Guys calling me dude..

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Thank you Silver,

I just didn't understand the underlying meaning of it.

Thanks everyone for your comments, I did not assume they were using the word dude for gender but it just is a word that not a lot of people say in the East coast or at least where I am so it had caught me off guard hearing it.

I'm in college, so pretty much all the guys, and even some girls, say "dude" all the time. For some people it's a filler words, just like "like" or "you know"

I’ve been called dude by guys before and I am not going to lie, I found it strange.

sometimes i say "you guys" when addressing a group of girlfriends. no big deal, i reckon. maybe the guy calling you "dude" was just trying to be friendly. "dude" is probably a substitute word for "pal"

I'm in NYC....Dude generally means "buddy" amongst young guys.....but can refer to young women, too.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, it was only used among black guys. A black woman would have been deeply insulted had she been called a "dude."

Well I doubt they mean any offense, its not a gender specific term actually.

"Dudette" is very rare, indeed.....though I've heard it used.

I used to hear "dudette" sometimes during the Awesome 80's and Nasty 90's, but it sounds even dumber than "dude". It makes me think of Ninja Turtles and stoner hippies and junk.

Where I live however, it's still common for people serving you, mostly women my age or older, to say "here you are, dear", or even "sweetheart". They say that to be friendly, not creepy or anything. But naturally people who live elsewhere and aren't aware of our culture want to smack the person in the face with a harassment suit.

It's definitely a thing. A lot of girls/non-binary people at my college call each other "dude", or "man", or "my dude." More often than not, it started out as a joke and then just became a widely-shared habit for us. It's pretty harmless and it's being reclaimed more as a gender-neutral term, although there have certainly been times where that has backfired on me. I once accidentally called my mom "dude" while we were at a yard sale. It wasn't a big deal, but she was definitely annoyed. There was another not-too-serious incident where I was having a discussion online with a transgender woman and I said something like "yeah, man!" without thinking about how that could be perceived by her. She requested that I didn't call her "man", I apologized to her and clarified that I didn't mean to come off as invalidating her identity in any way, she understood, and we moved on. Again, the word is harmless and silly, but I definitely can see why women (trans and non-trans) don't like being called it.

Yesterday I got called "mate".
I think that's basically the Australian for "dude".
This tends to happen if I'm looking a bit masculine, sometimes people aren't sure of my gender, and it's a catch-all term of address. This was a male colleague who knows me, but I guess he might think me trans or butch and was including me in the men's club, which is fine, it's friendly.
I may be wrong but I don't think men say "mate" to women who are looking feminine in high heels and dresses. I suppose "dude" is similar: women can say it to women friends in fun, but for a man to say it to a woman probably indicates gender ambiguity.

I've only heard "dudette" a few times. And that was quite a long time ago.

I still don't notice any women being referred to as "dude," except amongst friends.

Actually, "dude" used to originally mean someone from the city who doesn't know about cowboy stuff while visiting a ranch. That's where the term "dude ranch" came from.

^ That's why old people don't like it when you call them dude. I remember seeing this Youtube video about these 13 year olds who were harassing a middle aged cop. He said "Don't call me dude. A dude is someone on a ranch".