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I know it's controversial, but moving away from "guys" when I address a group and more or less defaulting to "they" when referring to people I don't know.
They was practical, because I deal with so many students exclusively via email, and the majority of them have foreign names where I'd never be able to place a gender anyways if they didn't state pronouns.
Switching away from guys was natural, but I'm in a very male dominated field and I'd heard from women students in my undergrad that they did feel just a bit excluded in a class setting (not as much social settings) when the professor addresses a room of 120 men and 5 women with "Guys", so it just more or less fell to the side in favour of folks/everyone.
I use "guys" even when address a group of women. I feel it's basically become a gender neutral term.
I certainly used to, and used to think it was essentially gender neutral, but again - in certain contexts like a male dominated classroom, the women/nb students could easily feel excluded by it. Outside of that, I also recognized my trans friends had a lot of thoughtless people intentionally misgendering them on the regular just to be mean, and finding small ways to reduce that reinforcement felt better than not. It was also surprisingly not that tough for me to adopt the more neutral language, so if it's a subtle help with no skin off my back it just seems very win-win.
I guess the point is, how sure are you that all the members of the groups you address using your "gender neutral" term feel equally included?
Maybe it depends on where you live but where I am I would be 100% sure that everyone feels included. If for some reason I wanted to single out the men I would use "boys"
Despite how country/southern y'all comes across it really is the most inclusive and rolls off the tongue like nothing else
I argue this as well. I think things turning gender-neutral is more progressive than them being cut, unless I'm missing something. I got kicked out of a progressive community (that I really wanted to stay in) partially because they disagreed with me on that opinion (along with the word "dude" as an interjection) and wanted everyone in lock-step. I will never forgive them.
I also think "guys" and "dude" have a level of informality and nuanced humor that doesn't have an easy substitute.
I'm in the process of making this switch. I'm a transplant in the US south and I've always been a bit averse to y'all because it feels too southern, but I think that's the one I'm going with. It's the best fit I've found. And I've noticed it getting more popular elsewhere in the world, and there's nothing inherently wrong with it.
Non-binary folks thank you for this as well. 👍
"Y'all" is an excellent alternative 🤠
I feel your pain there. I made the switch during the pandemic thanks to my lectures all being recorded. Hearing myself start every single class with "Okay guys let's get started" was just so cringey that I had to do something.