Little disappointed to be so downvoted for calling this out; I don't really do it very often. Also a brit, but I didn't know that the others in the conversation were men. It's pretty easy to use `guys` instead.
But it was a short comment intended to convey "Oops! Sorry. My bad." So you basically replied to an apology with a suggestion that the apology had committed some greater sin.
My feeling is that probably falls under the heading "Throwing the baby out with the bathwater." I don't think it qualifies as a Best Practice for improving the social climate on some metric or other.
That's not intended to lecture you. I'm just trying to make conversation on a topic I find interesting. Given the nature of the beast, I'm having very mixed feelings about commenting at all.
I don't understand your post/replies. Do you have a problem with people using britishisms? The "defence" spelling is also a britishism, so I'm not sure where you're going with all that.
"Guys" is not any more gender neutral than "Lads" (they both are often used in a gender-neutral way, but they're etymologically male). "Folks" is what I personally use if I specifically want something gender-neutral, but "lads" is definitely appropriate if the author is speaking to men.
Which brings me back to "this is a lot of noise for nothing".
