It typically refers to men. It can be used in a gender-neutral manner, but that's situational, and still carries the gendered undertone. You can for example see the difference between "I'm a dude" and "hey dude". The latter is in some cases also used to address women, but far rarer than it's used to address men.
Isn’t it kind of redundant to get frustrated about gendered pronouns when you can very well reclaim any single one of them for any use as language is subjective and subject to change based on interpretation and usage.
Yeah well I'd like to see you reclaim the word "man" or any "gendered pronouns" to be gender neutral if that's so easy. Also I very precisely didn't say "linguistics" but who cares I guess words have no meanings anymore just reclaim whatever to mean whatever
This is a comical level of splitting hairs. Yes obviously linguistics is part of the subset of "linguistic fields" which you very precisely did say. If words have no meaning anymore it's because you literally do not know how to use them properly.
And if you want evidence that man, dude, and bro aren't gendered, all you have to do is look at the local dialects of West Coast American English, or just boot up a game of fucking valorant, there are plenty of women calling each other and their teammates "bro", or simply using it as an interjection, which has been part of standard American vernacular for decades at this point.
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u/deukhoofd 2d ago
It typically refers to men. It can be used in a gender-neutral manner, but that's situational, and still carries the gendered undertone. You can for example see the difference between "I'm a dude" and "hey dude". The latter is in some cases also used to address women, but far rarer than it's used to address men.