You are right, and I apologize.

It was done to belabor a point. Namely that for a community that aims to be welcoming, belaboring that point can actually make it less welcoming.

It is taxing to participate in an environment where common language usage causes people to take offense where none is given or intended.

Using the word "guys" to describe Rust developers is not offensive; it's just incorrect.

How is it incorrect - 'guys' (plural) is not gender specific, and refers to groups of people regardless of gender.

In addition to general usage anecdotes (of women using this word to address groups of women), I'm happy to provide dictionary citations if you'd like?

"Guys" is a fairly complex term[1]. Its common gender association changes when used plurally from male (when used singularly) to non-gendered. Like "man", when used in place of "humanity", I believe it's a holdover from a time when it was entirely acceptable to be dismissive of half the race. As such, it's probably appropriate to be at least a little sensitive to the topic, since it's not just a matter or speech norms, but a reference to past inequality.

1: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11816/is-guy-gend...

> I believe it's a holdover from a time when it was entirely acceptable to be dismissive of half the race.

Ironically, when it was entirely acceptable to be dismissive of half the race, separate words were used - explicitly calling out a difference between groups. 'Guys' as a gender neutral term is a relatively recent phenomenon, and in many ways is an equalizing term.

> As such, it's probably appropriate to be at least a little sensitive to the topic

Alternatively you could argue that it's appropriate not to be over-sensitive to common, and innocent, language usage.

Later in this thread, someone even uses it specifically to refer to only men:

> The reason I said hostile is that in most discussions on Hacker News and Reddit a lot of people argue that the only reason women are so under-represented in tech is that all the guys are very hostile to women. This survey goes against that. For some reason they refuse to believe that some things are more interesting to women than men and vice versa.

I can happily find a reference (though not in this thread) to a woman using it to refer to a group of all women if you like...

Since we both have anecdotes, anecdotes are clearly not going to "solve" this.