This is not a new issue. Too long ago, I remember an effort to change the terms "guys and girls" to "guys and gals". Deliberate changes to language just don't work, so this went nowhere.

If I'm around PC women, I avoid the term "girls" because I don't want the discussion. I'm then more likely to go with something like "ladies and germs". Men have a sense of humor, whereas feminists notoriously do not.

The rest of the time, I use "girls". That's our language, and it means what it means: a bunch of female folk, in an informal setting.

I'm talking about how, for a laugh at work, the woman who edits me part-time occasionally calls me terrible names. Last week, she said something like: "Hurry up, whorebag." Me: "I prefer ho-bag, thanks."

I have a visceral, negative reaction to that sort of trashtalk, whether it comes from men or women. Like gratuitous cursing in a professional environment, it is at a minimum unseemly and distracting. I find it presumptuous and intrusive, and I am concerned about the sort of liberties and indignities the speaker is setting the stage for.

Also, I wonder if women think we men commonly talk to each other like that. We don't.

As an aside, when women started cursing like sailors they really did a lot of damage to their brand. Like piercing and tattoos, it's jarring and unattractive.

Chicks. You're all just chicks.

Gals is queer.

And Lastango, we use that way of speaking amongst ourselves -- it's fun. As for what it's setting the stage for, it's actually loving -- you can only talk that way to somebody who's in your circle enough that it won't be taken as an act of war.

In that, it's what's called a "costly signal."

Believe me, I know the research on swearing, having written a book with "fuck" in the title -- "Good Manners For Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" -- and having gone over the research recently, to discuss it on Dr. Drew's radio show.

Chicks is fine.

Gregg likes "broads." I love that. (For those who don't know, he was the late crime writer Elmore Leonard's researcher for 33 years.)

"Gals is queer."

Never heard that but ...

Are people so unimaginative that they can not stop "stealing" language?

I get the making up words but I personally as an old white dude just tune people out during a conversation/reading an article when I have to figure out that the word just spoken/wrote has had its meaning changed by the author.

In a millisecond I have to figure out whether they are being sarcastic, misspoke, changed the subject and I missed it, and so on.

Obviously they no longer care if I get their point so it has gone from being an exchange of ideas to being a condescending lecture at best.

"Just don't call me Shirley"
(sorry, Airplane reference for those who don't get it).

As a guy/male/dude/'bro, stuff like this makes it difficult in the workplace sometimes. Just like back in the 80s/90s with all the sexual harrassment stuff; men get apprehensive saying anything to women. Even stuff that is normal interaction: "I like your haircut" or "That perfume smells nice". The way I was raised those are normal compliments but now instead of saying them I go "is it going to be blown up somehow" and I don't say them.

This is the same kind of stuff, yesterday I could say "ok girls, lets get this meeting going", but today I can't and oh, when were you going to tell me the rules changed?

Make men afraid to talk with women they work with and work becomes a hostile environment.

I've called myself a woman for years although at sounds a little funny on my tongue since my mother still gets together with the girls.

I remember a male co-worker coming up to me so that I could take over his customer. There was no way that he could serve her. He was ready to punch his way through a wall because of her racism and blatant disrespect. The customer had referred to this 22 year old thin black male as a boy.

I looked at him puzzled because women are called girls all the time. This was almost 40 years ago. He had to explain to me why he was so upset and what it had to do with race. I think that the correlations are interesting.

Don't call me Shirley? Inconceivable!

https://youtu.be/iFQb-kBARNQ

"Gals is queer."

New one on me too. Must be a West Coast thing.

Women refer to men as "boys" all the time, and I'm sure they don't mean anything by it. Last week, we were over at the house of a couple we are friends with, and the guy and I were doing a bit of wiring in has basement. At one point, his wife calls down the stairs, "Are you boys almost done? We want to order pizza." Ordinary conversation; just a colloquialism.

Using "boy" as a form of address towards a black man may come across as racist, due to past history. That usage is something we carry with us from our European roots. In French, the word "garcon" (with a cedilla on the 'c') literally means "boy", but when used to address an adult man, it's a usage intended to be vaguely disrespectful, to remind the person so addressed of his station. That's why they often use "garcon" to address a waiter in a restaurant. (In French restaurants, the only people ruder than the staff are the customers.)

I hang out with my boys. All of them are adults (at least physically). When I hear anyone complaining about using 'girls' I know I don't want to talk with them any more. And probably not ever again. Once you are that focused on a single word you clearly are a joyless scold with no real problems so you make new ones up to scold people.

Honestly, I'm getting to old to even try to keep up with what stupid shit offends people these days.

If you don't like what I say, go the fuck away and leave me alone. And get off my lawn.

Mayim's head bobbing in that video made me dizzy.

Also, her recitation of the line, "I'm a girl," in The Big Bang Theory kinda makes you wonder where her outrage was when her paycheck was on the line.

Ahem.

Until it does not matter what you are called, you do not have equality - although there are some strange definitions of that in use. If you have the personal or work history that lends you confidence, you won't care.

If you're the special snowflake that thinks words are actions, then you're going to be hurt. Ow! Ow!

