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Comment by sb057 | Hacker News Reader

>while they are not currently necessary to view the file, they will be by the end of the year, assuming nothing changes.

What makes the author think something is changing?

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These were added extremely recently with no announcement.

Okay, I know what the tokens do. But how does this guy know they'll start working by the end of the year?

"she/her it/its" right on the page -- not a guy.

Guy is gender neutral, like person.

It is a noun, not a pronoun. “Dude” is also gender neutral, to save you a post at a later date.

Oh come on. Guy is sometimes gender neutral, but is overwhelmingly often not.

I would say “guys” is gender neutral but “guy” generally isn’t.

You're on the right track with guy being more more gendered than guys, but I wouldn't go so far as to say guys is completely neutral. Take "Guys and Dolls" for example. A very dated example, but that specifically-gendered usage does still exist to a reasonable extent, like saying "it's guys' night" and so forth.

Basically, guys is neutral in those cases where it's used to describe a group that isn't entirely male but otherwise it's male (somewhat circular reasoning, but I can't think of a better way to describe it); guy doesn't usually get that same logic applied.

“My guy!” - joking adoration “Get this guy an award/beer/microphone!” - similar

“THIS GUY, am I right?” - used to mock/express disbelief

“Bro” is also gender neutral, just adding in to this mix.

“Bro don’t play me like that.” “What’s up bro?”

I don't mean to derail this tangent, but I noticed your profile. End of year is when this changes?

Where I'm from, "guy" is gender neutral. Please stop trying to force American cultural norms on me - I'm not interested.

It's amazing how often I ask guy if they're into dudes and get a "No" without even a follow up as to what gender the dude is.

In this situation, it's obvious from context that the word is meant to be used as gendered. Don't be deliberately obtuse.

“Into dudes” provides context which genders the noun. It’s really not that hard.

“Dude, you wouldn’t believe what happened to me this weekend” gender ambiguous.

Context is everything.

No, guy is not gender neutral.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/guy

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/guy

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/guy

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11816/is-guy-gen...

Note that wiktionary points out the fact that the female complement to "guy" is "gal". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/guy

That's nice. The cultural norms where you're from aren't necessarily reflective of the use of language elsewhere though.

I haven’t heard the word gal used in person in a long time. “Guy” I hear frequently.

“Gal” seems derisive. I would assume someone was being berated or otherwise dismissed if being called “gal”. As in, “oh I suppose there are women here that I will address differently”, hence “gal”.

Interesting, I wouldn't place gal as derisive, just a word that has fallen out of common use. I used to work as a server and we'd talk about stuff like this.

Wonder if there is a regional aspect to it, or perhaps it being an older and less used word has lead to more individual variance in connotations?

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