I concur on both counts. I had a small team under my supervision. Two females, one male. I asked the group- do you mind if I call you “guys” and they all said they didnt mind.
But I dont think I would refer to just females are guys.
I often use “folks”.
Words change- how about “Wife”? " 1. ARCHAIC•SCOTTISH- a woman, especially an old or uneducated one."
Is “Ladies” okay? But most of us are not nobility.
This WaPo article says guys is gender neutral.
I’m sure all women are comfortable mentioning something like this to their male superior. It’s not like there’s any history of women being held back because they were “difficult” or the complaining type, right?
I work with a woman (a senior executive at the ad agency) who uses “friends” a lot to address a group. Sometimes I think it works, sometimes I think it feels a little presumptuous.
But, then, when I see it used like that, I am reminded of a series of fantasy novels (the “Elenium” trilogy by David Eddings), in which the main character, a knight named Sparhawk, always addresses strangers as “neighbor.” Someone asks Sparhawk, “why do you refer to people as ‘neighbor,’ and not, say, ‘friend?’” “Because I don’t know them well enough yet to know if they’ll be friends.”
So what is the solution? Grin and bear it? Guy is now gender neutral , and that is the way language works.
“Nice’ used to mean “stupid”. Then " scrupulous” then “subtle” (which it still can, sometimes) . Now it means " agreeable; satisfactory." So if the male boss tells the female worker she did a "nice’ job, is it okay for her to think he meant “stupid”?
Language changes.
I knew a woman who hated to be called “black”- she said “I am a lovely shade of mocha, I am not black”. Okay, I get that. But until she said something how would we know?
I mean, you could read this thread and realize that some people have a problem with it, even if they don’t say so, and make adjustments to take that into account.
Heck, even that word doesn’t have a universal meaning among native English speakers.
A few years ago, my Irish friend (who has lived in America for 30 years) asked me to take a look at a web site she was developing, and give me my opinion. One of the things I said about it was “it’s nice,” meaning “it works well, it looks good, etc.”
She was crestfallen; she explained to me that in Ireland, “nice” means “minimally acceptable,” and it’s a word that gets used by people who don’t particularly like something, but are trying to be polite.
I said I started using it in elementary school, as did all of us. As did other women here. None of us had any notion it referred only to males. Don’t presume to make our experience fit your scenario.
b
: person
—used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex - SOURCE
It is definitionally proper usage. Word meanings change over time, this is not a new thing and the people who make dictionaries do not care about political correctness. The definitions will change.
That said, if I was meeting @Johanna in person and I knew this was an issue I would make an effort to not use that word in that way. I would also hope there was no anger towards someone using that word if they didn’t know it was an issue until told that it was.
Vernacular is vernacular. When special little snowflakes have problems with it, then it’s fine just to ignore them in general, although we might cater to them individually.
When there are obvious problems, we should stop ourselves: this is “guys” and not the n-word. I don’t even want to use the n-word as an example, but we all know what the n-word is. It’s not even vernacular today.
Are we suggesting that “guys” is going to be equally reprehensible in 20 years’ time?
I’m offended by lots of words.
The curse words flying around everywhere you go is very off-putting.
I heard a woman say to a man at the pay window at the gas station tell the man “Get the fuck out of my window!”
It never occured to her that hollering fuck in public was not good. Especially as she was at her job.
I hear awful fusses between men and women at grocery stores or the clinic.
Sometimes it seems misogynistic.
I hear black men calling each other the “N” word with a string of nasty words after.
Do you think I would say to any of them “Umm, that word offends me?”
Nope.
Guys doesn’t bother me. Heck I call my male cats, girls, sometimes.
I grew up with a female cat, so I default to cats are female, dogs are male. Silly, I know.
I’m gonna try removing it from my mouth. Because, I believe you if it bothers you.