Tim's journal

I'll use "you guys" a lot without thinking about it, in casual speech, where it's accepted to be a gender-neutral term. But I'm coming to understand that because one wouldn't call a woman "some guy", and probably wouldn't call girls' night out "hanging with the guys", the plural "guys" actually carries quite a bit of gender baggage. Colloquial usage is hard to affect, but in formal speech and in settings where all people are supposed to be treated as welcome members of the community, even gray area terms with -some- gender baggage in -some- contexts should be switched out in favor of something else. Saying "hey everyone" is slightly more cumbersome than saying "hey guys", but it's not that much harder, and I think the microprogression value is so, so worth it in the long run.