In the song "My Guy" by Mary Wells, does she mean "My man" or "My partner of unspecified gender"?

I agree with you.

It was always assumed to mean "man". The American slang word "guy" means "man", at least in its native land.

Probably most operatic, "art", popular and pop songs ever written about love have assumed simple heterosexual romance, even if in illicit affairs, whatever their surrounding social attitudes towards other orientations.

This troll's notion seems symptomatic of a very modern trend to warp originally, rightly, well-intentioned drives for equality and tolerance of "difference", into dividing humanity into umpteen hermetic categories. Yet we are not database-indexed items in a vast warehouse - we are just [i]people[/i].
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Besides, the nine syllables of [i]partner of unspecified gender [/i]would not rhyme with [i]My[/i].

Nor fit the two or three beats allotted to [i]guy[/i] in the melody without squidging them into smaller fractions of a quaver than thought decent even for a Baroque harpsichord composition !

.....

Mary had a not-yet adult ovine whose fleece was as reflective of the resultant of the visible light spectrum, as snow.
And everywhere Mary went, the lamb of unspecified sex and unassigned gender was sure to choose of its own free will, to go.


[i]Greensleeves is my delight....[/i] (Very green: her/his clothes are of organically-grown linen dyed with sustainable vegetable extracts.)

Well guy has been used in the UK to mean man for hundreds of years so I don't see where the confusion is.

She quite literally means exactly what she sang, My Guy.
Everything doesn't have to be that deep.

"Guy" is an old American slang word for a[i] man[/i].

So she was singing about her fellow.

As far as i can tell its wide use in Britain to cover anyone, male or female, adult or child, is very recent, adopted mainly in the last few decades by those who cannot live without gratuitously affecting Americana.

In any case the song was written and published long before people started having unspecified relationships or unspecified genders!

(Have Americans in their own land taken to calling men, "chaps" or "blokes"? :-) )

Given the time frame of the original, I'd go with "guy" meaning male partner to her female singing. But the listener can make of it what they will.

She means a male romantic partner. Their affiliation is unspecified. Could be a bf a husband a fwb… anything really

Context matters. The song was released in 1964 in a much simpler time. My guy is definitely a MAN.

It’s a song. I couldn’t really fall out with people over something a trivial as lyrics.

Given the meaning of "guy" and the time period of the song .. yeah, she means her man

I grew up listening to her music and to me, it meant a male. I could be mistaken.

She says my guy so i guess she means ...My Guy!

"My guy" certainly meant "my man"/"my boyfriend" when it was written.

To try to force an historical event to conform to today's...notions is anachronistic.

The song is just a sweet song about how much a gal loves her guy. Sorry, others, it's about a male-female relationship in a traditional sense.

I believe she was speaking about a traditional heterosexual phenomenon. Though there were many in and out of the closet, I think that Mary knew what she was saying. Now Little Richard on the other hand?…

My man.

I loved that song. A great feel good song. If you danced well enough you might even get to kiss her

I agree with you. The song comes from a time when things were simple and not contrived

It’s a song. It can mean whatever you want it to.

The following lyrics would suggest that she definitely meant a man:

[quote] As a matter of opinion I think he's tops
My opinion is he's the cream of the crop
As a matter of taste to be exact
He's my ideal as a matter of fact [/quote]

My man.

Who in the sweet blue fuck is going to argue on the other side of that? Guy has been used to mean man ever since Guy Fawkes was convicted of trying to improve the London landscape.

Update: Sorry, my phone doesn't take dictation so good.

I have heard it used when referring to both men and women. I've known girls use it to describe other girls.
Personally I don't think it matters x