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by Nadya
4028 days ago
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Fully grown women also refer to their female coworkers largely as "girls". Guys do not refer to men as "boys". They don't use "men "either. They use "guys". Girls seem to dislike the feminine linguistic equivalent to "guys", which is "gals" seeing as they infrequently use it themselves to refer to themselves. However, they refer to themselves as girls quite frequently. I've been told several times in my life to stop using "gals" when referring to a female group because they disliked the word. Guys have "guys night out", they don't call it "mens night out". Girls have "girls night out". They don't call it "gals night out". For all intents and purposes - "girl" does not always refer to a young female; context is important. In Japanese おばあさん can refer to "aunt" or "middle-aged woman" and the context it is used in is important. Your aunt could really be a 6 year old girl. Why are you calling her a middle-aged woman? You aren't. You're calling her aunt. Similarly, for English, "girls" has become the equivalent of both "guys" and "boys" and depends on context in which it is used. Feel free to suggest an alternative to "gals" - but I'd consult with "the girls" first. They seem to have settled on "girls" themselves, but what do I know? |
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Sometimes, some of them do. Context matters, still, and one place where this is very rare -- for the same reason that it is very common for women to object when other people do this -- is in discussions of professional performance. And, in another sense in which context matters, what might be unoffensive -- or only mildly so -- on its own can be more offensive when it is compounding an already-sexist set of statements.
> Guys do not refer to men as "boys".
IME, sometimes they do. (It may not be particularly common in the dominant -- i.e., white middle-class -- subculture, but there certainly are subcultures in which, e.g., referring to an adult male's adult male associates as his "boys" is not uncommon. And it would still be compound the offense to use the same term for adult male members of that subculture when making an otherwise-racist set of statements.)
> Feel free to suggest an alternative to "gals"
In the context of the statement Hunt was making, the obvious choice that would not compound the already sexist nature of his remarks to refer to adult female humans would be "women".