Folx vs folks1/24/2024 ‘We invite challenges to our thinking’, they tweeted, ‘and we listen to our audience’. Nevertheless, Wellcome got so many complaints that they eventually removed the contentious X. ![]() ‘Womxn’ has been around for a while in activist circles: there are various Womxn’s Marches, the Olympia YWCA in Washington State runs a ‘Womxn of Achievement’ award, and the UK organisation Her Stories recently announced an art auction to benefit refugee and migrant womxn. "Hey folks!" avoids this.Earlier this month there was controversy after the Wellcome Collection, a museum in London, used the word ‘womxn’ in its publicity for an upcoming event. Almost like the speaker is a teacher yelling for people's attention. ![]() I'm not able to explain why, but I know that it can and does offend certain people. Also consider use in a greeting: "Hey people!" sounds blunt and almost aggressive to some. In fact, this also allows the speaker to avoid saying something like "these people" referring to a set of specific people, accidentally sounding like they are referring to the entire class the person is in (even though "folks" isn't any more specific than "people" in this regard- "persons" is rarely used in speech- there is not going to be the hair-trigger association that something like "these people" has). I think the use of "folk/s" is to avoid that phenomenon. Some phrases, even though absolutely neutral, with demographical references in them, have become latently politically charged in the eyes of out-groups even though there is no specific connotation (such as "black people"). My personal speculation is that this usage originated with demographically descriptive adjectives ("trans folk/s", "black folk/s") for a couple of reasons. ![]() The "folks" phenomenon comes up often in internet parody. While "folks" may be on the rise in general, it is disproportionately so in these specific contexts. People who do not spend a lot of time in these communities may not be familiar with it. Has folks gained a connotation that makes it a more inclusive gender-neutral term for people than people?įirst of all, this is absolutely a usage that is particularly notable within LGBT and social justice communities, and there is definitely some sort of gender connotation. I can see how addressing a group as "you people" would be frowned upon, given the negative implications of that term, but many of the recent uses of folks do not use it as a form of address, but rather as a third-person replacement of "people." (All three of the examples I cited above use it this way.) In these instances, is there any different connotation in using folks instead of people? However, this is just in the context of using it as a second-person plural pronoun. An Atlantic article, "The Problem with 'Hey Guys'", describes people consciously choosing to replace guys with the gender-neutral folks (it also mentions y'all), and says that folks is preferable to people because people is "too often pushy and impersonal." One reason I've seen for the usage of folks is to replace guys as a gender-neutral term for a group of people. I feel like it also was associated more with Southern redneck stereotypes (much like ain't and y'all) rather than being "mainstream." Both President Obama and President Bush were criticized for using it in speeches on serious topics, and it was typically dismissed as too informal or colloquial. This newly widespread usage of folks seems unusual given that the word until recently was seen in a fairly negative light.
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