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From: pedersen@cartan.berkeley.edu (Sharon L. Pedersen)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Girl == woman & man == boy ? (was: Re: Girls, girls, girls)
Message-ID: <1990Sep18.012351.27167@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 18 Sep 90 04:20:00 GMT
References: <6290@emory.mathcs.emory.edu> <11927@chaph.usc.edu> <27089@usc.edu> <67993@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Reply-To: pedersen@cartan.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Sharon L. Pedersen)
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In article <90255.141840ROPERK@QUCDN.BITNET> ROPERK@QUCDN.QueensU.CA
(Kim Roper) writes:
>       The "belittling" thing about the word "girl" is that it
>        implies a lack of maturity (in just about any sense of
>        the word).

And makes communication hard, whether or not you think it's
belittling.  In Europe this past year it seemed as if most men I met
had been taught that "girl" is the universal term in English for
"female human", regardless of age.  Once I was trying to find out the
name of a mathematician I'd seen at seminars:

"Do you know this woman, she has long hair in a braid?" I asked some
graduate students I met.

"No, I don't really know any of the girls in that seminar" replied one
of them.

Leaving me wondering if he'd be able to recognize who I was describing
anyway:  a faculty member about 35 years old.  To me, "girl" brings up
a picture of a child;  "woman", of a grown-up.

Granted, this is an example using non-native speakers; however,
similar gaps of understanding have occurred with Americans:

I once tried to ask some musicians why there were not highly trained
girls' choirs, on a par with the famous boys' choirs, e.g. Westminster
Abbey Boys' Choir, etc.  "Well, grown-up's voices have a different
quality from that of children's voices" was the somewhat bizarre
reply.  So I explained that no, I meant girl _children_.  But I still
couldn't get my question answered, because, no sooner did I ask the
question again "are girls' voices different from boys'?" than the
musicians were back to thinking that  "girl" == "woman", and comparing
female adults to male children.

(Maybe some of this was innate resistance to having to admit that
no-one knew if girls also could sing like angels, because no-one had
bothered to listen to or train them?)

--Sharon Pedersen
  pedersen@cartan.berkeley.edu   OR   ucbvax!cartan!pedersen