Don't use the word "girl" or "girls" when you are referring to adult females. It's my pet peeve.

[raccoon]

If you do this, I'm going to tell you the same way I tell my cat,

"Quit it, quit it, quit it, quit it."

And in my area, I hear WOMEN do this a lot! Aargh! Aargh!

[Wait Wut]

1. Sorry.

But, as a woman I look forward to 'girl's nite out'. Even though the 'boys' tag along. We do make them sit at another table, though. We don't want cooties.

[LiberalEsto]

2. I agree

Do people use the word "chick" any more?
That's the term I really, really hated back in the 70s-80s.

[bluedigger]

39. I picked up "chicks" from an ex-gf.

[MiddleFingerMom]

41. Lucky dog!! I think most, if not ALL my of ex-gf's woulda given me the boot for picking up "chicks".

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Whether I called them that or not.
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You, sir... are a god!!!
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[bluedigger]

43. I knew I could count on you to hit that hanging curve ball I left over the plate.

[MiddleFingerMom]

44. I was envious in more ways than one!!! I've picked up much worse things from ex-gf's.

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Oops.
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Once again TMI, MFM, TMI!!!
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[In_The_Wind]

48. Oh my MFM, sorry to hear that.

[Lochloosa]

3. Chicks?

Ladies.

[Quantess]

13. Broads and chicks

to be used ironically

Edit to add: I feel entitled to use these ironically since I am female. Not like it happens that often.

[antiquie]

60. Proud old hippy chick here

that detests broad=woman.

[Quantess]

61. Broad is really old fashioned.

I'm over 40, and I'm young enough to use "broad" ironically.

"Shorty" is a more recent slang term for woman, in hip-hop culture (all the shorties in the house say yeaaah). I have no idea if "shorty" is still current slang.

[antiquie]

62. Over sixty and under five foot here

and, unsurprisingly, I never heard shorty was generic (Betty, Sheila, Shorty!).

[Quantess]

63. I'll never forget when I told my mom (she's now 81) about the "shorty" slang.

She's such a nice lady, but she was irritated when I told her that. She was actually more pissed off about it than I was!

Edit to add: In general, I am the one who gets pissed off, not her! That's what surprised me.

[Callmecrazy]

16. I say "chicks" all the time...

It's harmless and I will continue to use it as well as the words "toots, mamacitas, Groovy (love that one), babycakes and double bubble"

Probably why I'm still single.

[In_The_Wind]

49. Babycakes can be sweet under the right circumstances.

[olddots]

4. I hate the terms gal and fella

babe & dude are stupid too ........I generally hate all humans at this stage of the game

[caraher]

5. It seems to be almost a generational thing

When I entered college in the early '80s it was clear that college-age and older women were definitely NOT interested in being referred to as "girls."

Now that I'm teaching college it seems almost the opposite - most young women seem to prefer to refer to themselves and their peers as "girls." I can't get used to it myself, but I can't bring myself to gripe about it without the urge to add, "... and stay OFF my lawn!"

[tabbycat31]

6. As an adult female

Woman/women is a much more formal term IMO.

The word 'gal' never really took off (in my generation), but the way I hear 'girl/girls' being used, it's the female equivalent to guy/guys as opposed to man/men (which again is more formal). There needs to be a casual term to address adult females.

[PoliticAverse]

76. "The word 'gal' never really took off" - I think that's too bad, I thought 'gal' was the perfect

complement to 'guy'.

[NightWatcher]

7. Which one of you ladies is gonna make a sandwich

Just doesn't flow off the tongue like "girls" does.


Kidding, I mean no disrespect but I do sometimes refer to grown women and females of all ages as girls. I guess I'm too casual. Please continue to feel free to call me a boy, guy, or dude (or schmuck, if applicable).

[clarice]

55. F%^& ing Hilarious. nt

[rrneck]

8. ...

[bluesbassman]

9. Well good luck with that.

Talking about the cat. Last time I tried to tell my cat to "quit it" he waited until I was asleep and tried to smother me with I pillow. He would've succeeded too, but as the last bit of life was flowing out of my body I had the wherewithal to grab some catnip I had stashed in my nightstand and rub it all in his maniacal face. Being the stoner that he is, he immediately released his hold on me and ambled out to the kitchen to raid the fridge.

I don't dare tell him to "quit it" any more, but I gotta tell you girl that I keep catnip strategically hidden around the house just in case!

[benld74]

10. Yes mam!

[Yavin4]

11. Reminds me of a story

I went to b-school in So. Calif with dreams of working in the entertainment industry. I had an informational interview with someone at a studio. When I showed up to his office and asked where it was, a secretary told me: "his office is to your left, and his girl sits over there". I was floored when she said it. I had to check the calendar to see if I went back in time.

