[yareally]

No worries :). I just think of it as another way of saying "dude".

[ars]

Bad example because officially dude is also male. The female is dudine, dudette, or dudess.

But like like guy, dude because gender neutral in common speech.

[king_jester]

Just to nitpick, guy and dude are not gender neutral, they just happened to be heavily used by the community in general, mostly because people assume users are men by default.

[Dylan16807]

Speak for yourself. A lot of people use it as a real gender neutral.

[brewski]

For a different point of view see http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html

[Dylan16807]

There are two related but subtly different uses here. A word like 'he' is a default, which can lead to problematic implications. A word like 'guy', to some people, is a true neutral, implying gender no more than the word 'somebody'.

Even if we were talking about 'he', your link would be out of place. Calling out the use of a gendered default as bad is not in fact another point of view on whether it is the default.

[brewski]

I have never heard of a female being addressed as "guy". Phrases such as "hey guy", "what's up guy" and so on have always been directed to a male.