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For someone trying to define how harassment should be dealt with, you're certainly keen on dismissively calling women "girls".
by whichdan 10y ago
For someone trying to define how harassment should be dealt with, you're certainly keen on dismissively calling women "girls".
- verroq 10y agoWomen, girls and ladies are used interchangeably to refer to females. Grown women will also refer each other girls. To read such a common usage as misogyny is idiotic.
- wpietri 10y agoHello! Guy here. One, those terms are not interchangeable. Words have meanings. Two, people will refer to themselves or people in their in-group by names that people in the outgroup should not call them. E.g., my friend runs a get-together called "nerd beers". I don't mind, because he is a fellow lover of technology. Other people do not get to call me a nerd. Many groups have similar patterns, including black and gay people: just because they call themselves a word does not mean that you can. Three, guys aren't very good at noticing misogyny. Other people noticing something you don't could be idiotic. But it could also be you just missing something that they've had more time and reason to think about.
- verroq 10y agoWhen people call females girls they are not infantalising them. Nor do people use this word in this manner. If you have a problem with the word girl in reference to a young woman then your quarrel is with the dictionary.
- AlexandrB 10y agoWell you certainly made your point, boy. Now go fetch my slippers!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dgacmu 10y agoThe key is "young" woman. From wikipedia, "A girl is a female human from birth through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood when she becomes a woman. " The discussion is specifically about calling an adult female human a "girl". Emphasis on adult, which in the US is typically regarded as 18.
- sagichmal 10y ago> When people call females girls they are not infantalising them. Yes, they often are. And this is often the way it is received, regardless of intent. edit: And, for the record, "females" is also a favorite objectifying shibboleth in certain circles. (Not accusing you, necessarily.) Just use "women".
- pfarnsworth 10y agoDo you call your male coworkers "boys"? Like, "Well, the boys in my team are very experienced in Java." If you don't, then you don't use the term "girls" to talk about your female coworkers. Period. End of Story.
- edblarney 10y agoNo. Wrong. 'Girl' is the feminine of 'Boy'. But it is also the feminine of 'Guy'. Examples: + "Hey guys, there's a problem, let's huddle on this" + "Me and the guys are going out for lunch, you in?" + "That guy is loco!" You would never say: + "Hey men, there's a problem, let's huddle" etc.. And neither: + "Hey women, there's an issue, let's huddle" + "Me and the women are going out for lunch" No. You would reasonably use 'girls' in every one of the scenarios. "guys aren't very good at noticing misogyny" Maybe this is true, but I would also say that a lot of people see misogyny where there is none.
- sleepybrett 10y agoNo, you should say "Hey ladies, there's an issue, let's huddle" You are welcome to call them girls if they are children. It might also be appropriate outside of a professional context to address a group of women you are close with, but I can't ever see a reason to use the word girls in a professional setting to refer to female coworkers. It's belittling and disrespectful.
- yodon 10y agoActually, what the responders above are saying is no, they wouldnt. You are saying that you would. A great many other people are telling you the norms you have internalized are quite different from the norms they internalized. Verbal norms change over time, just as other forms of norms change. You don't have to modify your norms to keep up with how the rest of society views those norms, but where they impact legal decisions your personal choice to reject the change in external norms may have a significant cost to you at some point.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- edblarney 10y ago" It's belittling and disrespectful." Completely false. 'Lady' is the feminine of 'Gentlemen'. I could, but would not usually say: "Gentlemen, let's go out for lunch" So I could, but would not likely say: "Ladies, let's go out for lunch" I would normally say: "Guys, let's go out for lunch" Or: "Girls, let's go out for lunch" 'Girls' is fully appropriate in every one of those situations. You are seeing sexism wherein there absolutely is none and this is a problem.
- mikestew 10y agoGrown women will also refer each other girls. I've heard a similar argument before, in reference to race. The logic is equally weak when crusty old white bigots use it.
- edblarney 10y ago"The logic is equally weak when crusty old white bigots use it." This comment is racist and bigoted.
