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Comment by Jdjdjdjjdhebe | Hacker News Reader

One girl, Kate

never even looked at the credit for the article. "this guy" was just a generic reference to random person I don't know. kind of like Canadians refer to anyone as buddy.

Unlike buddy, it's an inaccurate generic reference. It's a little more typing, but replacing "guy" with "person" or in this case "engineer" would be more precise (and inclusive).

"Guy" is a perfectly acceptable word for a man or a woman in much of the United States. When the PBS children's show The Electric Company starts with the cry, "Hey, you guys!" it is not excluding the female of the species. It's an idiom.

There are places where "you guys" is unusual. For example, when I moved to a certain part of Texas, it was unfamiliar to the people living there. Perhaps you live in a place where "guys" is uncommon and are unfamiliar with the term. In that case, I suggest you respect other people's cultures and embrace diversity.

“You guys” is only uncommon in Texas because we have the shorter “y’all.”

That isn’t just Texas even as far north as Kentucky and the Southern bits of Illinois and Indiana people use y’all.

in the plural or non-countable, such as this case, "guy" is ungendered

"The one guy" is literally the opposite of uncountable.

Guys, this doesn't have to be so hard. Just check the authorship before commenting about the author! If you get it wrong and someone points it out, say "oops, I should have checked" and it's over.

> Guys, this doesn't have to be so hard.

Please don’t assume our gender when preaching to us about inclusive language.

IME, gals aren't making these mistakes, and also aren't doubling down when called on them.

IME, gals aren't making these mistakes

Then you have limited E.

I debated calling this out and decided against because I knew you all would do it for me.

This, right here, is precisely why this issue is important. We have gendered pronouns that are so ingrained we try to pretend they're not gendered.

"All" is a _shorter_ and more inclusive substitute for "guys".

If you think this isn't important, just replace every occurance of "guys" that you see with "gals". If you're cool with that, good on you, but if you think for one second "oh don't say gals that might piss someone off" then, well, there's the kicker.

I thought using "guys" in a conversation about the use of the word "guys" would be obvious enough to register as tongue-in-cheek. But y'all went and proved me wrong!

Exactly. For example, the phrase "bad guy" could apply to a man or a woman. You can't just change that to "bad girl" and keep the meaning. "Bad girl" means something else entirely.

Guy isn't a gender-neutral term.

Guy isn't a gender-neutral term.

It is in many places. See my comment elsewhere in this thread. You may be unfamiliar with it in gender-neutral use, but it does exist.

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