When did "people" stop being an acceptable gender-neutral substitute for
{guys,gals}?
Owen
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 27, 2012, at 1:10 PM, Jo Rhett <jrh...@netconsonance.com> wrote:
> On Sep 27, 2012, at 9:20 AM, Jim Mercer wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 12:12:50PM -0400, Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
>>> Many. Although in fairness, some people use "guys" in a gender-neutral
>>> manner.
>>
>> some people use it in a globally-neutral manner.
>> "those guys over there" pointing at a rack full of servers.
>
>
> Guys seem to think that it's gender neutral. The majority of women are used
> to this, but they have indicated to me that they don't believe it to be very
> neutral. Using "guys" is not gender neutral, it's flat out implying the other
> gender doesn't matter. *
>
> Given the lack of truly neutral terms in english, I have taken to alternative
> my pronouns interchangably when I write.
> "Those guys are chewing on that, but these gals are doing the vector
> calculations." (pointing at different racks of gear)
>
> Or when actually referring to persons of mixed gender, here's a quote from
> something I posted in a private forum (my own journal) which is safe for
> export:
>
>> Because frankly, we're all in this together and honestly everyone loves the
>> competition. The guys I race with often come find me afterwards and tell me
>> where they got past me, or ask me how I kept passing them. The really fast
>> girls rarely want more than a beer to go out on the track and give you a
>> detailed breakdown on what you are doing wrong. We all help each other.
>
>
> In this situation I'm leaving it up the reader to grasp that I'm not saying
> that the girls are all faster than the boys, but I believe it's understood in
> context as the topic was about how peers help each other out.
>
> I really wish that english had better pronouns for this.
>
> * As evidence of the nasty side effects of this, the bible was translated
> from a language which understands gender neutral terms to english, and was in
> translating reduced it to "man". Which is now used by only-english-speaking
> preachers to justify the "proper placement" of women in society.
>
> If for no other reason than that the use of a single gender pronoun confuses
> less intelligent types to assume that women aren't important in technology
> (and god knows this completely baseless assumption is widely held) do your
> part to mix it up!
>
> --
> Jo Rhett
> Net Consonance : net philanthropy to improve open source and internet
> projects.
>
>
