In many contexts, "guys" is used to refer to any individual... not always in the perfectly neutral way I grew up with, but often enough that no difference / prejudice / sarcasm / etc is intended.
If you're not attracted to men, do you feel weird about being asked "so, what kind of guys do you find attractive?" Some of my guy friends who have done this exercise have found it's more gendered to them than they thought.
Great question. My perception is that ‘guys’ is generally still perceived as gender neutral by people (except for those into feminist blogs), but sometimes I wonder. It would be good to have a proper answer to this question. How do we get an answer without stepping on a political minefield?
I don't think it's a minefield of a question. In general if you want to know how women feel about it you need to either poll some you feel comfortable talking with or read enough experiences to get a good sense of opinion. I don't think you can derive other people's experience simply by thinking about it and or asking the wrong people. "Guys" is indeed standard language, but if you look at language the standard overwhelmingly favors men. Using "guys" maybe isn't the worst thing you can do, but if you believe in death by 1000 papercuts it's worth considering whether it matters to keep using it, or if you can switch to a different term. Personally I'm not attached to the word and to me it sounds like yet another way women are implicitly removed via language, so it's an easy decision to just pick another word.
As an experiment, use the word "guys" to refer to an organization (if you have one) in your company that is 80% female. "Let's ask the marketing guys about this one." Does it sound strange? If it does, then the term is not gender neutral.
In mixed groups or groups of men I still seem to say guys and I don’t think it’s an issue, although now that it’s been brought to my attention a lot of times if it’s a work setting I might revert to “hey, how is everyone”.
One thing I noticed is that I’d probably feel off calling a group of female coworkers gals, so I tend to refer to them as women I work with.
Conversely though, I rarely refer to group of male coworkers as men I work with and would probably say “a couple of guys at work” or something.
Language is funny like that, and intent, tone, familiarity, and cultural background matter a lot too.
For instance I’d never call anyone honey at work, but when an older black woman would say something like “oh honey, we can’t do this like that” it was totally fine because it was quite clear that was just her lexicon and it wasn’t uncomfortable for anyone at all.
Life is full of ambiguities, generally if you have to ask “might this make someone uncomfortable?”, I generally just avoid it.
Which can be a bit tough for me sometimes, I definitely grew up and would pepper my speech with curse words as in “oh shit!” Or “holy fuck really?”, but I’ve learned to limit that a bit over time.
