Guys and anything
Lately I have noticed the young people doing something that seems strange to me. (By “young people” I mean people my age and younger.) They use “guys” almost categorically when referring to males as a group. This wouldn’t be so weird, except that there’s no parallel term (for me) that refers to females, and so when they refer to both males and females, the references seem unequal, because they’ll use terms for females that have equivalents for males but they won’t use the equivalent terms for males. They’ll talk about “the girls” and “the guys,” but also “the women” and “the guys,” and I think I even heard once “the ladies” and “the guys”. To me, “girls” and “women” are used in different contexts (something about age or maturity; let’s not even touch how “ladies” is used), and “guys” should only work as the counterpart to “girls” if anything at all. And they never say “boys,” which I realize is due to “girls” cutting a much wider swath of applicability than “boys” - you can refer to girls of many different ages, but boys seems only to be under 18 (but why??). So they talk about college-aged “girls” but college-aged “guys,” and also college-aged “women” but still college-aged “guys.”
This is especially interesting when you consider that definitions of “guys” are gender-neutral (MW):
3 a: man, fellow b: person —used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex
Is plural “guys” gaining gender? Did Guys and Dolls start this?
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i have basically the same intuition as you do. ‘guys’ is in my lexicon, and i use it to refer to all-male and partially-male groups, and sometimes use it to refer to all-female groups, although it feels awkward then. i think the crux of the issue lies with historically parallel female form, ‘gals’, which somehow became regionally marked and therefore stigmatized, while ‘guys’ thrived throughout the US (and internationally as well; i’ve never met a european second-language speaker of english without ‘you guys’ and ‘OK’ in their lexicon)
Comment by Ed — 4/13/2008 @ 11:35 am
Shouldn’t we differentiate between “guys” the plural noun and “guys” a component of the 2nd. person plural pronoun? I (a second language speaker of English) would say that the former’s referent is definitely male (would you use the noun “guy” to refer to a woman?), while the latter - or rather its full form “you guys” - can refer to both all-male, all-female and mixed groups. Any gender-neutral use of “guys” would probaly derive from “you guys”.
Comment by bulbul — 4/13/2008 @ 12:47 pm
In my opinion, the problem lies in the English language itself. It seems to have a deficit of gender neutral pronouns. There is no plural form of “you” so people make up their own such as “y’all”, “you guys”, or “you all”. Spanish has “Ustedes”, old English had “ye”, we’re stuck with “you guys” which really does not sound gender neutral at all.
Comment by Harrison — 4/13/2008 @ 5:54 pm
I suspect “boys” is less often applied to males under 18 because of issues of masculine pride. Acknowledging the passage into manhood from boyhood is important in male social groups, and failure to acknowledge it shows a lack of respect. I guess it’s not (as much as) an issue of status for women? Also, the alternative “men” for a group of male friends seems to have the flavor of being a blatant assertion of masculinity.
Comment by Jason Adams — 4/13/2008 @ 10:19 pm
For me (a male) ‘guys’ is pretty neutral. I use it more or less equally with all-male, mixed, and all-female groups; it doesn’t sound odd to me at all to tell my wife and her (girl)friends, “You guys should…” I suspect that it might be much the same way for my wife, a couple of times I’ve heard her use ‘guy’ to refer to herself; as in, “I try to be a nice guy, but…”
Comment by Timm — 4/14/2008 @ 1:45 am
Would “gal” be considered the analog to “guy”?
Comment by baconfat — 4/14/2008 @ 9:19 am
Personally, I often try to bring back the word “gals”, and I also try to say “you folks” when addressing a mixed-gender group. I may be fighting a losing battle, particularly with “gals”.
Comment by Skullturf Q. Beavispants — 4/14/2008 @ 1:43 pm
Since we’re voting here: I’m a male, and I use the term “guys” as a familiar gender-neutral plural pronoun. I don’t ever use the term “boys”, “girls”, “men”, or “women” for a group I’m addressing.
Comment by Tutu — 6/12/2008 @ 4:26 pm