That's not true in my experience, and I doubt it's true in yours. While "guys" is sometimes employed to refer to a mixed gender group of people, it would be very weird for "guy" or "dude" to be used to refer to a woman. Argue in good faith, please. And try not to police PC here. You're not bringing anything to the discussion.
As someone who has lived in Southern California 90% of their life, and Berkeley, CA the rest, I can absolutely say that it is true in my experience that Californians (and I obviously include myself in this set) will use 'guy' and 'dude' to refer to anything. Men, women, children, dogs, cats, cars, burritos.
Last week I got up from the table to throw the rest of my burrito away and offered to take my wife's as well by saying "Dude, are you going to finish that guy?" I understand it isn't "correct", and the English are within their rights weep for their language if they like, but it is not weird at all in coastal California.
I refer to many servers, consoles, screens etc as him/her/he/she/guy, and I to call out any last remaining food on the kids plate in the same way as you. West coast as well.
I got it from both living in California and Miami, where many people used it that way, girls as well. For me it was a bit strange at first, but got used to it. I guess it might be some local urban stuff leaking nationwide?
You bring up your experience, basically call me a liar about my experiences and accuse me of not adding anything to the discussion.
Interesting. I grew up in California and what I said is a fact, as confirmed by other people. What are you bringing to the discussion exactly besides baseless accusations?
Dude implies some level of laid back cool personality. A dude is someone who skateboards, skis or does lots of pot, not a typical accountant, grammarian or middle manager.
You guys should really fix English language. As a non-native speaker whose native language allows properly expressing gender anytime, I find this funny, being downvoted for what is a structural problem of your language :-D
Does your language allow referring to a person while leaving their gender unspecified? If not, your language is deficient.
All the mainstream European languages I've seen (Germanic and Romance) don't seem to have this capability at all, and it's a big deficiency. Formal English doesn't have it either, but colloquially we've evolved it, using "they" (which of course is bad because it's supposed to be used for referring to people in the plural sense, not singular).
So don't complain about a language having structural problems if yours isn't any better.
It allows both ungendered and gendered approaches. It's really up to you to choose. So in fact my language is better in this regard, worse in others. Like any language.
I would prefer mentalese over Vangelis' direct to be honest ;-)
"Who did you have lunch with? Oh, some dude."
Try not to language police here. You're not bringing anything to the discussion.