Rhetoric Race and Religion
More and more I find myself responding, “I am not a guy,” to waiters in restaurants, to educated people at conferences, and even to people in progressive churches who refer to groups of women and men as “you guys.” Sometimes these are groups of all women, and still they call us “you guys.”
So the idea for this article has been stirring in me for a while. Its title was inspired by the work of Jeanette Blonigan Clancy, a Catholic lay theologian who writes a blog called “God Is Not Three Guys In The Sky,” and David Marks, a Presbyterian music minister whose blog is called “God Is Not a Guy.”
Just when I thought we’d about eliminated the so-called “generic” use of “man” because it really is exclusive, up pops “you guys” almost everywhere. Women and girls seem to use “you guys” as much as men and boys do. So why do females think they’re included in “you guys”? These same women usually protest loudly when they are referred to as “men” or “man,” as the King James and other older versions of the Bible do and as many churches still do. So why do they think it’s okay to be called by the male word “guys”?
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