Comments on: Just one of the guys

By: mighty red pen

mighty red pen — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 23:11:39 +0000

@JD, Yeah, I do know that, but gender-neutral language is one peeve I do allow myself (and I’ve worked in a few places that really encouraged this tendency). I don’t go to extremes over it, but if there is a better way to say “fellow” or “to man,” then I will try to change it. “Research fellow” would I guess fall under the category of “there isn’t a better way to say it,” I suppose.

There was one extreme example at one place I worked where people spent a significant amount of time trying to find an alternative to “manmade” as in “manmade disasters.” There was just no way around that: human-made? Person-made? No thanks.

I’d be interested in what others think on this.

By: JD

JD — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 15:10:23 +0000

I think I would probably use ‘folks’ or ‘people’ instead of ‘guys’ – but because ‘guys’ is (to my ears) very American, rather than because it is sexist.

MRP, would you really edit ‘fellow’ and ‘man’ (as a verb)? Wow. What about ‘research fellow’? And you know that the universal sense of ‘man’ (as in ‘mankind’, for example) predates the use of ‘man’ to mean ‘adult male’?

By: ducksanddrakes

ducksanddrakes — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 04:09:59 +0000

Sure there’s something to the sexism angle. But I find that “you guys” really shines when I don’t know (or have utterly forgotten) who the hell I’m talking about, let alone their genders or names.

It’s also vital for shirking tasks. I can’t count the number of times that I was sure one of “you guys” was supposed to pick up the tab, clean the fish tank or grade the term papers. In fact, without “you guys” I’m quite convinced that nothing would get done at all.

Blessings.

By: Granny

Granny — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 03:14:19 +0000

Yes, I’m with Georgia Girl. It’s obvious that MRP doesn’t live south of the Mason-Dixon line, where the answer is logical and clear: it’s “y’all” fer sure. (No, that was not a typo.) Not only is it plural, it’s inclusive, meaning not sexist, even though down here we’re not quite so obsessed with political correctness as y’all…

By: georgia girl

georgia girl — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:44:08 +0000

Maybe we have it right in the south (we will do something the lazy way because it’s just too hot to do it the hard way):
y’all = those of you right here
all y’all = those of you right here and everyone you know

By: Editrix

Editrix — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 16:28:25 +0000

I use “you guys” all the time, whether I’m talking to men, women, or some combination of the two. And I’ve never been offended when someone used “you guys” to refer to a group I was in. Somehow, “you guys” just FEELS gender-neutral to me. I mean, I know it has the word “guys” in there and all, and I can imagine why some women might be offended by it, but it just doesn’t ping my gen-dar. (Get it? “Gender” + “radar” = “gendar”? Oh, yeah. That one’s TOTALLY going to catch on. Any minute now.)

By: tk.

tk. — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:38:57 +0000

Well there’s the generic “you people”, but then you come off seeming a bit too quirky. Alternately, you can use an adjective to describe the people: “you bastards” or “hey, sports fans!” as my dad often says (even though none of us were really sports fans). If you’re in the south, “y’all” seems to work well and avoid any gender specificity. “You folks”, maybe?

I always think of the Electric Company yell, too, but I was too young to remember anything real specific about that show short of Spider-Man, Easy Reader, and the counting-to-12 song.