gender-neutral second-person plurals

[firecat]

I left this datapoint in selki's journal. (She said that the word "guy" isn't "some sort of modern gender-neutral salutation". Let me be clear that I completely respect this viewpoint.)

"Guys" or "you guys" has a completely gender-neutral connotation to me...but only when used as a second-person plural pronoun, the same way people use "y'all" or "youse". It feels wrong to me to address or label a woman or girl as a "guy" or to say "Those guys over there" when referring to a mixed group or a group of women/girls. But I'll comfortably say "OK, you guys..." even to a group of all women.

This isn't modern; I've been doing it my whole life and I'm over 50. I grew up in Michigan; I wonder if this is a regional usage.

In contrast, "dude," "men," "mankind," and "he/him" have a male-only connotation to me, although I can hear other people use "dude" in a gender-neutral manner. (I can't do that with the other words.)

Thoughts? Datapoints?

I also use "y'all," "youse" (but they don't feel like "my language"; they feel like I'm stealing them from other people's language), "peeps," and "folks." ("Peeps" feels modern to me, and "folks" feels old-fashioned.)

Comments

[amethystfirefly]

We're about the same way. We use "dude" in a gender-neutral manner but that's because we grew up in California. -laughs- I've gotten used to using "y'all" a lot since I moved down here and I imagine that it'll only get worse when I move further south in a month or two. "Youse" is a big Upper Peninsula thing, though I know it's used elsewhere in the US. (I want to say it's like a NYC thing. Maybe New England, too?)

[lilacsigil]

Youse is Australian, too.

[ironed_orchid]

I discovered that youse is Irish in origin, and that probably explains why Australia and various parts of the US have it.

[zillah975]

Hmm.

I use "y'all", but being Southern born and bred, it's natural to me. :) I use "guys" as largely gender neutral, but only use it when for whatever reason "y'all" doesn't work. And in the example above, instead of "those guys over there," I would probably say "those ones over there," though upon reflection I have no idea why, or "those folks over there."

"Dude," however, for me is used largely as an exclamation and is entirely gender-neutral -- "Dude! You totally just stole my drink!" or "Dude, don't buy that! I've got one I'll give you!"

(Only tangentially related, "buddy," "babe," and "sweetie" are also gender neutral for me, which I only really noticed when one of my male WoW guildies expressed some surprise at being called "sweetie". :)

And I accept "mankind" as typically intended to be gender neutral and it only makes me cringe a little bit, but I prefer "humankind."

I only use "peeps" with a small handful of close friends, 'cause it feels like stealing language the same way that it sounds like "y'all" feels to you.

[firecat]

Whose language does it feel like you're stealing when you use "peeps"?

[zillah975]

I'm honestly not sure. Folks a lot younger than me, I think? I just know it doesn't feel like mine.

[elainegrey]

I, too, am southern born and bread and "folks" feels quite comfortable to me: i use it often (and with multiple meanings). There's "my folks" which refer to my parents as well as the general "those folks over there." Y'all is also quite comfortable to me as second person plural.

"Peeps" definitely feels like it belongs to younger folks and to a sort of playful hip persona someone would put on, not to their natural state.

[firecat]

"Sweetie" is gender neutral for me; I use it to refer to my romantic partners, who are of various genders. "Buddy" connotes male to me. I think of "babe" as referring to a woman unless it's a form of address between people in a romantic relationship, in which case it can refer to any gender.

[johnpalmer]

Ah, yes - I knew there was a reason I thought of "dude" in the exclamatory sense :-). But I also use it to refer to a person, and when I do, it's always a guy.

[jinian]

I grew up comfortable with that (Pacific Northwest), but now I know too many people who are bothered by it to feel happy with any of my options.

[owlmoose]

I use "guys" and "you guys" much as you do. I also am in the habit of using "dude" as gender neutral, but it's a habit I'm trying to break -- although I can hear it as gender neutral when other people do it. Like you, I can't hear "mankind", "he", or "man" as gender neutral at all. There was a Mozilla billboard on Highway 101 for awhile that bore the motto "don't work for The Man, work for mankind", and it was like nails on a chalkboard every time I saw it. I'm okay with "working for The Man" as a phrase, but they couldn't have said "humanity"?

[jae]

I used to use 'you guys', exclusively. Now I sometimes say that, and sometimes say 'you folks' or 'you people'.

The reason why I switched doesn't have anything to do with gender awareness, though, but the way the pronoun 'you guys' sounds particularly American to me, and that doesn't always match with the way I feel and am trying to portray myself.

-J

[firecat]

Interesting -- at least one person on LJ who said he uses "you guys" is Canadian. (That doesn't mean your perception has to match, of course.)

