My mom often corrects me and my sister when we call each other dude, which really shouldn’t matter, but she’s making a big deal out of it anyways. And as someone who often doesn’t conform to what the defined box of what a girl is, it kinda hurts to be shoved back into place by one of the people who is supposed to accept me. So she told me to construct a survey and here’s part of it. Reblog if you’ve used dude (or other things like bro or man)as a non gender specific term before.
I think I call everyone dude, including my pets
Right? Like this is just a really common thing. The only exception is if somebody hates being called dude.
Also, I’ve had friends and supervisors who called women “gals” or “girls” instead of “dudes” or “guys” and it is just wildly jarring. Because it comes off like “hello I am really super invested in you being women. Hey, your gender, which should be irrelevant here, is really creepily important to me.”
“gals” has always seemed like such an… awkward word to me. Pretty sure I’ve always used “guys” as a general purpose term, though it was certainly cemented in high school. Given the nature of my high school (aka, all-girls school), “you guys” was, 99% of the time, directed at a group consisting entirely of girls. Meanwhile, the gender-specific term was “Guys” as in “I saw a Guy” and entirely a matter of emphasis.
I swear the entire school could pronounce the capital letter