When people talk about a term being "gender-neutral", that doesn't just mean "people use this term to refer to people of all genders"; many people also mean "do people of all genders, upon hearing this term, feel included, rather than othered". For instance, using "guys" to refer to a group emphasizes the idea that "guy" is the default and "not guy" is the exception not worth noting.
"not considered non-inclusive by any Australian I know" does not mean "not considered non-inclusive by any Australian". You've just given an example of the type of response that you and potentially some of your colleagues might give to people attempting to raise this issue. How many people you know might accurately predict that that would be your response, and thus not raise the issue because it would cause strife?
Inclusiveness is not exclusively an "American" issue, nor is it a matter of being "easily offended". Someone raising this issue to you may not be expressing offense; they may be expressing a desire to include people.
(This is not an argument specifically for "folks"; I fully agree that you shouldn't necessarily adopt a specific replacement term if that term doesn't make sense locally. Perhaps there's an inclusive term that does make more sense locally, to avoid having something that feels like a loanword.)
That's a good point, however, the original point still stands.
The term 'hey guys' may very well be materially 'inclusive' enough that it doesn't warrant intervention necessary.
In much the same way 'landlord' is not materially a non-inclusive term either.
If you want to split hairs, it's a never ending problem, the sweater will come apart.
Some people draw the line at 'hey guys' - some people draw the line at 'landlord'.
And FYI - your statement about 'Inclusivity is not an American problem' reeks of ugly cultural Imperialism. Though there's surely a kernel of truth, more than likely the applied manner will boil down to 'Americans version of everything at the remote office' - which is paradoxically might be 'exclusionary' of other cultures, like those in Australia.
A better approach might be to let Australia figure it out on their own.
> The term 'hey guys' may very well be materially 'inclusive' enough that it doesn't warrant intervention necessary.
That's not a decision made unilaterally by speakers and writers of the language; it's a decision made by those listening and reading, as well. You can't decide how your words are perceived; you can only choose what words you use.
> Some people draw the line at
Some people don't think of language in terms of "lines", as though saying "fine, this far, but no further". Language is a living, changing thing; every piece of it is interpreted in varying ways by different people, and those ways change over time. Using it, like many other human interactions, is an exercise in modeling others around you, and the net effect you want your communication to have to its many audiences, and the environment that communication will create, and all the connotations it may convey. When trying to record that in a dictionary, it may round to a few broad buckets or categories, but the language as it lives in people's heads seems more continuous than discrete.
That's true of all communication, not just specific words. If you tried to plot individual words or phrases in meaning-space, some of them would have fairly sharp well-identified points where the majority of people agree, and some of them would have fuzzier boundaries, and some of them would have multi-modal distributions. And even that oversimplifies, because it's entirely possible to model people at multiple depths, "this is what the speaker means when they're saying it, this is what parts of the audience are hearing, this is what other parts of the audience are hearing", such that your own model of some communication is a mental model of many interpretations.
This pattern applies in many different cases, and people do it all the time: predicting whether your audience is likely to know a particular piece of jargon from your field and comparing that to the value of the jargon or the need to define/explain it; accurately conveying levels of confidence/certainty/uncertainty; considering whether your audience will know a meme; attempting to come across as professional; choosing the right vocabulary level for the audience; making a new piece of terminology; naming a program or project; making a pun.
Yes, that's the usual argument that comes up at some point in those discussions: "Language has always been changing", etc etc.
What this glosses over, in my opinion, is that there are vastly different ways how language changes. Language is always changing on its own, simply because the way people talk is constantly evolving: Today's slang might become tomorrow's high language and todays high language will probably feel hilariously stilted and old-fashioned a few generations on.
It's something completely different to deliberately alter language: Encourage or discourage certain words or even languages, replace words with others, etc. Historically, that has always been closely tied to politics, power struggles and battles between opposing narratives, and I don't think it's different here.
> And even that oversimplifies, because it's entirely possible to model people at multiple depths, "this is what the speaker means when they're saying it, this is what parts of the audience are hearing, this is what other parts of the audience are hearing", such that your own model of some communication is a mental model of many interpretations.
Fully agreed, and I think you should always tune a presentation to your particular audience - but I think especially then, it's telling that Google Docs isn't even asking what your audience is. They are giving suggestions that they believe to be absolutely true, no matter which audience you are writing for.
Yes, sometimes language changes happen deliberately, sometimes they happen accidentally, and everywhere in between. Some changes that are perceived as happening naturally were deliberate. Affecting language deliberately vs accidentally is more-or-less entirely orthogonal to which side is correct. The involvement of politics doesn't eliminate the possibility of a correct side and an incorrect side, or a more-correct side and a more-incorrect side.
The strife is an ongoing American cultural war, however. Other countries generally have much more important ongoing local battles. It's a good political angle to hew in the US because it's very hard to attack - it's structurally similar to many past moral panics.
> do people of all genders, upon hearing this term, feel included, rather than othered
How other people feel is not something anyone can control. If someone is clearly addressing a group you are a part of, and clearly means to include you in their address to the group, and you decide to feel "othered" because of this term or that term, that is your problem. You need to re-evaluate how you feel. People feel all sorts of ways about everything. Sometimes your feelings are wrong.
> many people also mean "do people of all genders, upon hearing this term, feel included, rather than othered".
Yes, but this is a vastly more fuzzy criterion than the original one. What does "feeling included" mean? Who has the authority to declare how a group "feels" about something? Who even belongs to that group?
E.g., it might very well be the case that australian women did feel included when the term "guys" was used, because that was what they grew up with.
My (Australian) partner opens WFH group meetings with "hey guys", while working with mostly other women. Don't know any one that has taken offence to guys personally, either.
> Inclusiveness is not exclusively an "American" issue
Guys is used as a generic term in all English speaking countries except the US. It’s used by women to refer to groups, including exclusively female groups.
It is the US that’s out of step here (colour me surprised). Stop trying to force US English on the rest of the world.
> Guys is used as a generic term in all English speaking countries except the US. It’s used by women to refer to groups, including exclusively female groups.
This is true in large parts of the US too. There are regional dialects where this is not true, but it is not a general feature of American English.
"not considered non-inclusive by any Australian I know" does not mean "not considered non-inclusive by any Australian". You've just given an example of the type of response that you and potentially some of your colleagues might give to people attempting to raise this issue. How many people you know might accurately predict that that would be your response, and thus not raise the issue because it would cause strife?
Inclusiveness is not exclusively an "American" issue, nor is it a matter of being "easily offended". Someone raising this issue to you may not be expressing offense; they may be expressing a desire to include people.
(This is not an argument specifically for "folks"; I fully agree that you shouldn't necessarily adopt a specific replacement term if that term doesn't make sense locally. Perhaps there's an inclusive term that does make more sense locally, to avoid having something that feels like a loanword.)