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Re:Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser by jrockway on Thursday November 03, 2016 @08:43AM (#12863478)
This isn't about political correctness, it's about using the words you actually mean. If you are addressing a group of people, it makes sense to include them all in your address. So use a word that includes everyone, as the bot mentions, there are plenty.

If you think "guys" is gender-neutral, how about a thought experiment. You're a man, you started dating a woman. Do you tell your friends, "hey, I just started dating this great guy!" Nope. So why use that as your generic pronoun for your coworkers? It unnecessarily makes people feel excluded, even if you don't intend to exclude them.

Re:Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser by ohyoutravel on Thursday November 03, 2016 @11:22AM (#12864701)
100% on board with this. But I think the "dating a great guy" example is slightly off. In many languages, the masculine plural refers to a group of all men, or a mixed group. Whereas the feminine plural only refers to a group of women. And of course masculine singular refers to male only, and vice versa.

Saying "guys" in English refers to a masculine group or a mixed-gender group historically. Same with Spanish, for example. The suffix -o is masculine and -a is feminine. But -os is plural masculine or mixed gender group, -as is feminine only group.

That's generally just how language works. When I personally speak to any group (or person) I don't use gendered language, but although I like your example, I don't think it holds up to scrutiny.

Re:Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser by jrockway on Thursday November 03, 2016 @11:56AM (#12865065)
Right, "man" being the default gender is somewhat unfair to half the population, so it's best to avoid it. Yes, this means you have to think of new words. Nobody had a problem when their phone keyboards were too shitty to type "you", so I think we can do it.
Re:Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser by JBReefer on Thursday November 03, 2016 @12:07PM (#12865177)
I don't think that the 472 million Spanish speakers are going to change their cherished language based on your opinions.

Once you're done with them though, you only have the rest of the Romance language derived world. I don't think it's a fight worth having lol.

Re:Why a federal high-tech start-up is a money loser by jrockway on Thursday November 03, 2016 @01:46PM (#12866207)
So, go back to the beginning of the comment thread; it's about how a bot that only speaks English is "dystopian". English doesn't have gendered words, so we can quite easily fix the problem with almost no effort at all.