So I’ve realized that in conversations I’ll use traditional terms for men as general terms for all genders, both singularly and for groups. I always mean it well, but I’ve been thinking that it’s not as inclusive to women/trans people.

For example I would say:

“What’s up guys?” “How’s it going man?” "Good job, my dude!” etc.

Replacing these terms with person, people, etc sounds awkward. Y’all works but sounds very southern US (nowhere near where I am located) so it sounds out of place.

So what are some better options?

Edit: thanks for all the answers peoples, I appreciate the honest ones and some of the funny ones.

The simplest approach is to just drop the usage of guys, man, etc. Folks for groups and mate for singular appeal to me when I do want to add one in between friends.

  • @Dasus
    -7•9 months ago

    I feel like “guys” is definitely colloquially gender-neutral in most contexts.

    “Fireman” is clearly a patriarchic term that literally has “man” in it. In English “firefighter” is commonplace nowadays, but in my native Finnish, a lot of professions have “man” in the term, much in the vein of “policeman”, “ombudsman”, the Finnish equivalent of “janitor”, roughly translated directly as “building/house-man”.

    We’ve replaced loads. Most of them are good. Some new terms feel natural and get taken into use, but replacing “man” with “person” rarely works for us without feeling incredibly awkward to use.

    So my point is that we can reclaim those terms as gender neutral. Context matters. N-word being acceptable among black people is completely acceptable (and actually a very nice tool for emphasis when properly utilised), and it’s even in songs without anyone accusing the artists of racism. (Well, for pop songs at least, no racist hillbilly songs made it to that level.) That being said, it definitely doesn’t take away from it’s power as a slur if someone uses it in such a way.

    So I suggest we’ll just use “guys, bro, dudes” as gender neutral and rely that people will understand from context when they’re actually used to address men/exclude women etc.

    Also, isn’t “buddy” sort of neutral already? *goes to check* OoooooOoOooooh, it’s from “brother” originally. Guess it’s not as neutral originally.

    Well that’s s new one for me.