alt Hacker NewsI'm glad for you it doesn't feel exclusive. Your experience is totally valid and also you are correct, there are structural issues at play that also need addressing.
Other folks, myself included, do feel excluded by "guys" as a gender neutral term. I'm not offended, but I do appreciate when people offer something else.
But to your later point, I don't think it's either/or. We can do both.
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> Other folks, myself included, do feel excluded by "guys" as a gender neutral term.
You are reading into the words a message that was never intended, and that is on you, not the speaker.
I feel this is pedantry. It's been used in good faith as a neutral term to address all, basically no different to using words others don't like such as moist.
If this level of pedantry can be considered acceptable, how on earth do these folks justify/cope with terminology used in "empowerment" initiatives who often use very non-inclusive wording more so than "guys".
I think pursuing things like the eradication of an expression that is genuinely considered gender neutral by large swaths of people is the sort of thing that loses you goodwill for the big stuff.
I’m sorry that you find it exclusionary. What I find exclusionary is people telling me that it’s justifiable to think less of me for using that term, or comparing continuing to use the term to their grandmother who still uses the N word.
For what it’s worth I have stopped using “you guys” at work except for in “safe spaces” because I don’t want to deal with this sort of judgement. But I find the “it costs you nothing!” defense of word policing to be completely unconvincing.