[jae]

In that case, it might be an east-west thing rather than a north-south thing. Both affect the language difference between my "there" and my "here", though.

-J

[sonia]

I used "you guys" as a gender neutral expression without any awareness that it might be problematic until I was chastised for it one day at Mama Bears women's bookstore in Oakland, probably 15 years ago. Yes I did watch Electric Company which started, "HEY YOU GUYS!!!" in elementary school.

Over time, I've gradually replaced the phrase with with "you folks" or "you all" or "you ladies." Or, to be honest, "you guys I mean you all."

I'm taking a class on fighting oppression and domestic violence. There are 20 women and 2 men in the class. It grates on me something fierce when the presenter says, "You guys blah blah blah." To me it speaks of lack of awareness in a specifically feminist context.

The other place it grates on me lately is coming from the exclusively male management of the computer engineering company I work for, because I think they really do mean, "You men (oh yeah, maybe there are a couple of women too)," and I always want to say, "Hey, I'm right here!"

[noelfigart]

I use y'all, but I'm from Virginia. If it's inappropriate to use something colloquial, it'll be phrased using the expression "all of you" or merely "you."

At that point, gender neutral.

[meloukhia]

I think it's a pretty sensitive subject for some. Personally, I don't mind/sometimes actively like being called 'guy' or 'dude,' and don't mind those terms being used for mixed groups I'm in. I also use them a lot, although I am careful about context. If I know someone's bothered by it, obviously I'm going to avoid using it in reference to that person.

I will sometimes use y'all, but it feels forced to me given that it's not regionally appropriate.

[firecat]

Being careful seems like wise policy.

[eagle]

I'm the same (growing up in the Pacific Northwest), but "you guys" bothers enough people that I'm making a conscious effort to switch to "you folks" or "folks."

[feuervogel]

I use y'all. If I'm feeling silly, I use yinz (I went to college in PA, and my roommate was from Pittsburgh. Other college folks used youse guys.) I feel like y'all is more accepted than it used to be.

I always heard 'you guys' growing up in Maryland, but I've generally stopped using it, since it's exclusionary. I'm not a 'guys.' My genderqueer, non-binary-identified friend definitely isn't a 'guys,' so I don't call them that.

Folks does feel old-fashioned, but I use it on occasion.

[amadi]

Meanwhile, anyone actually in Pittsburgh who says yinz is immediately marked as someone who is to be taken a little less seriously...

[feuervogel]

Well, yeah. Court mainly uses it tongue in cheek, like when posting Yinztagram pictures to facebook (or "Go Stillers") or saying "Hey yinzers, anyone want to go out tonight?"

Then there's how people perceive "y'allers." William Shatner made fun of a fan who asked a question of him at Dragon*Con and used "y'all." Leonard Nimoy told him he was being an asshole.

[firecat]

William Shatner made fun of a fan who asked a question of him at Dragon*Con and used "y'all." Leonard Nimoy told him he was being an asshole.

I wish I could have been there.

[feuervogel]

Here is a summary, and a fan recorded the whole panel and put it up in 7 parts on YouTube. part 1. (I don't know how far into the panel it was, but at least halfway through I think.)

[amadi]

Further proof that Leonard Nimoy is a true quality individual!

[musyc]

I tend to use both guys and dudes as a gender-neutral term, though if a specific person asks me not to, I watch that around them. I also use y'all fairly often. "Folx" is something I use exclusively online, along with "ppl". Holdovers from IRC, those two.

[lilacsigil]

"Youse" is casual Australian, but I'd probably say "you guys". I would also say "those guys" (meaning men, women or a mixed group), but I wouldn't refer to a single person of any gender as a "guy". I would say "man" or "bloke" or "person" for a man, "woman" or "person" for a woman, or "person" for someone if I didn't know their gender or it wasn't relevant.

[ironed_orchid]

I'll happily address 2 or more women as "you guys" but I won't describe them as "those guys".

[adrian_turtle]

I don't use "you guys," to address a mixed gender or female group, myself, but whether that usage bothers me depends on the *speaker*. If a woman or elderly man says it, I don't assume sexist intent the way I do if a younger man says it. Even though there hasn't been a deliberate attempt to reclaim the usage, like there is to reclaim more specifically insulting terms, members of the insulted group can use the term if they like. (And people my parents' age? Eh, I don't expect them to keep up.)

[firecat]

For me "assuming sexist intent" and "getting snagged when a term is used in a way that doesn't match my connotations" are separate most of the time.

