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From: travis@gardens.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: Re: Girls, girls, girls
Message-ID: <86047@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Date: 19 Sep 90 14:32:18 GMT
Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
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Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Status: R


>In article <10254@goofy.Apple.COM> bdelan@apple.COM (Brian Delaney) writes:
>   In article <9009122207.AA10780@houston.cs.columbia.edu>
>   travis@houston.cs.columbia.edu (Travis Lee Winfrey) writes:
>   > In any case,the use of words like "girl" or "women" signals an
>   > attitude of respect or the lack of one.  You entirely miss the point
>   > by claiming that they are all words describing the same concept,
>   > when _every_ word is rich with connotations and secondary meanings.
>
>   Absolutely true, Travis.  The problem is, we don't all agree on what
>   those exact secondary meanings are.

That's highly misleading.  We agree substantially on the secondary
meanings, enough to have a very common understanding of their
meanings, from an early age when children first identify with being
"boys" or "girls", to the explosive words that label racial or ethnic
groups.  A more comparable use of "boy" to "girl" is not between
friends, but a white addressing an adult black male with "boy".
There, the offensive secondary meaning is instantaneously heard.

When you focus on the endless subtleties of communication, where one
person may chose not to act in a certain way because of the
assumptions of the second person, and so on, you're merely avoiding
the central issue: "men" and "girls" are used _together_ by people as
a conscious or unconscious sign of lack of respect for women.  If a
grown man continually referred to himself as a "boy," I would think
that he needed therapy.  It infantilizes adults to refer them with
children's names.

The central issue is not the friendly or casual use of the words
"girl" and "boy", nor is it people's private secondary assocations of
word meanings.  Why, some of my best friends are girls and boys.  The
central issue here is inequality of usage as a reflection of
inequality of status --- in a word, sexism.

>   In my example conversation, what can these people do?  They both have
>   contradictory notions of how one goes about be polite and respectful.
>   The best thing they can do is to remember that words are indeed just
>   words.  This makes the dynamite more stable, and less likely to be set
>   off by the words.  When they remember that words are just words, then
>   our second person won't mind quite as much hearing those words, and
>   out first person won't mind saying them.

This is a typical defense of the status quo.  The problem is not in
the words, you claim, but in being upset by them.  The problem is not
in the status quo, but in the attempt to change it.  The problem is
not in Selma or Johannesburg, but in these outsiders who want to
change our rules.  While the argument maintains the appearance of
fairness, it actually gives no reason for the person to use "girls" to
change, it simply tells the other to "lighten up."  "Lightening up" is
fine with me -- I think it's a fairly trivial area for concern -- but
the people who should relax are those who insist on using "girl"
despite the well-understood objections of others.

t