Word up, guys

Following on from yesterday’s reconsideration of the treatment of Guy Fawkes, here’s a quirky little piece from The New Yorker.

Guy Fawkes and the new pronoun in town
The new pronoun is “guys” itself, which, according to Allan Metcalf in “The Life of Guy: Guy Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot, and the Unlikely History of an Indispensable Word,” belongs on a paradigm of English personal pronouns in the twenty-first century: “I, you, he/she/it, we, guys, they.”

It’s used as a non-gender-specific pronoun, and I’ve certainly heard it being used that way at work for a while now. But for some, that’s still a problem.

But, for many, Guy’s etymological offspring, “guys,” when used as a pronoun, remains masculine, and its use is frowned upon as demeaning to women and L.G.B.T.Q. people. What to do about this upstart pronoun that has sneaked in through the back door? “Folks” is a little too folksy, but those same L.G.B.T.Q. people who gave us the singular nonbinary “they,” as well as “Mx.” and “Latinx,” have a solution: “folx.” Which sounds a bit like Fawkes. We can’t get away from this Guy, guys.

Author: Terry Madeley

Works with student data and enjoys reading about art, data, education and technology. View all posts by Terry Madeley