It's not about offending people. It's about including everyone. I've taken my daughter to Girl Scout meetings and had to hear 'Ok, moms...' constantly. It doesn't offend me but it doesn't make me feel like a part of the group either.
I think you're taking the words too literally. The adult women could be aunts, guardians, sisters, adoptive mothers, biological mothers, etc. We can always seek out ways to find words to be unfit in a sentence, but, the purpose of speaking is to communicate. Normal people will understand that 'moms' in this case means any adult who in this scenario is representing a child in some capacity. It's shorthand.
Sure, the speaker could have included all possibilities when addressing the audience, etc., but why? We know what they mean, they didn't intend to exclude you in any way and as an adult you can process the exceptions (moms, the bathrooms are there) you can figure out where the men's toilet is.
If we concentrate on people's speech patterns, we can always find faults. There are better things to spend your energy on. We could also embark on pluralization vs apostrophe too, it's a noble cause, but we all know what people mean.
I think OP is well aware that the speaker isn't specifically addressing moms and only moms. But even knowing that, it can make you feel less included, which is in itself unpleasant, even if on a more rational level you know that you are included.
I've been in these situations and I really don't feel excluded at all by casual language. I'm sure I could, if I wanted to find cause, but I don't because I understand the subsurface meaning of what people are saying.
Hmmm...the post is not about offense. It is specifically about modern use of "guys" being inclusive, and being perceived as inclusive by the vast number of listeners when used in 2nd person plural.
(g) my personal experience as a language user and linguistics student
In all, if you want to avoid "guys" as an address, do so because it is too colloquial, which it might be, not because it is gendered, it isn't.
And as I wrote in my article: be prepared to be courteous to your audience. If there are people there who will take offense, you may choose something different. But it's not you, it's not the word, it's them.
Anyway: what is the evidence that it is not OK? Because it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the person wanting to prohibit/ban something, not on the person saying "do whatever you want, it's fine".
