There was a debate on Woman’s Hour (a name I PERSONALLY find very offensive, biased and exclusive) about the use of the word ‘guys’ to describe or call a group of people of different genders. As in ‘hey guys (groups of men and women), you’re table’s ready now’. And they asked ‘is this appropriate?’ To call women ‘guys’ or include them under the generality which was obviously intended to mean ‘men’, when they invented the word in 1724. Errrr, just after Guy Fawkes. Hmmm…

And this is interesting, only in as far as it shows how little ‘real news’ ever happens in August and how desperate the BBC are to fill vacant air time.

When I phone companies at work I have a (terrible?) habit, if I get through to the woman I wish to speak to, of saying ‘Ah good, my main man’. To which the reply is always an amused ‘I’m not a man’. Right, like I didn’t know that, Lavella/Victoria/Rachel. Because to me the expression ‘main man’, which obviously started in a different world before the dinosaurs evolved and in a universe far, far away, is not ‘literal’. It doesn’t ‘translate’ as main=primary, man=person with a nob. No. It becomes an expression of its own. Indivisible. Irreducible. Main-man. The person in charge. Note; ‘PERSON’, not ‘man’ in charge. I can see that because it uses the word ‘man’ and the implications of how someone so important would have to be one and thus represents such a time on the (lack of) equality spectrum, it could be offensive. Which is why I do it, obviously. Because I like to ‘push’. Not in a childbirthy way. But then, surely, for women to have reached the lofty heights of being included in the phrase ‘main man’ is surely the greatest accolade. ‘Welcome to the club’, it says, of very important people.

Words and phrases which may once have been purely descriptive, like ‘main man’, enter the vernacular as complete phrases with a meaning greater than their mere words. Similarly, the term ‘fuckwit’ does not involve intercourse nor any intelligence whatsoever. Its just a word/phrase that speaks for itself. Unlike a real fuckwit, who generally can’t, or shouldn’t bother. The word wo-man contains the word man, perhaps we should stop using it immediately.

And that’s what happened to ‘guys’. Yes, of course it ONCE meant ‘men’ but the fact that it has now become inclusive should be hailed as a feminist triumph, not the cause for fucking debate about whether its appropriately post-feministly acceptable or not. Well done ‘gels’, it says, you’ve become a ‘guy’, YOU’RE FUCKING EQUAL!!! And yet, on Woman’s Hour at least, not quite totally happy with the sound of that equality.

Its all a bit pedantic. The point where feminism/political correctness has me rushing for the whisky bottle.

Happy Wednesday ‘Guys’

A xxxx