small team and spend all day together. Being friends with my coworkers is honestly good for my mental health, the company be damned.
If "girls" was defined in the dictionary as "a group of people", then no, I wouldn't care, not in the slightest. I wouldn't try to convince others that the dictionary was wrong, or that some definition I subscribe to is somehow more accurate.
The team I'm currently working with are exclusively of Indian heritage, I'm white. They often talk about Bollywood films, what they did for Diwali, etc. Should this make me feel awkward or excluded?
I don't really care if the company I work for is overwhelmingly anything. I usually manage to find some common ground with any person on an individual level. I don't really consider what the identify as, or what social grouping they've been deemed to belong to, as having any significance.
Wait until smiling or even looking at someone will be deemed offensive if you don’t do it the only right way. Cameras will be everywhere and and wrong look will be penalized harshly
And yet it keeps coming up at the american based global company i work at as a term many women do not like or consider gender neutral, consider maybe that there are people outside your limited social circle who view it differently and in large companies spanning the globe they need to take into account other cultures and people who are not in america?
