Girl

[prog]

Already rethinking earlier statement about the word "girl". To go against college-indoctrinated language lessons feels like a tiny act of sacrilege, and invites a deal of internal debate. Here is an excerpt:

jmac: After all, there are plenty of contexts where I could legitimately use "boy" in reference to an adult male.

strange interlocutor: Fair enough, but what about that context in the cafe? if you'd been served your coffee by a man, would you have written "the boy who..."? No, you'd have written "the guy who...", and I resist your sexist equivalence of the ambiguous "guy" with the diminutive "girl". Shame shame shame on you.

jmac: [Mumbles, shuffles feet.]

This is an old argument and I back away from having an official opinion on it for today.

Comments

[cnoocy]

That's much less likely to be true of women who are young and/or in a non-social field (that is, anyone who's not an aging debutante.) When one is respected based on something other than apparent age, "girl" is more a disrespectful or at least informal appellation. I don't think it's a matter of tanking the most negative interpretation, but more a matter of taking the interpretation appropriate to the setting. There's a big difference between referring to the woman serving you coffee as a girl and carding the 55-year old woman to whom you're serving dinner.
For that matter, power dynamics come into the equation as well.