So I’ve realized that in conversations I’ll use traditional terms for men as general terms for all genders, both singularly and for groups. I always mean it well, but I’ve been thinking that it’s not as inclusive to women/trans people.
For example I would say:
“What’s up guys?” “How’s it going man?” "Good job, my dude!” etc.
Replacing these terms with person, people, etc sounds awkward. Y’all works but sounds very southern US (nowhere near where I am located) so it sounds out of place.
So what are some better options?
Edit: thanks for all the answers peoples, I appreciate the honest ones and some of the funny ones.
The simplest approach is to just drop the usage of guys, man, etc. Folks for groups and mate for singular appeal to me when I do want to add one in between friends.
That’s because context matters.
“You’re shit” and “You’re the shit” mean completely different things
Of course. No one literally thinks that “dude” always means man.
The issue isn’t the obvious truth of the different meanings. The issue is that those different meanings aren’t neutral like they claim to be, because they rely on the idea of men being the “default” state of people.
There’s a reason there isn’t exactly a large number of words in use that can men “woman” and “everybody” and that’s because most men would be uncomfortable with that.
Yet somehow, the opposite is fine?
Your points in this thread are certainly implying that “dude” is always a man. When you say “if a word is either neutral or masc, then it’s not neutral”, then you’re literally saying it always is masc.
So, neutrality is a spectrum? How do you define the different parts of the neutrality spectrum?
That’s a claim that needs some data to back up.
I don’t give a single shit about what they think. Why should anyone?
I mean, clearly you do. If you didn’t give a shit, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
And just like you, enough people “give a shit” about man being a stand in for the default human, that despite literally thousands and years of language development not a single case of “woman as the default” has entered common usage.
That’s what bias looks like.
Hot take alert… Bitch has seen to evolved similar to Australian’s cunt at this point. “Women as the default” but it is still neutrally used.
Your examples of female-based neutral words are pejorative. Do you have examples not rooted in misogyny?
Queen
“Queen” by itself refers to either women or gay men. It is not gender neutral. “Drama queen” is applied to all genders, but, again, this example is pejorative toward women. Do you have any examples of women-centric language that can refer to all genders, but that is not negative toward women?
I think we would need to clarify on what your definition of gender neutral is before continuing. I would consider it gender neutral because I and the people I hang around would use the term with a person regardless of their gender. Maybe that’s exclusive to us but also you defined more than one gender that can be described by the term so a looser definition of gender neutral would still apply. Women and men (even though they are gay) are very clearly two different genders.