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Comment by vacri | Hacker News Reader

(That's a gender-inclusive "you guys".)

Or you could just use gender-neutral language in the first place, if you're concerned about being inclusive. "you folks", "my colleagues", even just "you". There's a host of alternatives. It scans weirdly that you highlight that the phrase might be taken the wrong way, but then choose to explain it rather than alter it.

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I sent the following mail to Dan, too, but for others who might be confused at why people take offense to an attempt at inclusiveness:

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I'm kind of surprised to see you explicitly call attention to your usage of "you guys" in your post. I'd originally thought that I at least preferred it to leaving "you guys" there unannounced ... but given a little more thinking, I suspect it's actually worse. The subtext that you've provided there, to people who do not identify as "guys", is 'I know you're there, and I know that these words make some of you uneasy, but don't worry, I didn't mean to offend you, I just really really wanted to use these words anyway; I think they're worth the risk of offending you'.

I know what you were trying to get at -- you want to make Hacker News a better place for /everyone/. (And thanks for that!) I'm sure you didn't intend that meaning to non-guys, and I totally understand how that came about. But, given that, I think that you might want to edit those words. Can I recommend the usage of "you all", or if you want to be more colloquial, "you folks"?

Point taken. I rewrote the phrase to "you all" before I saw this, so hopefully I'm getting the hang of it.

Thanks! Much appreciated.

"You guys" is gender neutral where I'm from, and I don't think you're entitled to redefine the term 'guys' as being specific to a gender where I'm from. "You blokes" or "You gals"... yeah... gender specific in my immediate culture.

At some point, you're going to need to accept that when some people use a term that's loaded for you, it's not necessarily loaded for them, and the problematic nature of the term is only problematic to you and your circles, and it's just not intended as insulting, demeaning, belittling, or othering.

I'm not sure I agree in this case. The Oxford English Dictionary gives ones of the definitions of guy as 'people of either sex' [0]. There's value in defending this meaning, and not running away from it because it could be misinterpreted. This is similar to how geeks like to defend the positive definition of 'hacker', rather than avoiding it.

To be clear: I'm not trying to minimize the feelings of women or other marginalized communities. Rather, I'm just saying that one way to respond is to aggressively 'colonize' words so that a positive meaning becomes the dominant meaning.

[0] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/guy

I agree with you on the usually dual-gender definition, though it's not always seen that way. I'm saying that it scans oddly to highlight a term and justify it, rather than alter it. If you think your terminology is going to cause problems, then rephrase yourself, don't justify keeping it as is.

I didn't really mean for my criticism to end up talking about further gender issues - it's really meant to be a comment on better communication. I was reading the submission about topic A, then hit a parenthetical remark that is justifying an orthogonal topic B, then back to topic A again. It doesn't scan well.

What do you mean by 'it doesn't scan well'?

The flow of the paragraph isn't fluid. One concept doesn't flow into the next concept and/or it reads awkwardly.

The meaning of "guys" (as "men" or "people of either sex") depends a lot on its context and a lot on the person reading the words - here's a survey with some examples: http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/27/guys-guys-guys/ (But a moderation note probably isn't a great place to try to shift interpretations of words.)

Exactly.

If you are smart enough to recognise that your choice of language is not ideal, it would be better to change it rather than try to justify it.

Agree strongly with jwise0's well-crafted comment: the justification makes it worse. You recognise that this is a gendered word, which a group of people might be uncomfortable with, and yet you indicate that you are deliberately using it.

The second word isn't necessary. "You" can be singular or plural.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/you

It's a term of affection.

So are 'you folks' and other options. The thing is, you turn a comment that has nothing to do with gender issues into one that highlights it with things like your parenthetical remark. If you think it's not inclusive and that's an issue for you, then find another way to say it.

I'm not offended by the comment, nor do I have trouble understanding it. It's just odd to express inclusiveness by highlighting and justifying a term rather than adjusting it.

I see your point. What I wrote was the way I would normally say it when I was trying to be friendly to a group, such as a team. Then I realized someone might think it was exclusive, which I certainly didn't intend, so I added the other bit. It's colloquial English; the phrase has clearly morphed to be gender neutral. The confusion comes from the fact that the word "guys", standalone, has not. I probably should have known better than to use it, but I like my English to be alive.

"You folks" sounds corny. No one says "folks", in my experience, other than corporate managers in emails.

It's not so clearly neutral; this confusion could be a language register mismatch issue. "You guys" as a gender-neutral term is a very informal usage - it's something I might say in person to a mixed-gender group of my close friends. But even slightly more formal language isn't as slangy, such as a written post on a forum of mostly strangers and acquaintances, so the "you guys" doesn't read as obviously gender-neutral.

You've hit the nail on the head, I think, except that the circle of usage in this case goes quite a bit further than close friends. Actually, the more I think about it, it really does seem to me that "you guys" is a distinct usage from "guys". But linguistic minutiae (some of us like them!) are obviously not the main point here, and I appreciate the deeper insight.

It's hard for me not to write in an alive way, which means using informalities when they feel like the mot juste. Actually, I'm dreading the prospect of having to strip all possible misunderstandings out of my writing in advance. It feels like going to language jail. But I understand why people do it and why I may have to. I hope that anyone who cares about this noticed that I did replace "you guys" with "you all" above.

Edit: When I said "all possible misunderstandings", I wasn't talking about inclusivity—I meant literally all possible misunderstandings about anything.

You don't have to sterilise your languge; it just takes a little bit of practise. It's something of a myth that language must be sterilised to be inclusive. Perhaps see it as a challenge to your language skills rather than a prison sentence?

I did the same thing myself with my general assumption that all online authors are 'he' until otherwise noted, with the excuse that it eased the 'he/she' usage issue. That annoyed the living shit out of me, as it was really an excuse for laziness, so I changed it. Now you'll usually see me refer directly to someone's handle, an article author's surname* when it's known, or just say 'the author'. Occasionally it makes the sentence feel a touch stilted, so I haven't perfected it, but I'm much happier with that than the previous way. Sometimes I use 'they', which is gaining acceptance, but there's still a group of people that can't stand the singular 'they'. Overall it was fun training myself that way.

You'll be under more scrutiny, admittedly :)

*What prompted me to do this was watching a political talking heads show. I noticed that male politicians were always referred to by surname, as were older female ones, but young female politicians got the informal first-name treatment. It really drove home the difference in professional respect given to the various groups.

Oh, I didn't mean "sterilized to be inclusive"! I meant trying to avoid all possible misunderstandings about anything.

Nice, thanks for editing the post. Sociolinguistics is fascinating; at least not every kind of mismatch/misunderstanding is loaded. And there's a paper for some linguist to write on the hybrid tone of friendly and authoritative that forum moderators find to use.

(Edit: Part of why I consider clear use of "you guys" to be so limited is that when used in professional/quasi-professional tech industry contexts, it can accidentally annoyingly remind readers that we're among very few women around: http://subfictional.com/2012/07/02/language-matters-stop-usi... )

It really is fascinating.

I've been a public forum moderator for two or three days at this point. I'll probably find a lot of hybrid tones to use before there's a reliably good one. Your patience in the meantime is appreciated.

And "you people" sounds condescending, or in some cases racist or otherwise derogatory (I sure wouldn't say "you people are really bad at X" to a population entirely of another race).

Isn't the thought and recognition enough?

"It scans weirdly that you highlight that the phrase might be taken the wrong way, but then choose to explain it rather than alter it"

Edit: re 'enough?', this isn't meant to be a crushing, accusative comment, but advice for better expression in the future.

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