This:
“Young lady! Young lady! . . . .”
I don’t understand anyone who thinks you shouldn’t get mad about things that don’t affect you personally. It’s called caring about other people. If all you care about is you and your own, you’re the one with the problem. Heck, such a lack of empathy is the main symptom of a few mental disorders.
And if that fails to move you, how about this: If you disallow getting angry about things that happen to other people, you have no civil rights movement. You have no abolition of slavery. You have no one giving a shit about the Holocaust. Every movement to advance mankind doesn’t happen because everyone is too busy only caring about what affects them.
The entire world depends on the ability of people to get mad for other people. Stop acting like it’s somehow an insult for someone to care about how something makes someone else feel.
I honestly don’t understand your definition of justification. Something that’s wrong in one context does not somehow become not wrong just because it’s surrounded by a bigger wrong. If it is justified to be upset about it in one case, it must be justified to be upset about it in the other.
And let’s be clear that we are discussing a hypothetical–the OP is not outraged. This is just something that bugs her. The only people alleging outrage are those who can’t offer a reason why referring to older teenagers as little girls and not little boys is acceptable.
If it was found to be another 15 year old who killed this girl, most of the same people calling her a little girl would want to see the other one charged as an adult.
If you read the above while The Battle Hymn of the Republic plays softly in the background, gradually becoming louder and forcing you to speak louder, well, just give it a try.
I’m sure the dead girl, where ever she may be, is grateful to you for being angry on her behalf at the sheriff’s referring to her as a little girl. It’s the people like you who make this world a better place.
Depends on your culture. Some places of the world, a female child is not exactly something you value highly… anyway as for instinctive or human nature, this human feels a duty to protect children, the weak and the vulnerable, whatever their gender. I don’t need my heartstrings played by casting a victimized youth as a little child, the act is despicable enough as-is.
Think of the word ‘hoodie’ and I bet you’ll have your answer! 
I find the term “little girl” for a 15-year-old only vaguely annoying.
The vague annoyance is completely lost in the ugliness of this crime. I live in the girl’s town, shop where the suspect worked, and pass by his trailer park almost weekly. Ick. And they think it likely that this guy might be the one who, a couple of years ago, was assaulting women after dark in our Safeway parking lot, and who sexually assaulted a lone jogger early in the morning in an area very near to where I sometimes walk and jog.
I was at a lecture about the Katie Poirier murder case a few years ago, and the speaker talked about “the fear that little girl must have been feeling” as her abductor drove away with her in his car. She was 19 when she was murdered.
On the one hand, yeah, that’s mildly annoying.
On the other hand, I know that if I had been in her position, I certainly would’ve FELT like a little girl…scared, helpless, and vulnerable.
I’m remembering now that the family of Trayvon Martin referred to him as a “baby”.
BigT in da house.
:throws both middle fingers in the air:
A PA I know, female, who works for a urologist mentioned to me that she was shocked at the number of “little girls” who came to her with urinary tract infections.
“Little girls?” I said. “Really? How old?”
I was imaging 7, 8, maybe 10.
“Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, about that,” she said.
Not what I would’ve thought of as “little girls” either.
This. Usually you see a 15 year old girl, even your daughter, as a maturing young woman. But when she has been kidnapped, and probably helpless, you can’t help but think about how young and frightened she probably is. You concentrate on her youth and the fact that she is more of a child than an adult at that point.
Yes, but like I keep asking: would you have a similar thought if a 15-year-old boy was kidnapped? If you would, then you’re not the subject of my OP. Clarifying again: my issue isn’t with calling them “little girls,” but rather calling them “little girls” while not also calling boys “little boys.”
I can certainly understand why someone (especially someone who’s a parent, even if the teen in question isn’t their own child) would think of a kidnapped teenager as young and vulnerable and feel particular protective toward them. I never had any misunderstanding of that.
The posters who mentioned Trayvon Martin had a good point. He was the first male I’ve heard of where they referred to him using this sort of infantilizing language.
I’ve heard plenty over the years of both boys and girls inappropriately called little, but girls more so.
Coincidentally as I opened and was reading this thread, I heard my wife say “Why are they calling her a little girl?” The local news was talking about a fifteen year old who was suspended for an anti bullying video she created for a school project.
I also get annoyed when an abusive or murderous parent is referred to as a Mom or Dad. To me, they may be a mother or father but they are not a Mom or Dad. They don’t deserve the name and it cheapens it for the real ones.
But I remember having been a little girl, and for most of the time that I was a little girl, I didn’t feel scared, helpless or vulnerable.
Being scared, helpless and vulnerable doesn’t make people 3’-tall and give them vaginas if they don’t happen to have one, Being 3’-tall and female doesn’t make you scared, helpless and vulnerable.
Um, I hate to ask this, but I just have to. How big was this girl? Was she, in fact, little?
I have been little all my life. Little is an adjective. And girls, get abducted more because they tend to be easier to nab. Largely because they are littler.
She is a girl at 15yrs. Has anyone bothered to establish if she is little or not.
Maybe make sure you’re understanding the full context, before getting all bent. And of all the things in this story, there are plenty that deserve outrage, the choice of the word little, seems a petty one to choose, in my opinion.
Speaking as a father, girls are special. You teach your sons to be men. Your daughter will be your “little girl” if she’s 45 years old and weighs 300 pounds.
So, it’s not surprising that the sheriff can relate to what the parents are feeling. I would bet you a sawbuck that he has a “little girl.”
I can’t off the top of my head remember ever seeing/hearing any news coverage of a kidnapping case involving a teen boy, so I have no idea whether they’re referred to as “little boys” any more or less often than kidnapped teen girls are called “little girls”. While I’m sure teen boys are kidnapped, the only high profile teen kidnapping cases springing to mind had female victims (e.g. Elizabeth Smart). Maybe girls are kidnapped far more often, or attract far more media attention when they are, and that’s why you don’t hear teen boys who were kidnapped being called “little boys” very often.