Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
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?"
|
How about ladies, women, girls, folks, or even just that wonderful second-person singular and plural personal pronoun "you" standing alone? And that's what I liked about Y'all/You all in fresnelly's post. We just need to move Y'all/You all up North of the Mason-Dixon line and overcome our urban sophisticate aversion to things Southern (except food, of course
) and we'll have a new gender neutral second person pronoun.
Nobody uses "dolls" anymore except to describe a child's plaything or a collectible.
Or maybe a waiter at a dinner theater?
Guys and Dolls - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Or the diner style places with the real or pseudo Southern Belle waitress, where every customer is doll, or hun, or sweetie or something similar.
Quote:
|
"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.
|
Especially since in France "Guy" is is a male given name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_(given_name)
And I do! Plus one
Quote:
Originally Posted by snowy
I've had a couple conversations recently about the use of guys as a gender-neutral term, actually. It seems like a lot of people my age and younger just accept that it is. It came up at work because my female coworkers and I always use that term in regards to our mixed gender groups, i.e. "Hey guys, it's time to put your coats on." This then led to a conversation with friends wherein we agreed that "guys" is so commonly used these days to refer to a group of people of either gender that is has become gender-neutral.
|
Ironic, isn't it, after all those years trying to lose the accepted use of chairman, postman, policeman, etc we now want to add a male term to the gender neutral pool of words? After all of the years spent replacing supposedly "male" terms with awkwordities like "Department Chair"
(hey, what about the department desk?) now we add a new male term.
Quote:
|
I love how language lives.
|
Another plus one
And in the long run, of course, usage will trump all!
Lindy