Quote:
Originally Posted by Lindy
Which I like because it is perfectly gender neutral. 
It jars me when someone (like a waiter) says "You guys ready to order?" to a mixed gender group. I know it's become common, but it still derails me. 
Here's a clue: If it has tits, it's not a guy. Guys have balls. Some more than others, but you get the idea.  |
You know who has tits? Dolls.
See, that's the thing: I don't know of anyone who refers to the female gender as "dolls." Could you imagine a waiter approaching a table of women and saying, "You dolls ready to order?" Or even a mixed table with, "You guys & dolls ready to order?" I might on a very rare occasion hear someone use "gals," but it hardly ever registers on the radar anymore.
"Guys" applied even to a group of females only doesn't jar me at all. I've accepted it as a gender-neutral term (colloquially anyway), which is interesting now that I think of it.
What's not so much the case is when someone refers to a female using
man: "Oh, man, did you see that?" or "Hey, man, what's up?" I hear it all the time. In many cases, I don't really think about it, but sometimes I think to myself, "Why did she just call her a man?"
Gotta love language!