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

[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.)