Why is it that women can refer to their female friends as “girlfriends” without anyone thinking they are lesbians, but if a man referred to his male friend as a “boyfriend”, it would take on sexual connotations?
Dunno, but I’m reminded of the time my friend Diane and I (both straight) had a joint rummage sale at her house. When she was chatting with people, I kept hearing her refer to me as “my girlfriend,” which she uses as in the OP to refer to all of her female friends. Later I teased her that with us having frequently been seen in the company of her small town’s small yet “notorious” gay circle of friends, our having a joint rummage sale, combined with her choice of term for me and our known friends, might well have given some people the wrong impression.
Which doesn’t bother me, of course. I enjoy being an honorary lesbian. 
I dunno … maybe its got something to do with why women go to the “ladies room” in groups, but men don’t usually have any interest in group toity.
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I dunno … maybe its got something to do with why women go to the “ladies room” in groups, . . .
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I shall hereby reveal the reasons why we travel to the Ladies’ room in packs:
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To talk about you, of course. How can we bitch and moan about our dates/spouses unless we all congregate in a private area?
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To borrow each other’s lipsticks, hairbrushes, and toiletry items.
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To have someone to chat with whilst waiting in line.
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Safety’s in numbers.
Now that I’ve told you, I guess I’ll have to kill you.
(Looks like the thread title got attacked by the quote bug.)
What if we turn this around a little? Why don’t women just call their female friends “friends” like guys do? Why do they feel the need to make the distinction between the male friends and the female friends? 
I tend to use the term “girlfriend” if the context of whatever I’m saying seems to require it. For example, if I’m talking about a girls night out, I might choose to say “So I went out with a bunch of my girl friends…” It totally depends on the situation. I do say boy friends too, though a bit less because it confuses people about whether I went out with friends or with my actual boyfriend…
Oh, yeah, and in my mind, I make the difference between “girfriend” and “girl friend” , though theres no way to tell by listening.
I’m under the impression that heterosexual men could call their male friends “boyfriends” in the 1910s and 1920s. My grandmother (born in 1905) would always ask me how my “boyfriends” were doing – I kept trying to correct her, telling her that the term implied that what were only my buddies were gay lovers, but she kept using the term as if the term meant something else in the era her vocabulary developed under. When Grandma was born, after all, “gay” still meant “happy,” and all of us can remember our parents using some words that would be seen as archaic today, like “icebox” and “carfare” for “refrigerator” and “bus fare.”
The usage of “boyfriend” to refer to a male acquaintance may have lasted even longer than the 1920s. In the 1950 short film “Catching Trouble” (about an animal trapper in the Everglades), the male narrator twice refers to the main character (also male) as “my boyfriend.” It’s used with no apparent sexual connotations, unless I happen to be particularly oblivious (not an unlikely possibility).
FTR, “Catching Trouble” can be found on the “Mystery Science Theater 3000: Shorts, vol.2” tape, which is where I saw it.
–sublight.
It would just seem that men, in general, are so afraid of being called homosexual, that they just avoid the term at all. Women don’t seem to be as hung up on that.
Btw: The pattern of specifyíng friends’ gender like that is in fact found in many, or most other languages. As an English teacher, I often get asked what to call a specifically female or male, non-intimate friend, and have to explain that there isn’t always a way.
I do not call my male friends “boyfriends,” but “guy friends” works just fine. At the time I was still dating my (current) wife, this made the distinction a bit easier. “Are you going to the party with your girlfriend or with your guy friends?” Doesn’t sound gay at all, I think.
I guess that’s one way that English speakers are starting to fill in that semantic gap. Of course, it’s not yet standardized that way, but maybe it will be someday.
I’ve always thought that there was something offputting about (say) a forty-year-old woman referring to her fifty-year-old paramour as her “boyfriend”. I think the whole usage is a bit of a vulgarism, though society has devolved to the point now that there don’t seem to be many appropriate substitute terms.
It’s because all women are inherently bisexual or lesbians. It’s a Freudian slip: that they are attracted to all of their female friends. :D:D:D
To quote Dennis Finch (“Just Shoot Me”): All women are just two drinks away from a girl-on-girl adventure.
You forgot one. In case we need someone to hold the door shut for us
One of my grandmothers (b. 1896) used to use the word boyfriend in the same way when referring to my buddies. Carfare, though archaic in everyday conversation, still sometimes crops up in the context of discussing daily or weekly personal expenses.
As for the Girlfriend thing, I always wondered also why females will describe one another as “pretty!” or “so pretty!”. While I grant that saying someone’s pretty or attractive doesn’t imply sexual attraction, but if a guy says another guy’s good-looking he almost has to be gay.
Well, I actually am gay and I have to make sure I don’t say ‘girlfriends’ because most people know I’m gay and I end up sounding like quite the…scoundrel.
For instance:
“I went out Friday night with my girlfriends…we didn’t stay out late and called it an early night.”
I would like to say that if anyone would like to make an honest woman out of me by making the above statement and its implications true, please to be calling me soon.
Tibs.
Women like to admire other women’s beauty. I always thought the reason why is simple: women are beautiful. Men aren’t.
I never use the word girlfriend. In fact, if I need to say with whom I’ll be spending some time, I just name names.
Since I’m usually with a bunch of guys anyway, there’s no need to distinguish the genders. If someone is not sure and simply must know whether ‘Chris’ is a chick or a guy, just ask me.
Ok, time for “the homosexual angle.”
Us gay guys tend to use “friend” for acquaintance, “boyfriend” for the obvious, and “girlfriend” for one of two purposes: campily yelling it at a friend (with implied quotation marks) as a joke or referring to a very close, male friend who is not our boyfriend. This is often an important distinction to make, especially to people we’re attracted to (“Oh, the guy I’m eating dinner with? He’s my best girlfriend, not my boyfriend.”) There’s also some psychological reality to the term, as [wild generalization] gay men seem to have very close, more typically “female” friendships than do straight men [/wild generalization].