“Guys” is not gender neutral
What if I could overcome my gut-wrenching hatred for the phrase ‘you guys’?
Well, it would certainly make my life a lot easier because I hear this phrase multiple times a day. I wish I could accept being referred to in terms that insinuate the whole population is male or that male terms are ‘neutral,’ but I can’t. When I hear ‘you guys,’ I don’t feel like whoever is saying/writing this is talking to me because I am not an f***ing guy!
Reminds me of my post on how “guys” was used in an email to advertise a web development job. “Guys” is not gender neutral.
Related posts:
Just checked out the link to the older post, and couldn’t do much more than shake my head. I like to consider myself moderate in my feminism (although there are news clippings out there somewhere that allude to otherwise, LOL) and while I don’t think there was any intention to disrespect females in that listserve posting, I DO think it’s unfortunate that a “professional” company would get so ‘informal’ that they start assuming gender neutrality in phrases and risk potentially pissing off a nice number of possible applicants. I mean, really, how difficult is it to proofread? Snatch up a thesaurus?
Seriously… this:
“Hey guys,
We’re looking for a motivated web developer who loves what he does. ”
Moves to this:
“Hello, everyone! We’re looking for a motivated web developer who loves their job.”
in less than four words. *eyeroll*
Erika
25 Aug 08 at 1:14 am
[...] via the Oregon State University Network Engineering blog: As some of you would know by now, the oregonstate.edu domain is being blocked by hotmail.com. This means that any email coming from our domain will bounce and not be delivered. I just want to give you guys a heads up and let you all know that I am working on getting us delisted from their system. A request has been submitted and I expect to hear back from them in a day or two. [...]
Blocked by Hotmail » Eric Stoller’s Blog
10 Sep 08 at 8:21 pm