I know that according to the dictionary "guy" means "man" but there's no good gender-neutral word for "some person" especially if you want to be informal.
"Some guy couldn't make a right turn at the light for 10 friggin minutes so now I'm late"
Not necessarily a guy driving (let's suppose I couldn't see the driver; I just know their car didn't move for forever) and it's unfair/sexist to men to assume it was a man, could have just as easily been a woman.
"Hey guys, is everyone ready to go to lunch?"
There might well people girls in the group that's going to lunch (there often are) and I don't want to offend them. But "Hey people, " doesn't sound right, "Hey folks," doesn't either, and "Hey everybody," isn't a good substitute either: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8LqozaaB7s&t=1m12s
Anyone have a good gender-neutral word I can use instead?
I think "hey guys" has come to be accepted as a gender neutral term (from my experience in the UK). Somehow "That guy" however is still gender specific...
I try to default to "hey folks" or "hey all" unless it's all male "hey guys" or female "hey girls" or friends for sure "hey (words I don't normally use in public)".
I also try to stick with "person", "someone", singular they, whatever is as flexible as possible until I know what the person prefers to be called.
I do find myself accidentally defaulting to assuming he/she depending on the context. Been trying to correct myself so I don't make people feel unwelcome though. :)
Sometimes it can be regional based. For example in the south we say "ya'll" but in some other places they say "you guys" (or yooos guys).
I feel awkward saying ya'll a lot so I use you guys. But many times the group I am referring to is female so I use you girls or ladies. This can get you in trouble depending on the age of the group sometimes I get: "are you calling us young/old" and then I go back to ya'll.
> Because the person who runs the site in all probability is a male if you don't know otherwise.
I agreed with this at first glance, but on second glance: What makes you say this? If you are like me, then your antecedent probability assumption itself was based on sexism, and not evidence. And, in fact, some quick Googling suggests that at least half of bloggers are women. I suppose its debatable whether Ikeahackers is a "blog" but this seems like evidence enough to undermine the premise that, in the absence of any other information, the person behind the site is probably a man.
I don't mean to condemn you, or anything like that. I freely admit that I use the word "guy" by default and, as I mentioned, I was initially in agreement with your point until I took a step back and did a little intentional self-criticism.
I hope we can all agree that sexism is probably universal, to one degree or other, and that we all should work to minimize it, but also that the occasional slip does not make one a bad person.
>I agreed with this at first glance, but on second glance: What makes you say this? If you are like me, then your antecedent probability assumption itself was based on sexism, and not evidence. And, in fact, some quick Googling suggests that at least half of bloggers are women.
You wrongly assume that the probability assessment was done solely on the fact that it's a blog. It's not. There are additional information that influences the probability. Mainly that there's hacking involved.
I think we're all still waiting to see the evidence -- as opposed to biases -- upon which you're basing these antecedent probabilities.
There's also another point worth making: even if it were true that you have a truly objective, rational reason for assuming that (e.g.) the author of the blog is a man, this doesn't resolve the question of whether you should speak as though you assume all unidentified hackers, bloggers, whatever are men. There is more at stake than whether you happen to be right or wrong in guessing the blogger's gender. The problem is that such patterns of language can and do easily harden into norms -- i.e., you may only use masculine nouns for probabilistic reasons, but this pattern of speaking, if sufficiently widespread, can give rise to the view it is abnormal (in the normative, not the merely descriptive sense) for women to hack or start hacker blogs. This is a bad thing because the social pressure that results can meaningfully restrict the freedom of future women.
If you mean defaulting to that word, it's because it's the best generic stand-in.
If you mean defaulting to assuming someone's male, it's because it's deeply ingrained in culture. Notice how female characters in cartoons often must be explicitly differentiated as such (pink ribbons, bows, clothes)?
"Some guy couldn't make a right turn at the light for 10 friggin minutes so now I'm late"
Not necessarily a guy driving (let's suppose I couldn't see the driver; I just know their car didn't move for forever) and it's unfair/sexist to men to assume it was a man, could have just as easily been a woman.
"Hey guys, is everyone ready to go to lunch?"
There might well people girls in the group that's going to lunch (there often are) and I don't want to offend them. But "Hey people, " doesn't sound right, "Hey folks," doesn't either, and "Hey everybody," isn't a good substitute either: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8LqozaaB7s&t=1m12s
Anyone have a good gender-neutral word I can use instead?