Tbh i think the implicit masculinization of the word 'guy' does all of us a disservice. Theres plenty of words that mean a male person but only guy carries with it the understanding that each person contributes their personal affectation to the whole of their society (new type of guy, get a load of this guy, etc). Let girls be guys!

@scattapilla there's plenty of gender-neutral words that mean something similar. why not use one of those instead?

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla I honestly can't think of a single one actually, can you rattle some off? :o

@patchuun @scattapilla I tend to default to 'person'/'people,' or maybe 'folks'

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla "person" sounds so stiff and dull to me, and "folks" can't really be used in the singular form :/

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla but dont get me wrong, I do /not/ want to be called a guy (although "you guys" is fine by me, but I nonetheless try to instead default to "y'all" but I feel fake and awkward with that despite having used it for years at this point)

@patchuun @scattapilla that's true, and also maybe I'm projecting a little too much here, but even informally being called a 'guy' triggers my dysphoria. so I'll typically take something stiff and informal over something misgender-y

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla like to me, "you guys" is gender neutral, but "a guy", "type of guy", etc. is masc basically

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla yee, I think OP's complaint is about the lexical gap of there not really being a connotational equivalent of "guy" for girls and girlthings and other non-masc entities

@patchuun @scattapilla I for one support adopting a gender-neutral 'girls'/'ladies' and seeing how long it takes for the first guy to complain

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla "you folks" would almost cut it for the addressing-a-group case but, somehow that feels even more awkward for me to say than y'all, which already feels awkward enough and like I'm stealing valor x.x

@patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead personally a fan of "cucks" (genuinely)

as in "sup, cucks?"

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla oh, I do use gender-neutral "girl" already :3
but that also has different connotations for me compared to guy!

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla oh actually, I also use "gamers" and "chat" for this context lol. idk I'm ontologically cringe, people probably shouldn't talk like me x3

@YKantRachelRead because i want to use the word 'guy'. I am not interested in using less eloquent words to describe a person, i want the word guy to not have gender

@scattapilla I mean, like it or not, 'guy' does have an inherent gendered quality to it. why should a woman accept the singular 'guy' when most men wouldn't accept the singular 'girl?'

@imbl @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead that for me has very very specific connotations lol, I could never use that as a "guy" substitute. the whole point of a "guy"-equivalent term is that it implies default settings (certainly a conversation to be had about masc-implying-default of course, I'm sure plenty of ink has been spilt on that subject by much more articulate people than me, but I digress), like, "just some guy", implies nothing about their personality or what they're like or anything like that, it conjures up no particular feelings or imagery in your head, it's just a blank stick figure template on which you draw other characteristics and adjectives: "guy who likes movies" "short guy" "IT guy"

@imbl @YKantRachelRead @scattapilla I don't really like "gal" as a fem equivalent either, a "gal" is not a blank slate to me, there are certain ineffable characteristics attached to "gal" (and plus it makes me feel like I'm larping as a cowgirl or something, similar to "y'all"). "girl" is close but it's still just a smidge more formal than "guy" in the same way that "boy" is

@patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead
"behold: an Folk." mmm yeah nah i dont like it.
unless... i do? hard to know!

@patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead I go weird with it. "Persons", "beings", "cheese bags".

Anything can be a collective pronoun with the right inflection.

But yea the key there is the confidence to just do it, and it needs a receptive audience. If you're around excessively median people they're just gonna be like, "why aren't you just saying guys?"

@scattapilla I was just thinking a few hours ago I rather like, "weird little guy" as an affectionate phrase but I need a neutral or fem version to use on myself.

@itsmaya @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead ................"darlings"

@patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead in the right crowd "hey you gays" absolutely slays.
If it doesn't you need a better crowd :3

@patchuun @scattapilla @itsmaya

"my dears"
"lovelies"

@patchuun @scattapilla @itsmaya (imagining all of these spoken in an appropriately bougie Queen's English)

@patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead affectionate possives is a good angle.
Failure to stick to theme:
"Minions", "co-conspirators", "lackeys", "chumps", "angels", "sinners", "besties", "wursties".

@YKantRachelRead i know this and i dont like it thats why i made this post

@scattapilla and my point is that it seems to me that the solution here is new terminology, rather than trying to gender-neutralize something that makes transfems dysphoric

@itsmaya @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead I'm realizing a lot of these, plus what Rachel said, are either things I already say or adjacent to things I already say. for most people I talk to regularly I do have plenty of "you guys" alternatives that feel more natural to me than "y'all". but the problem is they're too specific and not generic enough to be universally applicable. I wouldn't call a group of random people "dearies" "lovelies" etc.

@itsmaya you can be a weird little guy! Without making any statement on your gender

@scattapilla @itsmaya Maya explicitly stated that she wanted a gender-neutral or fem version, so I don't feel like telling her "it's okay to use the masc default" is a helpful reply

@patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead okay so there's a linguistic issue here that i've noticed in a few other places that has to do with gender and specifically informal non-gendered terms. namely, there aren't any. anything you look for is either going to sound silly, nonsensical, or stiff. and i think the reason for that is because "informal" isn't actually an intrinsic property of a word, but one conveyed by the existing culture. "guy" is informal because it is. peopole have used it that way for decades. the only way that changes is by picking a new word, and pushing through the weirdness, because that's how a word becomes informal. so we just pick a word, any word, or make one up. which word it is doesn't matter, because we're transgressing against a culturally-enforced linguistic boundary.

that's why i like cucks/queers/fags/homos/sluts/fuckers, etc. we're already trying to kill a linguistic god here, might as well go all the way with it

@imbl @patchuun @scattapilla excellent post, thank you

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla TBF my reply was kind of at cross-purposes to the first post.