I'm a legal administrative assistant ("LAA" for short). This is a relatively new term, because evidently secretary or legal secretary is just too demeaning. When I first started working at my current job 10 years ago, one of my attorneys asked how I wanted to be referenced, i.e., as his assistant or his secretary. I laughed...I said secretary was fine, since that's exactly what I am. Now it's this whole thing in my firm that we're LAAs...and it makes me crazy because everyone is tripping over themselves to make sure they address us as LAAs and not secretaries. So girls definitely doesn't bother me. I get together with the girls, we have girls' night out and I've never been offended by the use of girl. Some people must not have anything going on in their live if they have time to make a big deal out of this crap.

I never get called girl. I do get called kid all the time by customers. Men and women.

I do get called kid all the time by customers. Men and women.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

"I do get called kid all the time by customers. Men and women."

That's just 'cause your cute (did that on purpose - I can invent words with best of 'em)

Yea, right.

You ever try to call some women "woman" and see how you will get an earful of "how dare you call me OLD"!

Some folks just aren't happy without something to bitch about.

There, I just used the "B" word. What are they going to do about that?!

Might have had more merit if she hadn't used the terms guys and dudes, instead of men.

If the 'dude' at the bar had said 'gal' or 'dudette' he would probably been chastised for that, too.

If she is going with the idea words and labels matter. She should be reminded, it's Lords and Ladies not Ladies and gentlemen. Since Lord/Lady denote noble rank, gentleman/gentlewoman in non noble

When you don't feel weak, when you feel the antithesis of weak, you can even shrug it off when somebody calls you what are supposed to be really terrible names.
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Being resilient doesn't mean being SILENT. Miss Manners will happily back up anyone who agrees. Also, in "Kitchen Confidential," Anthony Bourdain gave examples of how women cooks and chefs in restaurants have to be really tough, since there's no shortage of really awful men - but that usually included striking back, within the law, of course.

I do not put up with trash talk even from women who are clearly NOT trying to be friendly, and even if they are, it's not friendly to me. What's wrong with formality, especially in an office? Not that all offices are the same.

Here's what I said elsewhere in 2005:

I especially dislike the phrase "guys and girls." Not only does it sound to me like an expression used by semi-literate characters in a 1940s gangster movie, but it also implies, I think, that boys shouldn't have to grow up and girls aren't allowed to grow up. Miss Manners, too, is tired of the practice of calling a group of men and women "guys." In fact, that happens when the group is all-female, too, as I've observed. (She very much dislikes THAT.)

If I had a kid, I'd try to teach it to make a game out of using the word "guy" or "guys" as seldom as possible, just for the sake of expanding the English language back to its original, beautiful spectrum. In an article in the hippie newspaper "Boston Phoenix," years ago, someone complained about how people are using fewer and fewer words and overusing them, such as "whatever." The clincher was when the writer pointed out that even "All in the Family's" working-class Archie Bunker had a very wide vocabulary, even if he didn't really understand the proper meaning of half the words he tried to use. Examples: "Patience is a virgin," "A house of ill refute," etc. He couldn't even spell "daddy" correctly on one occasion, but he very seldom said "whatever," and didn't tend to repeat his phrases that much from episode to episode. This hardly made him seem unrealistic at the time.
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Even stuff that is normal interaction: "I like your haircut" or "That perfume smells nice". The way I was raised those are normal compliments
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In a social environment, of course. They're not suitable in a business environment. Not that overreactions don't exist, but there are formality reasons that men don't as commonly note clothes and hairstyles in their male co-workers (whom they barely know). A co-worker who's also a good friend is different.
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I looked at him puzzled because women are called girls all the time. This was almost 40 years ago. He had to explain to me why he was so upset and what it had to do with race.
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I mentioned that issue in a previous thread. I don't think I've ever heard a white person (in real life) call a black man who's a STRANGER a "boy." But that's likely because most white people now know better than to do that, since they never really did that with white strangers, unless the speaker was an angry cop yelling at a white misbehaving man.

Do you cringe when you hear adult women referred to as "girls"?

No, I cringe when I see PHd holders on talk shows claiming vaccinations are a 'bad thing'

The reason women are called girls is hiding in plain sight.

Adult women, on account of reasons having no doubt to do with evolution, are far less differentiated from girls then men are from boys.

Women's voices do not change; their features do not become lupine; their bodies remain hairless; their appearance remains soft; shoulder-head proportions do not change nearly to the extent men's do.

Regardless of how true all that may be, I grant lenona this: reconstruct sentences to use "she" instead of "girl", or "chick".

No one will notice you aren't doing it wrong.

"Boy" is deliberately demeaning when used by a white to refer to a black man, but that's the exception. An old West rancher did not insult or demean his crew by calling them his "(cow)boys", and a medieval lord most certainly wasn't insulting the hereditary professional soldiers he hired and called "boys" = cnihts = "knights".

In modern English, the connotations of "girl" and "boy" as applied to adults may be different, just because (as a matter of biology, not culture) youthfulness is more attractive in women than in men.