"you guys": change language, do no harm, but can we please leave space for learning and growing?
First reactions: the language police I've recently learned that calling a group of people you guys may be considered insensitive to transgender people. My first reaction to this was an inner eye-roll, and thoughts along the lines of, "Oh come on, that's going too far." The same reaction I had to learning that the word crazy is not to be used -- in any context -- because it's insensitive to people with mental illness. Why are people policing my language this closely? Is this really important? Who determined this is now inappropriate speech? I've always thought of guys as gender-neutral, and you guys represents a group of people of any gender -- in the appropriate context. Clearly some people say "guys and girls," and in that context guys means men and boys. But words have different meanings in different contexts, and most speakers of any given language are able to distinguish among those contexts. Is you guys really so offensive, to the po...
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