Can the Term "Guys" Refer to Women and Girls?

By Heather Gehlert, AlterNet. Posted February 28, 2007.

Going out to eat with my father is always a tense affair. For the five or ten minutes it takes from the time the host or hostess seats us to the time our server comes to take our order, I sit quietly, feeling anxious and wondering how our waiter or waitress will greet us.

Will she say, "How are you all doing today?" Or, "What can I get you folks to drink?" If we're near our hometown in the rural Midwest, there is a good chance she'll say the latter, but, more often than not, we hear: "Hi, my name is Jamie, and I'll be taking care of you guys today. Our specials this afternoon are smoked salmon, parmesan-crusted tilapia ..."

"Excuse me," my dad cuts in, his eyes narrowing to a glare, "but I only see one guy here."

My stomach drops and I stare at the table in front of me, trying not to roll my eyes. The lecture never takes more than a minute, but it's still excruciating.

On rare occasion, a waiter or waitress will argue back, saying "guys" is a gender-neutral term. But, most of the time, he or she just stands very still, jaw dropped, looking stunned.

Because this exchange never leads to a thoughtful discussion of gender and language, I long ago dismissed it as one of my dad's quirks -- a one-person tirade to laugh at and let go of. Besides, one of my father's biggest heroes is Bill O'Reilly -- not exactly a portrait of feminist ideals.

Yet, for whatever reason, now that my dad and I live in different states and I see him only once or twice a year, I'm noticing how often men and women use the phrase "you guys" to refer to both sexes. It happens in restaurants, at council meetings -- even in grade-school classrooms.

And so, a voice in the back of my head is starting to say, Maybe he has a point. Maybe this isn't an arbitrary battle over an arbitrary word.

A cursory glance at blog postings shows that the use of the word "guys" is much more discussed and much more controversial than I had realized.

Giving credence to my dad's argument, dozens of postings read something like this: Try walking up to a group of men and women and saying, "Hey, girls, how's it going?" The reaction won't be positive. The men in the group probably won't find the feminine label amusing -- and certainly not arbitrary.

So why is the reverse acceptable? Why is "girls" gender-specific, but "guys" is not?

"Is it because men are not considered gendered, like white people do not consider themselves a race or European-Americans ethnic?" writes Farrah Ferriell, an instructor at the Women's Studies Program at Western Kentucky University. "I say yes ..."

A few posts down on the same site, Kathy Ferguson, a teacher from Hawaii, writes, "You know, I think I find myself in the "get a life" camp on these questions. ... '[Y]ou guys' [can be said] with affection. Words don't have inherent meanings, after all; they have the meanings that usage gives them, and are not necessarily stuck in past patriarchal contexts. I also find that I have many more important struggles in my classrooms than these."

See more stories tagged with: feminism, gender, language

Heather Gehlert is a managing editor at AlterNet.

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