Why is using the term ‘guys’ for women acceptable?

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Guys and gals….

Just a quick one for you guys, I mean gals, reading this post.  I’m writing this on International Women’s Day. I don’t know how this works out for you but as a predominantly work from home, self-employed person, this day doesn’t differentiate from any other workday.  But I do respect the shout out. I know that the large tech companies are putting resources and energy into acknowledging the important roles and potential inequalities of women in the workplace (my partner works in the tech industry). They particularly highlight this on IWD but there is a concerted effort to redress the balance on a day to day basis.

However the main point of the post is this.  Why has the word ‘guys’ become so acceptable when addressing women?  And from my experience, the gender-fluid youth are the worst culprits!  We are encouraged to drop ‘he/she’ terms for the gender-neutral ‘they’. (I tend to do this anyway when having to identify a gender isn’t an integral part of the story.)  But if saying he or she is no longer politically correct, how can calling either a mixed gender group, let alone a women only group, the male term – guys? How can this be considered okay? 

I’ve looked it up in the dictionary. 1. Guy = a man or fellow. 2. Guys = a person: used in plural to refer to the members of a group regardless of sex. So what we have here is that it’s acceptable to refer to the plural of woman, ie women, as a group of men. Well I guess we put up with wo-man, wo-men. But do we really have to accept yet another term where the male version takes precedent or is considered gender-neutral? Will it one day be acceptable to call a group of men ‘Bettys’? I doubt it.

If you haven’t been aware of this before, I guarantee you will now be.  You’ll find, as I do, that every time someone, be they male or female, refers to you as a guy, you’ll mutter under your breath… I’m not a guy, I’m a woman.

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