[akycha]

I'm from California, but don't currently live there. I use "Duuuude" as an exclamation, but it doesn't have a gender as such because as an exclamation, it doesn't refer to a person. (Meaning depends on inflection and can vary from "Hey, I'm glad we still have a front bumper on the car and by the way, did you notice they didn't use a turn signal?" to "Are you seriously, seriously, seriously sure that you want to pick up that angry kitten?" to "That looked like a UFO over there, call the X-Files.")

"Dude" when referring to a person "Those dudes" is exclusively male to me, and I never use it that way.

I was trained to use "you guys" as gender-neutral, but I don't anymore, and like other commenters, whether I perceive it that way in usage has to do with the speaker.

[maize]

I have long used "man," "dude," "you guys," and sometimes "guys," with entirely gender-neutral intentions, but I don't think that that necessarily makes the practice correct, just habitual and somewhat difficult for me to break. I periodically look for substitutes, but I haven't had a lot of success in making them stick. Ironically, because my social circle is comprised of vastly more women than men, I'm almost always using them to refer to women, and in some cases there are particular uses that I associate only with women. Like, "DUDE." or, "D U D E." to signify that I've just encountered something really jaw-dropping that I am about to share that's relevant to that person's interest is something I do with specific people, *all* of whom are women (and they do it in return with me). But even with that familiarity, I think if I could find good substitutes and make them stick, it would be good. "y'all" and "youse" are regionally very associated with parts of the U.S. and would earn either weird looks or sidetracking commentary when used up here, and I think "peeps" might similarly, but with less recognition / more confusion. "Folks," works, and I do use it when I can, but it doesn't fit all contexts.

[johnpalmer]

When I was young, using "guys" for a mixed crowd seemed a bit like a joke - like, deliberate obtuseness, or deliberate misstatement.

Then, guys seemed like a deliberate short hand, especially because there was no appropriate "guys" for women. There was "gals" but that wasn't like "guys"... I don't know if I heard "gals" as less than "guys" because it was used that way, or if I just assumed that it was due to sexism in the culture. So, now it seems like a perfectly proper shorthand, but I do sometimes hope that it's not misconstrued.

"Dude" is always a guy for me, unless it's being used as an exclamation. Like, if we were playing a game and you played a skillful move that impacted me (or betrayed an earlier agreement we had, in one of those back-stabby kinds of games) then "Dude!" in an aggrieved tone definitely means "you".

But "I met a dude" excludes the possibility that I'm going to mention tits, unless I'm talking about a crossdresser. (Or someone with a medical condition. Or if I just want to talk about tits.)

[sabotabby]

I will refer to an all-female group as "you guys." Or "folks." "Y'all" and "youse" are common where I grew up and I try my best not to talk like that.

Oh, I'll also call an individual woman "dude" sometimes. That's increasingly gender neutral imo.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I use "dude" for everyone as a term of address, but if I said "those dudes" I'd mean men, and if I say "those guys" I'd mean a random collection of people even if they were all female. "You guys" as a term of address also serve the "y'all" function for me.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

We share the Detroit-area background, and to me "you guys" (or sometimes just "guys") is definitely a gender-neutral second person plural and can comfortably be used for any mix of genders. But only in the collective, not the singular! I'm not sure off the top of my head where "those guys" fits in this structure.

I've picked up "folx" from the alt.callahans newsgroup, but I don't use it consistently. And even if I did, it suffers from the "can't tell how it's spelled in a non-text medium" issue.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Same as you. Southern Ontario.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I'm 65, and "you guys" is gender-neutral to me. My 20-something kids (of both genders) have been known to call me "dude."

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

Um, I guess these folks don't realize that "you guys" is a noun phrase and not a pronoun at all? :)

I guess I don't see what's wrong with "you" as the plural for "you". We stopped using "thou" quite some time ago and commandeered the plural to mean singular as well, now we're expected to find a new plural? Hmm. Couldst please stop changing it about?

[firecat]

I guess I don't see what's wrong with "you" as the plural for "you".

Nothing wrong with it, but it's interesting that people keep coming up with second-person-plural-only variants. They must come in handy for some situations.

[usqueba.livejournal.com]

I tend to use "guys" and "dude!" as gender neutral words except when I say something like "guys and gals". I think I use "guys and gals" for people I know as opposed to "men and women" for strangers.

In writing, I sometimes use "youse" for a plural "you".

[ladythmpr.livejournal.com]

I come by my "y'all" honestly, as my maternal family is from the (US) south.

"You guys" has been gender-neutral to me since I can remember.

If I say "Duuuude!" it's because "I can't believe you did that and I do NOT approve!" But I'm sure that meaning is a me-ism.

[firecat]

If I say "Duuuude!" it's because "I can't believe you did that and I do NOT approve!" But I'm sure that meaning is a me-ism.

One person on the DW side uses it that way as well.