Ok so now that we have consensus that it’s not INHERENTLY offensive, let’s talk about how it often IS offensive. Everyone should learn the difference.
In the sixties (and I’m assuming before), calling a woman a woman was often considered to be demeaning. The polite term was lady and if you didn’t use that, you were implying that she was somehow less than a lady. Hence the comedy satire group, LAW (Ladies Against Women).
Another vote for it depends on context.
The article that inspired this thread was:
HuffPost - Fiji Water Girl Steals The Show During Golden Globes Red Carpet
I don’t think they were trying to belittle or demean her with the word (although Chronos took issue with it).
“Men” paired with “Ladies” would also sound wrong to me. Again, parallelism:
Gentlemen and Ladies
Women and Men
Girls and Boys
Guys and Gals
Females and Males*
Brothers and Sisters
Mamas and Papas
Dudes and, uh, Dudettes?
*Using “female” and “male” as nouns can also be offensive, in some contexts. I tend to associate it with “police-speak”, and it can be racially charged, although obviously that isn’t always the case: Single White Male, Single White Female, and so on.
This is one of those places where an old guy seems less offensive than a younger guy.
I remember old bosses who would make a comment like “I’ll check with the girl at the front desk” or something like that, and it flew right under the radar and seemed like something old guys say.
But unless you are nearing retirement age, it sounds offensive without without very specific context.
In California, “guys” can refer to either sex/gender, which can confuse folks from other states.
I don’t have the exact quote, and I think it’s from Cokie Roberts. She was remarking how during the Gulf War instead of talking about “Bringing our boys back home” we now talk about “Bringing them men and women of the armed services back home”. She remarked that it was yet another way that women have turned boys into men.
Since it was my comment that prompted this, I’ll weigh in: There are contexts where it’s not offensive, which are basically the same contexts where it’d be inoffensive to refer to an adult male as a “boy”. But in most contexts, it would be considered out of place to use “boy”, but nonetheless still common, for some reason, to use “girl”. Since the offensive contexts are more common than the inoffensive ones, I answered “inherently offensive” in the poll.
I also mentioned in the other thread that this usage sometimes creates ambiguity of meaning. For instance, in a book I read a couple of years ago, a male character who’s off exploring the wilderness encounters and rescues a female character. The male character is unambiguously an adult: He’s referred to as a “man”, and I think his age might even have been given. The female character’s age is never given, and she’s referred to as a “girl”. And it’s relevant if she’s an adult or not: If she’s actually an adult, then one might expect their subsequent interactions to be colored by romantic tensions, but not if she’s, say, 13.
Nor is this the only way in which language routinely infantilizes women. For instance, a particularly attractive woman might be referred to as a “babe”, which literally means an infant. The male equivalent, meanwhile, “hunk”, literally means a large piece of something, and is not infantile at all.
Thinking about it some more, the existence of “guy” really muddies the waters. Take “I’ll check with the girl at the front desk”. Saying “I’ll check with the boy at the front desk” would be really weird (unless someone’s twelve-year-old son is filling in at Reception today.) But, would you have said “I’ll check with the man at the front desk” or “I’ll check with the guy at the front desk”? Perhaps “girl” should be reserved strictly for situations in which “boy” would be appropriate (“Girls’ night out”:“Poker with the boys”), and “gal” should be used as the parallel for “guy” (“The gal at the front desk was friendly enough, until I told her I was a private dick; then she got pretty frosty with me”), but in speech that’s going to be almost impossible to distinguish.
I tend to relate better to machines than to people. To me, “female” invokes a flicker of meaning along the lines of “some thing you stick something else into”. Like one of these (which, curiously, has a decidedly male element to it). I avoid using the term with humans whenever it is not obnoxious to do so.
It is mind-blowing to think someone would think it appropriate to refer to an employee as “boy” or “girl” unironically. Like, super old people maybe, but certainly not pre-retirement types.
There seem to be few neutral and non-infantilizing slang words for women. What are the female parallels to the following?
U.S.: guy, dude
U.K.: fellow, bloke, chap
I don’t think guy and gal are equivalent - gal is just an informal equivalent to girl, whereas guy is not infantilizing. That could account for why guy is tending to become gender-neutral in some dialects.
guys & dolls?
Try to think rationally about why this would be a bad idea.
“…the lady at the front desk” would be a suitable analog to “…guy…” to me.
“Gal” sounds folksy and outdated to me.
Hmm, ‘babe’ is pretty commonly used by women to describe attractive men as well. Commoner than ‘hunk’ in my personal experience.
We could probably use a new informal term for a woman, but that tends not to be the sort of project that goes well. I know someone who was seethingly furious about a waitress asking him and his wife ‘So, what can I get you guys?’ because how dare anyone call his wife a guy, not a lady?! Told everyone he knew never to go to that restaurant, complained to the manager, left scathing reviews everywhere, the works.
Yes, he’s pretty old.
Really? In what region/dialect/age group? I don’t think I’ve ever heard this.
I said “inherently offensive” but that might be a bit overstated.
The opposite of “girls” for me is “boys”. Both I tend to use to refer to young people, and the young are lower-status. I would tend not to refer to a woman/female as a “girl” unless I was prepared to refer to a male/man as a “boy” of the same age and in the same situation.
But then again, I am A) old, and B) tend to be overly formal rather than vice versa. I would say “the lady at the front desk” rather than “the girl” unless the person sitting at the front desk was fourteen or less or thereabouts.
But see A). They all look like children to me. Now get off my lawn, girlie.
Regards,
Shodan
Ever heard of “Girls Night Out” or “Chick Flick”?
Women use those terms all the time so it can depend on context.
No shit?