- throwaway-hn123 10y agoNo boy - you are
- verroq 10y agoAh a term used mostly as a racist perjorative is comparable to the word "girl" with has no negative qualities when used in reference to a young women. Take your strawman home with you.
- mikestew 10y agoThe only straw man is from the one arguing about the terms used. I was referring to logic used to justify the use of those terms, quoting your post in the process. It's almost the antithesis of the straw man argument.
- justaman 10y agoEver notice how everyone only ever cites "Strawman" on the internet? Its because thats the only logical fallacy they can remember because it so often reinforces their own arguments in their own heads by not adding information. Every idiot who never studied logic will cry "STRAWMAN!"
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 10y ago>The logic is equally weak when crusty old white bigots use it. Do you realize that you're being a racist?
- AlexandrB 10y agoContext is everything. If your employer called you "boy" you would be upset. If a judge in a court of law called you "boy" you would be upset as well. And rightly so. While if a friend refers to your group of friends as "the boys", that's clearly a term of endearment. Calling women "girls" while discussing something like the politics of harassment has the effect of subtly diminishing their credibility and personhood.
- verroq 10y agoYou seem to think the grandparent deliberately used this term to demean women. I don't think so. I think the usage is common enough that you are being oversensitative.
- st3v3r 10y agoGiven that poster's other comments in here, I seem to doubt that. It's seeming like the grandparent is using it to demean women, and is getting angry that they're being called out on it.
- KMag 10y ago> Calling women "girls" while discussing something like the politics of harassment has the effect of subtly diminishing their credibility and personhood. Do you mean "adulthood" instead of "personhood", or are you using "personhood" as a term d'art unfamiliar to me? (I am assuming you consider a child or adolescent to be a person as much as an adult is a person, with as much personality.)
- in_cahoots 10y agoNo, we don't. I am a woman and I do not use those terms interchangeably. Neither do any of the other professional women I know. My female friends are called 'the girls' as a group. But at work it's either 'woman', 'gals', or 'guys'. I would never call a coworker girl unless she referred to herself that way, and I haven't heard my male or female coworkers do it either. At work calling an adult a 'girl' brings up immediate connotations of "the girls in secretary" from an earlier era, just as 'boy' brings up unpleasant racial connotations from that same era.
- edblarney 10y agoI'm not sure I agree. I often call people quite my junior 'boys' and 'girls'. I work with a startup of dudes under 24. I call them 'lads'. I could technically be their father. Is that wrong? No. Neither is using the term Mrs. Ms. or Miss.. In far-left socialist Montreal, where women are not even allowed by law to take their husband's name - people use the French equivalent everywhere: 'Madame' and 'Mademoiselle'. Same in Germany. Is that harassment now? I think this kind of comment is not helping the situation - you want to find prejudice wherever you can, even when there is none there. Let's work on getting the actual harassment stuff fixed - and avoid getting into culture wars.
- wpietri 10y ago> and avoid getting into culture wars Complaining about identity politics is how white men practice identity politics. Your post here is a shot fired in a culture war. You can't do that and complain about culture wars. The phenomenon you're exploiting here is that the status quo is seen as the default state of the system. When women talk about bias, it's easy to say, "Why are women always talking about bias? Why are they starting a culture war?" The start of the war, though, is lost in prehistory. For millennia, women were basically property, traded among families and owned by men. In the last couple hundred years, we've been unwinding that. We're not done yet, though. E.g., in the US we only hit parity in the number of medical and law degrees circa 2005; we won't see parity in the number of doctors and lawyers for decades more. Women didn't start the war. They, and a growing number of men, are the resistance. Hopefully we will end the war within decades. But please don't pretend that shouting, "Stop fighting back!" is equivalent to a call for peace.
- 15charlimit 10y ago> in the US we only hit parity in the number of medical and law degrees circa 2005; we won't see parity in the number of doctors and lawyers for decades more It is a flawed assumption that "parity in degrees" has any meaning as a measure of some vaguely-defined "equality" value.
- wpietri 10y ago