The intent was, "I was just thinking of this similar thing" but hrm could be read as contradictory.

@imbl @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead I agree with your assessment of what the problem is, but your preferred solution leaves me unsatisfied; not everyone I might possibly talk or refer to is a cuck, a queer, a fag, homo, slut etcetera. If they're not on the team, I don't want to address them as if they were, you know?

I really think a neologism is the only real solution to this problem

@patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead glipglops it is

@imbl in a language where words aren’t conceived as having intrinsic meaning, none of them have intrinsic meaning. Borrowing languages like English don’t do intrinsic meaning because the easy way to borrow is take the sound and meaning as-found. Another language system can demand intrinsic meaning for its words and it will happen to refuse borrowing because each word needs to resolve itself into meaning within its own system. @patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead

@imbl @patchuun @scattapilla hey glipglops, how's it going

@YKantRachelRead @patchuun @scattapilla yayyyy
did good? :3

@YKantRachelRead @imbl @scattapilla lmao

@YKantRachelRead @imbl @scattapilla I'm afraid you got pranked here sister

@zephyrleifrenner @imbl @patchuun @scattapilla what

@imbl @patchuun @scattapilla yes you did sis! patpatpat

@patchuun @scattapilla @imbl no seriously, 'glipglops' is the type of thing that elle and I would say to each other lol

@YKantRachelRead @scattapilla @imbl it's also a rick and morty reference x3

@patchuun @scattapilla @imbl MOTHERFFFFFFFFFFF

@patchuun @scattapilla @imbl @YKantRachelRead patchie: "I don't want to call people cucks unless they deserve it (complimentary)"

@zephyrleifrenner @patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead we can demand intrinsic meaning all we like, but words are just mouth sounds and only have meanings because someone (usually people who died a long time ago) said they did. but nothing about a word can imbue itself with meaning. the closest we can get is onomatopoeic words which are simply an attempt to wordify a non-mouth sound. and even those are subjective not just between cultures but between people as well

@itsmaya @scattapilla @imbl @YKantRachelRead unironically, yes

@patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead i was dead serious about it though. its a good one, it's simple, it rolls off the (us english speaking, at least) tongue well, it has flow through a repetitive structure. it's a good word :3

@patchuun @scattapilla @itsmaya @YKantRachelRead cowards. normalize cuckholdry through linguistic memeticism 😤

@imbl @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead the prosody displeases me. too many phonemes too

@patchuun @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead the tyranny of structurefulness. we'll never agree on a new word, so we can either enforce our linguistic wills upon others or never communicate (mostly joking but also partially serious and i have a lot of thoughts referencing evangelion about anarchism and egoism and collectivism but im too tired to actually write this essay rn. anyway accept my new word or else 😤 /s)

@patchuun @scattapilla @imbl @YKantRachelRead what of "schmuck"

@anarchautistic @scattapilla @imbl @YKantRachelRead no bueno

@imbl a language that demands intrinsic meaning operates a bit like Euclid. Words are propositions that can be analyzed to discover their intrinsic meaning built out of axiomatic roots. Those axiomatic roots are scarce and painfully abstract, so they present a very different level of Platonic Form challenge than a word like chair. And of course in such a language there is no one word for anything, there a wide array of words and this doesn’t cause a giant problem because they can be analyzed

@zephyrleifrenner but where did those axioms come from? what gives them meaning or authority?

@patchuun @anarchautistic @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead okay what about unintelligable brutal slamming death metal inhale scream s?

@imbl @anarchautistic @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead I give up I think. language is bad actually

@anarchautistic @patchuun @imbl @YKantRachelRead this ones the best so far which is double silly because its the yiddish word for dick

@patchuun @anarchautistic @scattapilla @YKantRachelRead

@YKantRachelRead @patchuun @imbl
incredible

@imbl the system itself internally and the discovery of words that perfectly convey an aspect of the true nature of the object, and that perfectly resolve so that any of the possible ways they are analyzed they reinforce the intended meaning. You can object that it is all self referential, that none of it exists in the physical world, but again it is much like mathematics.

@imbl another way to say this is the authority of each axiom comes from whether they combine with the other roots in such a way as to build this system and that this system then works to create worlds that beautifully perfectly, poetically describe things in the world.

@zephyrleifrenner are beauty, perfection, and poetry not subjective though?

my objections aren't that this is self-referential or abstract, but that it's basis is still extrinsic. nothing gives these words intrinsic meaning except for these axioms, but these axioms also (i assume, since i don't actually know the axioms) aren't intrinsic (although i'm genuinely very curious about these axioms and perfect intrinsic words, the concept is interesting :3)

@patchuun @imbl @YKantRachelRead yeah this is a good way of putting it. We need a quick easy word for nonsexual nongender general purpose description of humans and theres only so many quick easy words to go around

@imbl the reason the axioms in Euclid are worth anything is because the system they create is geometry. Book 1 proposition 47, aka the Pythagorean theorem, is a necessary result of the axioms. So you can validate the hypothetical worth of the axioms by their result. You can change the axioms and get non-Euclidean geometry which has its uses and this is where you get into the extrinsic nature of them, but suddenly that nature has a very different quality, right? These axioms build something.

@zephyrleifrenner well yes, but those axioms apply to euclidean geometry, and i'm not convinced that the existence of, say, the axiom of choice, implies anything about the existence of extrinsically meaningful language