"man" vs. "guy" redux

[Mark A Mandel]

On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Dennis R. Preston wrote:

#Such collocations as "bad guys" and "a guy thing" would seem to
#contradict this reasoning, while such horrors as "The Man Show" ("The
#Guy Show"?) seem to support it.

"Bad guys" and "a guy thing" are in accordance with the emotional -- not
gender -- neutrality of "guy". "Bad guys" applies to the villains of a
piece, whether fictional ("Showdown at the O.K. Corral"), real (9/11),
or uncertain (supply your own), and is generic at the level of "party"
or "side". To me, "bad men"  must apply to a group small enough and
definite enough that all the members can be identified as men; it is
almost exclusively a child phrase. ("Badmen", dubious plural of
"badman", is a different question whose answer still isn't a
counterexample.) "A guy thing", IMHO, means 'something that adult males
do and females don't do', whether factually or stereotypically, such as
hold spitting contests or compare the size of their motorcycles (larger
= better) or cell phones (smaller = better).

-- Mark A. Mandel