[MiddleFingerMom]

18. I agree. "His woman sits over there" would have been more appropriate.

[Yavin4]

19. Or better yet, "His Assistant" or "His Secretary" n/t

[MiddleFingerMom]

21. Geez, this all gets so confusing.

[LisaLynne]

27. It's really not. nt

[MiddleFingerMom]

28. Y'all are aware that you're in The Lounge, right?

[LisaLynne]

30. Meaning what exactly?

And don't just say it's just a place to joke around. The OP was being serious. Some people post serious things here. I always try to respond to the tone of the OP.

[MiddleFingerMom]

31. This isn't exactly the place to be all grim and serious -- serious sociopolitical discussions...

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... can be found over there in General Discussion (GD).
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[LisaLynne]

36. So, you don't like this post being in the lounge.

If people are getting too serious for you there are plenty of other threads, right?

[MiddleFingerMom]

37. Okie-dokie.

[LisaLynne]

38. ...

[MiddleFingerMom]

35. Okie-dokie.

[lumpy]

65. LOL

n

[antiquie]

66. Girl (Friday) once meant your boss knew you did it all.

n.
(Business / Professions) a female employee who has a wide range of duties, usually including secretarial and clerical work
[coined on the pattern of man Friday]
n. Informal
An efficient and faithful woman aide or employee.

[nolabear]

12. I don't like rules rather than sensitivity to the situation.

As someone said, "Girls' Night Out" is appropriate in a way because the women want to play. "Girl Talk" is different from "Woman Talk" and "Girl, you look FINE!" is intimate and friendly where I come from.

If the boss refers to you as his girl, or someone snaps their finger at you as you wait their table and says "Girl!" or someone dismissively says "You girls have fun, now" when you're going off to pull a baby off a burning building then yes, it is demeaning.

Imo we need to just plain pay attention to how to honor one another more and do it because we care.

But I have my peeves too, so I feel ya.

[pipi_k]

22. That is

how I would put it, too.

Context is important (to me), as well as who is using the term.

[HappyMe]

47. I agree.

Context is everything.

[Iggo]

14. Okay, lady.

[hunter]

15. People use "girls" because women are powerful.

I come from a matriarchal family of powerful women.

My wife is a powerful woman.

My sister is a firefighter, another powerful woman.

Nobody ever calls my wife, my sister, my mom, my grandmas, or my great grandmas "girls." Not more than once, anyways.

As a kid I did not mess with my great grandmas. All of them were tough frontier women.



As a wide-eyed city kid I'd watch one of my great grandmas cut up animals, birds, and fish for dinner. She was fast. I hate to think what she could have done to a man who didn't show her the proper respect.

[LisaLynne]

29. Thank you for that post.

It's nice to see someone who understands.

[NewJeffCT]

17. Unless the woman calls herself a "girl" first

I always use woman. And, usually the only women that call themselves "girl" or one of the "girls" are older women.

[we can do it]

20. We call ourselves the girls in my little circle of friends......What's the problem?

[raccoon]

46. see post #12. nt

[rug]

23. You got it, sweetheart!

[DinahMoeHum]

24. "You see a girl, send her back to school" is my stock response. . .

. . .after swiveling my head around saying "Where? Who are you talking about?"

[panader0]

25. What about "My Girl" by the Temps?

[R B Garr]

26. The young female instructor at the gym called me Hun the other day

She's probably at least 25 years younger than me, but it actually made me smile after I looked at her for a second and she was serious. You could see she had adopted that as a catch-all kind of greeting. I thought it was kind of cute.

I do call other women girls a lot, and I almost did in the reply title to my post. To me, a lot of younger females do seem like girls, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way. Maybe it's just noting an age difference? I probably need PC training.

[Chan790]

52. Wonder if she's from Baltimore...

"Hon" is a quintessentially Baltimorean expression. It drives me batty to the point that I typically skip-out when my friends are going up to Baltimore for the evening because the locals use it as the catch-all placeholder and pronoun. A sentence like "Hon, she'll be right over with your ketchup, hon; hon, bring that ketchup over there." should never pass unironically from anybody's mouth.

I'm nobody's "hon", "baby" or "sweetie" and I like it like that.

[R B Garr]

57. That's interesting, because my first thought after she said it was wondering where she was from

It did seem unusual to hear that, and I did look at her for a second to see if maybe she was being flippant, but she wasn't and was actually very polite. I thought maybe it was a southern expression, but I couldn't detect any southern accent. I never would have thought the northeast, so that's interesting to hear your experience from that area.

