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.