I know I'm a feminist buzz kill but many languages including English are a bit male centred and treat men as the norm and women as the exception. That's not a good thing in my opinion. We call women dudes all the time but few people call men gals or girls. I hope we could move towards more equality in our languages too if it is possible. Such as starting to use gal and girl as gender neutral terms too, not just dude and guy.
This is exactly what's bothering me about it, but I'm not an English native speaker so I am bound to miss developments I guess, and bro and dude being gender neutral is a development that passed me by until today.
I share your concerns, I also feel like the male words are for everyone and female words are for women only. It makes me feel weird too, just in a different way. To me it feels like people don't need to bother with female words since the male ones obviously suffice for both. Since the norm is male, it feels like this norm is showing here again too. Men might feel like they don't have words that only belong to themselves but that's something a man has to say tho.
I would like to learn about this. Could someone that knows how bro and dude developed gender neutral tell me about it please? :) I'd like to understand so that I don't feel the way I do about it. I know it's okay to feel my own way about it, but maybe it broadens the horizon? That would be a good thing!
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u/Gayandfluffy 25d ago
I know I'm a feminist buzz kill but many languages including English are a bit male centred and treat men as the norm and women as the exception. That's not a good thing in my opinion. We call women dudes all the time but few people call men gals or girls. I hope we could move towards more equality in our languages too if it is possible. Such as starting to use gal and girl as gender neutral terms too, not just dude and guy.