-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Is "Youse Guys" a bad phrase?
- Thread starter Painguy
- Start date
Oppo
Member
i hear it knowingly applied. and i approve of this approach. i'd rather lean on de-gendering man, dude, bro etc. it's both more achievable and i have to admit, funnier.
Hear it all the time here. People pretty casually refer to each other as "dude". Same with calling a group of women "you guys".
Shit, I know I've even said "dude" to my mom on occasion.
As someone whos trans, no. If its okay for cis-women then its okay for all women.
(and it is for most women I know at least)
As an exclamation its cool. You dont call a woman a dude but you call them dude, you know? Like "Dude! Did you just see that?"
Both are fairly casual though, especially dude
WaterAstro
Member
Yeah, I use "You guys" when it is only guys and "You girls" when it's only girls. I use "Everyone" when it is mixed or when I'm not sure.
^ What Misha said.
Fascinating.
Call BS all you like, it's not that out of the ordinary.
Fascinating.
Call BS all you like, it's not that out of the ordinary.
shira
Member
I bet "you know" and "like" are literally the three mostly commonly said words on the West Coast. Like, I would bet actual money on that.
You know, like, dude, YOU GUYS!. Yes, we actually fucking talk like that.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Well, I gotta, it's a really big claim. I'm trying really hard to think of / find material in media where women are called dudes. Like an abundance of this to make it common or ordinary. Maybe in Dudeism or surfer culture? But even then I can't place media doing this, so it's hard for me to believe it's that much different.
You might be leaking your culture cause I'm from Pittsburgh and we talk like that here too haha
Well maybe not quite like that. Usually theres a bit more content in the middle haha
It's mostly casual talk. You won't see it much in media, because we sound really dumb when we do it and movies shamed "valley speak" pretty hard for a while. It slips out a lot of if you watch people who stream from the West Coast though. Like, EZA has even made note of it on several occasions that they have to make a concentrated effort to not slip into valley speak. Some of the guys even have podcast goals to not say "you know".
Dude, like, you know, you guys. People will string combinations together of that over and over here in casual conversation. Especially Like and You know.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
I get the whole "like" and "you know" bit but your claim was people call women dudes and it's a casual, ordinary thing. I get folks say "you guys" but a singular dude or dudes for a group seems quite rare, well really rare.
It's not rare here at all in casual conversation. Even women addressing other women in a group will go "guys!".
mariachi507
Member
I use both "you guys" and "y'all".
It's actually odd to me that you find it so strange. I, and apparently others, have heard it often enough that it doesn't even stick out.
Demoskinos
Member
I rarely ever hear any woman get offended by "you guys" and honestly its incredibly unprofessional for someone to lecture a client or customer like that.
Honestly? I would never make a thing out of it, but since you asked... I think "You guys" actually kind of sucks, especially for a group of women. Just sounds childish and "off" somehow. Never had a problem with "mankind", "chairman", masculine default in other languages etc either, like I don't mind formally being part of a group of "men" but a woman just isn't a "guy"
Maybe I'm just weird but what's wrong with "you all" anyway?
Reminder that your average man would throw a shit fit if someone called him a woman, "colloquially" or not
Maybe I'm just weird but what's wrong with "you all" anyway?
Reminder that your average man would throw a shit fit if someone called him a woman, "colloquially" or not
Warm Machine
Member
"Meat sacks" is perfectly acceptable as an inclusive statement.
PeskyToaster
Member
I feel like guys has become pretty gender neutral
In this thread we've learned you didn't know you guys was gender neutral and now we're learning you've never heard a woman being called dude before. Fascinating.
You should make a Morpheus meme for this.
OP, this would be my reaction:
I was at a animal shelter recently along with a young lady. The guy referred to us as "you guys" when talking about getting a dog for us. It's slang, man, slang. When addressing a large, mixed audience, of course you would say something like "guys and gals" or "ladies and gentlemen", of course. But in everyday speech, it's just shorthand. Just like the word "man" and "mankind" imply "woman", so does "you guys".
It's not, it's just that it only works in certain contexts. Like you'd never refer to a woman as "that dude over there" or "this dude was talking to me the other day" but you can go up to a female friend and say "dude did you see that?" or "omg dude no way" in response to something she says. This type of usage is common.
Similarly you would not refer to a woman as a guy but you can go up to a group of all women and say something like "hey guys are you ready to go right now?" or whatever.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
When did I say I didn't know it wasn't gender neutral? Or the idea that I didn't know people find it gender neutral?
I'll be waiting.
Here you said it isn't.
I mean, you had to be told it WAS gender neutral and now you're having to be told dude can also be gender neutral. It's a real head scratcher how these are things that need to be explained.
timetokill
Banned
Wonderful title change
PS I say "dude" all the time regardless of gender :\
PS I say "dude" all the time regardless of gender :\
Subpar Spatula
Banned
See you missed the point. I know people find it gender neutral but in reality it isn't.
That's, like, the point.
umop_3pisdn
Member
I want to be able to use dude and gurl with everyone interchangeably tbh but that ideal will go unrealized.
So English is wrong and you're right? Man, what a point.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Naw, just means I've thought past the "what did the dictionary say?"
Like, the phrase is "you guys". Guy singular refers to male and everyone seems to agree but "guys" refers to both female and male and can be used if it's a group of women and one guy. It suggests a standard or a default and it's male. Plenty of words do this: freshman, grandfathered (why not grandmothered?), etc.
Your idea that "English" is wrong is really awful. English is an evolving language that takes bits and pieces from multiple languages. We learn more about by thinking and trying to understand the meaning of each word and applying them. That's how a lot of slang comes about cause it's a word that matches the action, thought, or idea being presented.
To say it's gender-neutral only means that, well, women don't seem to mind but you haven't gone past that. Just because women say something doesn't automatically mean it's gender-neutral in all regards.
RageWaffles
Member
Some people do get bothered by it, which I understand. But I say it a lot, even when talking to groups of only women.
Dude is a gender-neutral term to me. People have said it to me, and I've said to other women.
Dude is a gender-neutral term to me. People have said it to me, and I've said to other women.
Skellig Gra
Member
That title change. Joe Pesci would be proud.
Language varies a lot, especially from region to region. For as long as I've been living on the west coast, which is the entire 34 years of my life, Guys and Dude have *always* been used in a gender-neutral manner by both men and women here. It has never not been that way for as long as I've been able to understand and speak English.
And "you guys" evolved to be commonly known to be gender neutral and will continue to be as long as it is commonly seen as such. This isn't a case of you seeing past the dictionary, this is a case with you disagreeing with where English evolved and wanting it to evolve into something else.
As long as it is commonly seen as gender neutral, it will continue to be gender neutral, because that's how language works.
Earthbound64
Banned
Well, you must find this thread an exercise in idiocy, then.
Yeah, I know a lot of women who use dude to refer to either men or women.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Well, it evolved into the male category. FYI, language seems to evolving to gender-neutral terms like "folks", "everyone", "everybody", "y'all", etc. I think it's because "you guys" isn't as gender-neutral as a lot believe even though it's commonly used.
You're not even trying to understand the phrase "you guys" but just keep latching onto the fact that everyone says it therefore the entire thing is gender-neutral. Males, female, other can all say "you guys" and be fine but it doesn't make the core of the phrase gender-neutral because it literally references guys AKA the plural version of males because language evolved to define "guy" as "male".
the-pi-guy
Member
I know some women who call other women "dude". It's just part of some people's vocabulary.
I'm sure it's more of a regional thing.
Similar threads
- Locked