[156854] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: guys != gender neutral
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Scott Howard)
Thu Sep 27 19:08:22 2012
In-Reply-To: <E14AC703-27B6-427E-B245-23363F6DD924@netconsonance.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:08:11 -0700
From: Scott Howard <scott@doc.net.au>
To: Jo Rhett <jrhett@netconsonance.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:10 AM, Jo Rhett <jrhett@netconsonance.com> wrote:
> Guys seem to think that it's gender neutral. The majority of women are
> used to this, but they have indicated to me that they don't believe it to
> be very neutral. Using "guys" is not gender neutral, it's flat out implying
> the other gender doesn't matter. *
>
The Oxford English dictionary apparently disagrees with you.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/guy?region=us&q=guys
(*guys*) people of either sex: * you guys want some coffee?
*
As other many words in the English language there are multiple definitions,
and one of those definitions is gender specific - but the one above is very
much gender neutral ("either sex" - it doesn't get much clearer than that!)
Scott
