Guys. What’s the Big Deal?
Guys, what’s the big deal? That is my question for those who are offended by the increasingly commonplace usage of “guys” as a gender neutral term describing both males and females in the plural. Now, as with all things language, what we say, what we mean, and how others perceive our words can be entirely different. The finer nuances of exact meaning can and do change over time without any official signpost warning. Language is complicated business. And when a term is slowly in the processes of a semantic shift, there are growing pains. That is where we currently are with guys.
A person that disapproves of using guys gender neutrally typically starts with the premise that guys is in perfect opposition to gals. We have men and women, boys and girls, and guys and gals. But this supposed semantic symmetry has a problem. While the first two examples are perfect equivalents in our language to designate gender specificity, the latter example is not. To state the obvious, nobody says gals anymore. And this is where our semantic symmetry falls apart. In order to have symmetry you need . . . symmetry!
For terms that have a descriptive purpose that is in binary opposition - pretty/ugly, good/bad, like/dislike - we have meaning attached to each that is mutually codependent. There must be a term B in opposition with term A otherwise the meaning of Term A can semantically change or disappear altogether. If for some odd reason good disappeared from our verbal repertoire, we would not have bad as we know it. This is where we are with guys and gals. It is unstable in meaning by not having a binary opposition to counterbalance it. Its prototype antithesis - that which is used with, evolved alongside, and is assumed to be its converse - has weakened to the point of disappearing. In short, our guy has been ditched by his gal.
The irony is that gal predominated first. Adam might have appeared before Eve in the biblical account of creation, but here our gal was first on the scene, with a first usage recorded around 1795. Commonplace usage slowly started an uptick in the mid-1830s, surged at the the very end of the 19th century, and reached its peak in 1952 just as I Love Lucy (speaking of gals!) was hitting the television airwaves opposite Ozzie & Harriet (a guy and a gal).
So what does all this mean for us in the year 2022? It means that if you are 70 years old or older you probably used gal at one point and might be hanging on to its meaning either consciously or subconsciously. If you are 50-70 (as a rough estimate) you might not have used gal typically, but grew up with popular cultural references to it here and there (we watched I Love Lucy and Ozzie & Harriet as reruns on TV, for example). If you are younger than this things get murky for gals, and increasingly so for those progressively younger than this.
The bottom line is that if you still associate guys with the male gender and are offended by its use to describe females, then you are likely on the wrong side of a linguistic phenomenon. But only time will tell for sure, so fight and resist if you wish. But if nothing else understand that this is simply a normal part of language change. The use of guys in the vast majority of occasioned uses would be indicative of its trending in a different direction of meaning and not to be taken as either conscious or subconscious gender bias.
Hang out in any college coffee shop and watch someone walk in late to a meeting with a mixed gender group and note how many times the person says something akin to, “Sorry I’m late guys” or “How long have you guys been here?” The person is not referring only to the males in the group and the females should not feel slighted.
One interesting linguistic fact: we do not refer to females as guy in the singular. It only applies in the plural. You would never say, “The guy waiting our table is terrible, she has not filled our water glasses once.” Some might claim this is evidence to support the idea that we really do mean males when we say guys because a guy in the singular can only be a male. Not so fast my contrarian friend. Speaking of fast, language change is not fast. It is slow. Semantically, terms have a tendency to expand rather than contract. Guys expanding in the plural is the logical first step as mixed gender inevitably blurred initially in addressed intent. There might have been a period of questioning of gender inclusivity, but that is gone now. Guy in the singular will either get there by hitching its wagon to guys or it will simply never stick for reasons every bit as unknown as why guys became gender neutral or gal(s) disappeared in the first place.
Bottom line for everyone: it is simply not worth getting upset over. Wouldn’t you guys agree?
