Why do we refer to groups of people regardless of gender as

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Why do we refer to groups of people regardless of gender as "guys"? As in:

"hi guys!"

Even if that group includes females.

I would imagine just "ease" and to be casual. It's just a parroted word and I think it means to signify informality and maybe familiarity.

I wonder if it doesn't stem from the era in which females were widely viewed as chattels, and thus not considered to be people. In Arabic, a mixed group is referred to in the masculine (though some "progressive" types have begun to say "boys and girls"). I suspect this is merely an artifact from a past time.

I don't mind being called a guy. I'd rather be seen as male than female, in a vintage sense.

When addressing a group of females, I always say "Hi guys - er, I mean girls!" as a joke. It usually gets a chuckle out of them.

Hello.

There was a post in some other thread a while ago (I can't remember what the thread was about) that mentioned a woman having been offended by a waiter in a restaurant or something who addressed the group of women including her as guys in a friendly manner, and correcting him, saying "us, ladies". So, some women seem to be offended by it, though that was the only example of such women that I have ever come across.

In some other languages a group of people is still officially referred to in a masculin form as long as there is at least one male person in the group. So in an extreme example, if there is a group of 100 people, out of whom only one is male, and 99 are female, because of the presence of one male, the group is treated as masculin. Also, an equivalent of the word "fathers" is used to refer to parents (including a mother). I don't know if there are feminists who are complaining about it.

I don't know the reason for or the history of the use of the word "guys".

I just call them humans.

I've been wondering that myself. The first time I encountered that use of 'guys' was when I watched "Home alone" for the first time (when it was new). When he wakes up alone, he goes down and calls out "guys", and my initial thought was 'why is he only calling the males?', but since guys were translated to 'folkens' I assumed it was slang.

Since then I have only seen it as a casual greeting. It's a little weird though, since no one would refer to a single girl as a guy or a dude.


That could definitely have something to do with it. It's the same in Hebrew, by the way. Kinda like people tend to say "he" when gender is unknown.