Can you expand on why y’all makes them feel degraded? Y’all is often used to convey a feeling of warmth towards the addressee or express familiarity, which seems the opposite of degrading.
I'm not saying y'all does, I'm saying 'hey guys' does when they're, in fact, not a guy. Or a least for some. I also know women who aren't offended by it and we've had explicit discussions surrounding it. But being more thoughtful doesn't seem to hurt anyone when there are more inclusive terms you can use.
I can tell you as a gay man I appreciate when people ask about my partner (gender neutral) versus default to wife. Am I offended by it? Not really, it's right 90% of the time. But it's nice that people are considerate of other options when they don't know themselves. And you don't know that I'm gay by looking at me. Many women you do know they're not a man, so you would already know that you're using the male pronoun as default for all people when you could be more contextual to the situation (and avoid pulling the entire history of male-dominated societies and language with it).
The problem I have with the word "partner" is that it is ambiguous -- it could mean life partner, sexual partner, or business partner. Honestly I wish there were another commonly accepted word I could use to avoid the ambiguity. "Spouse" comes close (if the couple is married) but there isn't a in well-accepted gender-neutral term for the other member in an unmarried pair. "SO" (significant other) comes close, but often I have to explain what that means, so I can't consider it well-accepted. And people seem to associate "partner" with sex, so if the couple is remaining chaste until marriage, using "partner" can be offensive. Sigh - English is hard.
"Partner" is a mostly term used with gays. straights many feel strange to apply this term to husband, also wife. Can someone not simply ask about "spouse"? There previously exists term without gender for such persons.
"Spouse" implies marriage. "Significant Other" is a common safe bet, but is a bit too much of a mouthful IMO.
I've seen "partner" being used in reference to hetero relationships more frequently in the last decade, and think that's probably a good development. "Boyfriend" and "Girlfriend" sounds a bit infantilizing to me when used in reference to adults.
My wife and I still call each other boyfriend/girlfriend, but we are old fashioned. We like it because we are an dating (each other), even though we are married.
One argument in favor of using partner is that boyfriend/girlfriend is ambiguous. My wife often refers to her close female friends as "my girlfriend", even though they are clearly not dating each other. It occasionally causes some confusion with people a generation older than us who aren't familiar with that usage.
Partner/spouse/significant other... doesn't make a difference which one to me. I just picked that one at random. The fact that people create space for me not to have a wife is what I appreciate.
So as a married man, I use partner: it fits with my understanding of marriage, we’re partners, we both have a hand in managing a household. It feels good to say.
