Girl vs Woman

[Justin_Case001 4,855]

Hmm.  This is an interesting topic that I've thought a fair bit about.  Mayim Bialik made a video about this which I enjoyed.  I'll share that before I give my own opinion.

Spoiler

 

She made a good case, and some great points, and I definitely agree that we shouldn't be using "girl" when we really mean "woman".  However, there's more to this story than Mayim tells.  It's perfectly acceptable to use the terms "boy" and "girl" to refer to adults in certain contexts.  The key here is equality.  It's perfectly fine to say, "You go, girl!", because we also say, "Atta boy!" sometimes when a man does something good.  Boy and girl can also be a terms of affection and endearment.  That's why adults have boyfriends and girlfriends.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with walking into a room full of your adult, female friends and saying, "So, you girls wanna go to a movie tonight?"  This is because it's an affectionate, casual term, and, more importantly, it's because we also often address a group of adult male friends in the same manner, saying something like, "So, what do you boys wanna do tonight?"  There's nothing wrong with adult women having "girl's night", just like there's nothing wrong with men having "boy's night".  Although, for whatever reason, many phrases such as that one have fallen out of favor, and are more typically replaced with "guy".  "Guy's night."  You hear "guy" more than "boy" these days (at least in America.  Not sure about other places), but you still hear boy on occasion.  Let's say you have two couples, and they're double dating.  If the husbands are ready, and the wives are not, one man might say to the other, "The girls ready yet?"  But likewise, if the wives are ready, and the husbands are not, one woman might say, "Where are the boys?  Are they ready?"  There's absolutely nothing wrong with this sort of language.  It denotes familiarity, affection, casualness, and sometimes a bit of playfulness.  Again, the key is equality.  Let's make sure we're not only saying "girl" and never "boy".

The times when it is unacceptable, in my opinion, to use the word girl, are the cases when you're clearly referring to a woman in some professional position, as in the examples Mayim pointed out.  If you're with someone in a business, and they have a question, don't tell them to ask the "girl" behind the counter, because you wouldn't tell them to ask the "boy" behind the counter.  Mayim was right about that one.  A great example of this, and something that really grinds my gears, is the double standard with some super hero names.  Supergirl is not okay.  Why?  Simple: because a character called Superboy clearly wouldn't be an adult.  No one would ever think that Superboy is anything but a child.  I don't need any more proof than that.  Supergirl needs to be equal to Superman.  She needs to be Superwoman.  They actually addressed this point in the beginning of the new Supergirl tv series, and they did a piss poor job of it.  They basically just swept it under the rug so that they could keep the traditional character name as it always has been.  Now, Wonder Woman is great, and Cat Woman is great.  Don't know why they couldn't do that with Supergirl.

And, uh, yeah.  That's about it.  That's my two cents.

[碇 シンジン 27,427]

If you want to make an issue out of something that is possible but that doesn't mean that the issue is real 

I agree that English as a language has dominant masculine terms but i dont think the meanings themselves are not that dominant at all though i cannot really speak from a native perspective as in my language we dont have he/she gender differianting terms at all

And as the meanings of the terms are subject to change over time I don't think there is any issue to be had here it's just people who want to whine, whining.

[Dreambiscuit 8,024]

21 hours ago, Methuselah said:

You... you don't mind if people call you a b****? :-X

Nah. You'd be surprised just how many actually do. Some of them are my best friends. 

[The Historian 515]

Hey, whatever word you use, as long as it's female, I don't really care. You wanna call me a "stupid girl"? You go right ahead. I've been called far worse than that.