Comment by buuyytp
17 hours ago
No one decided it was offensive. Show me anyone saying they're offended by the use of "guys" as a gender neutral term.
People get lumped into "guys" and feel excluded. That's such a different bar than feeling offended.
It's ok for you to say, "I'm sorry my language makes you feel excluded, but I'm not going to change" and it's ok for someone to think less of you as a result.
Why does everyone jump to the idea that people who want more inclusive language are offended? Or that the critique being offered here is that the language is offensive?
(Granted, sometimes that is the critique. Plenty of casual racism or ableism is offensive. But that's not the case with "guys".)
This really feels like splitting hairs.
As a woman in this industry, being told that using “guys” to address mixed groups is non-inclusive/insufficiently considerate/worth thinking less of me for (just wow) is much worse than being addressed by “guys” when I’m in a mixed group.
Like… we have real problems with equality in tech, right?
Yes we have real problems, and this one isn't and it takes 1 minute to solve. "Okay thank you, will change it for next time".
Why spend even one minute "solving" a non-problem? What would even qualify as a solution to a non-problem? Or maybe it's a problem, just not a real problem, although if a problem is imaginary, surely the solution can be too.
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It takes less than that.
“I’m not going to do that. Moving on.”
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> Yes we have real problems, and this one isn't
Yes.
> solve
No that's not solving anything.
I'm glad for you it doesn't feel exclusive. Your experience is totally valid and also you are correct, there are structural issues at play that also need addressing.
Other folks, myself included, do feel excluded by "guys" as a gender neutral term. I'm not offended, but I do appreciate when people offer something else.
But to your later point, I don't think it's either/or. We can do both.
I think pursuing things like the eradication of an expression that is genuinely considered gender neutral by large swaths of people is the sort of thing that loses you goodwill for the big stuff.
I’m sorry that you find it exclusionary. What I find exclusionary is people telling me that it’s justifiable to think less of me for using that term, or comparing continuing to use the term to their grandmother who still uses the N word.
For what it’s worth I have stopped using “you guys” at work except for in “safe spaces” because I don’t want to deal with this sort of judgement. But I find the “it costs you nothing!” defense of word policing to be completely unconvincing.
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> Other folks, myself included, do feel excluded by "guys" as a gender neutral term.
You are reading into the words a message that was never intended, and that is on you, not the speaker.
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I feel this is pedantry. It's been used in good faith as a neutral term to address all, basically no different to using words others don't like such as moist.
If this level of pedantry can be considered acceptable, how on earth do these folks justify/cope with terminology used in "empowerment" initiatives who often use very non-inclusive wording more so than "guys".
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Eh, happened to me. Decades ago, before all this wave of preformativeness. To be fair, I _was_ addressing a small group of girls my age; at the time the gender of the people involved was simply not relevant to the topic and I didn't consider it at all.