The last time my husband and I ate supper in an upscale restaurant, the host seated us at a table covered with a white cloth. A young woman introduced herself as Becky, our server. She asked, “Can I get you guys something to drink?”
Sunday at church, two boys and four girls gathered around our female pastor for the children’s sermon. She greeted them with, “Good morning. It’s great to see you guys.”
While I watched a high school girls’ softball game recently, one of the players shouted, “Come on you guys, let’s get some runs.”
I cringed each time I heard gals referred to as guys. I was part of the women’s movement in the sixties and seventies that changed our country including our language. Our daughter, Lisa, became one of the females who invaded all-male bastions such as police and fire departments to become police officers and firefighters. Men joined women as flight attendants and nurses.
Why go backwards? In the fifties, Becky would have been our waitress, our pastor would have been a man and there would have been no girls’ ball team. My female school teachers assured me that documents such as The Declaration of Independence with the words, “All men are created equal,” meant girls, too. When I became an adult, I learned that wasn’t true.
The English language provides words for a mixed group such as people and children that don’t have a gender connotation. Ball players can still be ladies.
How do you refer to females or groups including both sexes?