I'm not sure I agree in this case. The Oxford English Dictionary gives ones of the definitions of guy as 'people of either sex' [0]. There's value in defending this meaning, and not running away from it because it could be misinterpreted. This is similar to how geeks like to defend the positive definition of 'hacker', rather than avoiding it.
To be clear: I'm not trying to minimize the feelings of women or other marginalized communities. Rather, I'm just saying that one way to respond is to aggressively 'colonize' words so that a positive meaning becomes the dominant meaning.
I agree with you on the usually dual-gender definition, though it's not always seen that way. I'm saying that it scans oddly to highlight a term and justify it, rather than alter it. If you think your terminology is going to cause problems, then rephrase yourself, don't justify keeping it as is.
I didn't really mean for my criticism to end up talking about further gender issues - it's really meant to be a comment on better communication. I was reading the submission about topic A, then hit a parenthetical remark that is justifying an orthogonal topic B, then back to topic A again. It doesn't scan well.
The meaning of "guys" (as "men" or "people of either sex") depends a lot on its context and a lot on the person reading the words - here's a survey with some examples: http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/12/27/guys-guys-guys/ (But a moderation note probably isn't a great place to try to shift interpretations of words.)
To be clear: I'm not trying to minimize the feelings of women or other marginalized communities. Rather, I'm just saying that one way to respond is to aggressively 'colonize' words so that a positive meaning becomes the dominant meaning.
[0] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/guy