Fortunately we have Vox’s Jenée Desmond-Harris to instruct the English-speaking world on the insult this “gendered” word imposes on women in the workplace, and everywhere else.
Never mind the difficulty people would have in finding a workable and politically suitable replacement.
It all pales in comparison with the need to address linguistic inequality.
By the way, it’s still cool to use “pales,” right? I may need to update my scorecard:
I’m a big user of “guys,” and when it was first brought to my attention that the phrase was frowned upon among leading feminist thinkers and people concerned with equality — especially in male-dominated workplaces — my reaction was “Oh, come on. It’s inaccurate, but it’s not actually hurting anyone.”But I’ve changed my mind. As I read up on the issue, I realized that my kneejerk response (“but it doesn’t seem like that big a deal to me, personally, and changing would require effort on my part and that’s hard and tiring”) is nothing more than a very typical lazy excuse for avoiding the tiny tweaks to our lives that can, as a whole, make society more equal...
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