maple classic™ 
"dude" is not gender neutral
you don't have to "play guess the gender" if you only take a second to ask the person or read their bio
if you disagree please feel free to go eat your own shoe
@squirrel or hell, just use gender neutral terms until you get around to finding out
That's what I tend to do 'cause I'm super lazy
I was pretty sure that dude became a unisex term in like the 70s?
I am troubled by the implication that we should turn a term that is seeing neutral usage into a gendered term purely because of a suspicion of coded use. That seems counterproductive to queering language.
@Irick @troubleMoney dude is not gender neutral
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dude
it always meant male
@squirrel @troubleMoney
From the article:
"In the early 1960s, dude became prominent in surfer culture as a synonym of guy or fella. The female equivalent was "dudette" or "dudess," but these have both fallen into disuse, and "dude" is now also used as a unisex term."
@troubleMoney
In academic linguistics we seek to describe rather than proscribe usage. The politics of language are another issue entirely, which is sort of the issue here.
Dude is commonly in use as a gender neutral term in many communities (source: http://www.pitt.edu/~kiesling/dude/dude.html ). What is the political gain associated with gendering it?
It seems a linguistic regression which does not follow with the general trends.
Feminist Linguist perspective on the soruced study: https://debuk.wordpress.com/2016/02/21/guys-and-dudes/
@Irick Well, for a start that's not what the data presented there indicates
It shows that it's used primarily, but not exclusively, as a male term in the groups surveyed
@troubleMoney "Here I want to pause and make a general point about the relationship between language and gender. The fact that a linguistic form is used more by men than women, or vice-versa, does not justify the conclusion that what the form actually expresses is masculinity or femininity."
- Linguist's commentary on the data
She goes on to argue it is not the term, but the 'cool solidarity' that the term represents that is coded. I agree with this, and I very much encourage decoupling.
@Irick None of that changes the fact that it is widely used, and widely accepted, as a male address term
That's the core issue here, individual women and enbys can decide that they'll use the term to refer to themselves, but that doesn't mean that all women and enbys have to be comfortable with the term being used that way
@Irick We're not suddenly deciding to gender this term
It's already gendered
It's always been gendered
@troubleMoney
By who?
English doesn't have an academy, nor a grammatical gender except in very rare instances like blond/blonde.
You are claiming a slang term has a formal, pan-cultural attribute that would justify ignoring the ad-hoc use within in-groups.
That's pretty wack.
@Irick By the English speaking world in general
I'm claiming that the term in question has a widely accepted meaning and usage
You want to use it differently in your in-group? Fine, no worries, that's absolutely okay
Just don't complain when everyone else goes by the widely accepted definition and not whatever your in-group decided it meant instead
@troubleMoney
I will.
I have a political ends that requires doing do. E.G. queering language.
@troubleMoney
I've pretty solidly covered the linguistic basis of my argument with expert testimony and data.
The question remains: how does gendering this term help? Personal forms of address are determined in ad-hoc negotiation. Your personal feelings toward a form of address within a peer group is taken into account within that ad-hoc process. The choice therein is more an issue of courtesy.
That is wildly different from the claim of culture coding.