[astral]

68. I think "Hun" is cute and affectionate

I don't see anything wrong with that. I don't find anything wrong with the term 'girls' either. It guess it has to do with more than context but our individual life experiences. To acknowledge a person's gender / femininity is a positive thing to do not a negative thing. And with no official rites of passage in this country, at what moment does a girl wake up in the morning and find she's not a girl anymore, she's now a woman?

I find the term "babycakes," however, just plain icky.

I'm old enough for the store clerks to be calling me 'maam' now, and ask if I need help out to the car (sigh).

[noamnety]

32. I teach in a high school

I make a point in class especially of not calling the female students "girls" - but women. I know they aren't technically adult yet, but it's part of getting both genders of students used to hearing the word as a normal part of speech.

It's pretty sad though that I should feel like we need to sensitize people to hearing a word for adult females.

[Brigid]

33. And don't call me "baby girl!'

I hate that!

[MiddleFingerMom]

34. !!!

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[BainsBane]

40. That's what I call my dog sometimes

[In_The_Wind]

50. +1

[a la izquierda]

42. I'm 36 years old and I say girls or ladies...

And I'm a girl. If a man called me that, I'd rip his face off.

[Jamaal510]

45. I hate when people use the word "females"

when referring to women and girls. I hear it all the time on shows like Jerry Springer, and it sounds as if they are talking about animals instead of human beings. And I hear both men and women do it.
As a man, it might not be my place to complain about it, but I just think it sounds very low-class.

[antiquie]

64. Button pusher for me (two days later)...

I see two bears, do I ask which one is the man and which one is the female?
It is especially annoying to hear First Man to BlahBlah and First Female to BlahBlah.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

51. meh, I've been called worse -

I try not to sweat the small stuff.

[dr.strangelove]

53. My experience is that it is the preferred term by "girls"

I recall being yelled at in about 1995 during a softball game when I playfully referred to my teammates as Boys and Girls and a young woman (about 25ish) told me in no uncertain terms I was never again to refer to her as a girl, that she was a "woman".

But now, its seems that this same age group prefers this term. It really makes no difference to me. I will galdly refer to someone however they prefer, but I find it interesting how preferences change over time. My wife, who hates beign called a girl, thinks it is realted to the "Girl Power" pop culture references popular with teens in the late 90s and early 2000s. That these former teens are now 25-35 and like the term girl, not seeing it as a term to take power from a woman.

It does not matter either way to me. You can call this 40-something a boy, man, dude, guy, chief, kid, buddy or whateer you want. I will do my best not to offend anyone else.

[MizzM]

54. Lovely Lady

I live in an apartment house in which reside several Russians. I don't know if it's the way the Russian language expresses itself, but every time one speaks to me (which is rare), I am addressed as Lovely Lady. I was taken aback at this at first, thinking it's a little forward of a man who is a stranger to refer to me by that. But I soon came to realize that all women in here are Lovely Ladies when spoken to by one of these Russian gentlemen. Could be worse--he could be calling me chicky.

[clarice]

56. Personally, I am flattered when someone calls me a girl. Lighten up. nt

[ConcernedCanuk]

58. I wonder how The Golden Girls feel about that . . .

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But ya know what irritates me?

Is when my friends, or anyone refers to their wife as

"The Wife", rather than my wife.

I find that sorta impersonal.

just sayin'

CC

[AsahinaKimi]

59. Does that mean I can not attend...

"Girls Night out" ??

[La Lioness Priyanka]

67. i agree. my mom was talking the other day about "girls night out"

and i said " mom, you havent been a girl in like 4 decades and quite and i haven't been a girl for about 2" so lets call this womans night out or something less silly

[AngryOldDem]

69. And furthermore...

Stop saying "guys" when it's mixed company (or **any** company for that matter)...it makes me gnash my teeth when I hear that, especially from wait staff.

And don't use my first name unless: 1) you know me; or 2) I tell you it's okay to do so. Maybe it's age setting in, but this bothers me too when it happens...usually at the bank from a young, condescending, artificially cheery teller.

[jessie04]

70. 'Atta girl" ? ...........atta woman?

[antiquie]

71. Way to go!

Good job!

[jessie04]

74. Well, which is right ??

[antiquie]

75. The proper one.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1018&pid=462405

[DFW]

72. I don't. My wife does.

Well, she says "die Mädels," but it translates out to about the same thing.

She's an emancipated social worker, and uses it as a colloquialism from her area of Northern Germany. Her women friends are all professors and doctors. If they're cool with it, it's not my place to correct her!

[NYC_SKP]

73. If we made a big list of all the words everyone hates, gal, fella, chick, dude....

There wouldn't be any words left!

I will try to not use the words you don't like to hear whenever I'm around you!

FWIW I have my own pet peeves too, like using "less" instead of "fewer".

There are rules about this, dammit!