this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
842 points (99.6% liked)
Microblog Memes
6671 readers
2437 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Poll: is “guy” gender neutral yet? It is in my part of Northern California but I have accidentally confused people before.
It depends on who you ask, but I think that when you say "guy" most people think of a man.
It depends on usage.
"He's a guy." Is gendered.
"Hey you guys!" Is gender neutral.
"She's a guy." Is transphobic.
How about "She's my guy"?
If she's your hook up yes, but if she's someone with whom you hook up no
May work in context?
I think there's never going to be a true consensus on things like this.
A friend who is a trans woman told me that sometimes when people say "hey guys" or similar, she often feels an instinctive rush of dysphoria (especially if it's a context where she's the only woman in the group), but that she realises it is often intended in a gender neutral manner, so it's not reasonable for her to feel upset at this. She considers the upset that she feels at this to be "her problem" so to speak, and doesn't expect people to change how they speak. Since this discussion though, I have tried to be more mindful of it when using words like "dude" or "guy" as collective terms.
Yeah, it sucks that trans people have to shoulder this additional burden on top of all the other shit that society throws at them.
Context dependent - i.e. walking up to a group and saying 'hey guys' is gender neutral, but saying 'I saw a guy the other day' generally implies you saw a man.
“Guys” (plural) seems to have two meanings:
“Guy” (singular) doesn’t seem to be gender neutral, so it seemingly only means “random man.”
So, “you guys” can be gender neutral, but if you’re a guy who dates guys, you’re likely gay, bi, pan, or queer.
I've started using folks because I couldn't answer that question
There’s a right wing politician here who made “folks” his trademark so I can’t bring myself to use that one either:
https://www.thebeaverton.com/2018/06/folks-folks-folks-folks-folks/