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Comment by wp1 | Hacker News Reader

FTFY: The guy you go to lunch with during your on-site interview @Google is most likely the one who hasn't completed interview training yet.

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FTFY: the PERSON you go to lunch with...

FTFY, guy and dude are pretty much asexual references for a person you don't know who you had a personal interaction with, at least in California.

"Who did you have lunch with? Oh, some dude."

Try not to language police here. You're not bringing anything to the discussion.

That's not true in my experience, and I doubt it's true in yours. While "guys" is sometimes employed to refer to a mixed gender group of people, it would be very weird for "guy" or "dude" to be used to refer to a woman. Argue in good faith, please. And try not to police PC here. You're not bringing anything to the discussion.

As someone who has lived in Southern California 90% of their life, and Berkeley, CA the rest, I can absolutely say that it is true in my experience that Californians (and I obviously include myself in this set) will use 'guy' and 'dude' to refer to anything. Men, women, children, dogs, cats, cars, burritos.

Last week I got up from the table to throw the rest of my burrito away and offered to take my wife's as well by saying "Dude, are you going to finish that guy?" I understand it isn't "correct", and the English are within their rights weep for their language if they like, but it is not weird at all in coastal California.

I remember using "guy" to refer to a network cable at one point.

"Do I plug this guy or that guy into the switch?"

This was in North Texas.

I refer to many servers, consoles, screens etc as him/her/he/she/guy, and I to call out any last remaining food on the kids plate in the same way as you. West coast as well.

I got it from both living in California and Miami, where many people used it that way, girls as well. For me it was a bit strange at first, but got used to it. I guess it might be some local urban stuff leaking nationwide?

You bring up your experience, basically call me a liar about my experiences and accuse me of not adding anything to the discussion.

Interesting. I grew up in California and what I said is a fact, as confirmed by other people. What are you bringing to the discussion exactly besides baseless accusations?

I agree with the lady who wrote this post.

Way to misinterpret what I said. I said that "dude" and "guy" were asexual, not "lady".

I was using "lady" asexually.

Just like you can use the "n-word" non-racially?

The conversation was about the colloquial usage of the word dude and guy. Nothing was said about lady.

> "guy and dude are pretty much asexual references"

and I'm using 'lady' asexually. Is this triggering you?

Considering that lady is not generally accepted as an asexual term, I'm having a difficult time parsing your statement.

Certain words mean certain things in certain contexts. If you want to start using "lady" as an asexual term, go for it. Be prepared for stares and weird looks when people don't know what you're talking about because it's not generally used that way, unlike 'dude and guy'.

What's your point exactly?

You don't see my point? You're frustrated and defensive, and all I've done is address you by the wrong gender.

> You're frustrated and defensive

Project much?

> all I've done is address you by the wrong gender.

How do you know it's the wrong gender? Why are you making assumptions about my gender, without knowing if I identify as a female?

My original point was the the words "dude" and "guy" have lost all gender connotations in California at least. Try to stay on point.

Dude implies some level of laid back cool personality. A dude is someone who skateboards, skis or does lots of pot, not a typical accountant, grammarian or middle manager.

You guys should really fix English language. As a non-native speaker whose native language allows properly expressing gender anytime, I find this funny, being downvoted for what is a structural problem of your language :-D

Does your language allow referring to a person while leaving their gender unspecified? If not, your language is deficient.

All the mainstream European languages I've seen (Germanic and Romance) don't seem to have this capability at all, and it's a big deficiency. Formal English doesn't have it either, but colloquially we've evolved it, using "they" (which of course is bad because it's supposed to be used for referring to people in the plural sense, not singular).

So don't complain about a language having structural problems if yours isn't any better.

It allows both ungendered and gendered approaches. It's really up to you to choose. So in fact my language is better in this regard, worse in others. Like any language.

I would prefer mentalese over Vangelis' direct to be honest ;-)

Thing is, most languages that do that don't just allow properly expressing gender, they require it. And that's not necessarily a good thing.

Regardless of what weird world they live in, nobody refers to a singular woman as a guy or dude in the mainstream.

"guys" became gender neutral sometime in the 70's, Rita Moreno: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_iGaQglnKg

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