Thursday, March 27, 2008

Woman or Girl

If calling a woman a girl is demeaning don't you get the same effect if you call a man a boy. If an older successful man was called a boy, he too would be offended. I personally wouldn't mind being called a girl even if I was 40 years old. It would probably even make me feel younger. The lines for calling someone a boy, girl, guys, even the N word have gotten way too vague. When is it right to say, or not right. Who can say that word and who can't. Woman call their friends girls all the time and I'm sure that some men even call each other boys. Every word can be taken a different way when used in many different contexts. My friends like to joke about the "woman of the house". Saying a womans job is to clean and cook. They will sometimes jokingly say to me "Hey woman go make me a sandwich." So in that context woman is more offensive. If they said "hey girl..." it probably wouldn't hold the same weight.

1 comment:

Prof Ron said...

I think a key point, though, is that men are traditionally not called boys. Can you imagine an announcer referring to men NCAA players as boys? I can't. Certainly, though, you make a good point that context matters--woman can be used in a very demeaning way.