What’s a Good Gender-Neutral Term for a Group of People?
Recently it’s been bugging me that I say "guys" to refer to a mixed-gender group of people. It’s a small thing, perhaps, but little things like this make a difference, and add up to big biases (consider the "boy and his father get in an accident" story - since you probably don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll blog about soon). I remember when I was about ten years old watching "Star Trek: The New Generation," and laughing that they had changed "where no man has gone before" to "where no one has gone before." My mom tried to explain why these little things were important, and when I told her I thought it was silly, she actually cried (one of the very few times I’ve seen her cry) and said that if I couldn’t see the small things, there was no hope of my really understanding what equality meant. It broke my heart to see her cry, and it really made me think. Since then I’ve had similar revelations, usually originally pointed out by friends - such as referring to women as women and not "girls" ("girl" is not at all the same as "guy"; "girl" maps to "boy," whereas "guy" is age-independent - no such term exists for women).
As for referring to groups, a friend of mine says "folks" (it was his saying this that really made me start thinking about this) but I find this too "folksy;" "you people" sounds too Ross-Perot-sticking-his-foot-in-his-mouth; "ya’ll" sounds too Southern. Can anyone think of a good one?
