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From: riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: woman's opinion on "girl"/"woman"
Message-ID: <614@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 13-Dec-83 11:44:32 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.614
Posted: Tue Dec 13 11:44:32 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Dec-83 00:59:24 EST
References: <1497@tekig1.UUCP>, <307@iheds.UUCP> <6771@arizona.UUCP>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 31


 >> "He who takes offense where no offense was intended is a fool."
 >> Think about it.

Okay, I'm thinking about it, and I think I see the point, but there's
another side to the coin, too.  Sometimes no offense is consciously
intended, but a word or an act nevertheless reflects an extreme of
insensitivity or of bigotry which is itself offensive.

Let's look at another example.  Not too long ago in the South, the word
"boy" was used to refer to a black male of any age.  Even if you want
to assert that words like "nigger", "darky" or "coon" were at that time
valueless, everyday terms with no offensive properties, I don't see how
you can say that about "boy".  Calling a grown or even an elderly black
man "boy" was nothing less than saying that he wasn't really a man and
that his proper place was one of the same subservience expected of a child.

Nevertheless, I'm sure that there were many whites who used the word this
way all their lives without once thinking, "Oh, I'm going to call this old
man a 'boy' and watch him squirm."  That is, although the word reflected
with its every utterance the bigotry and racism of the people who used it,
it wasn't always used with an "intent to offend".  In my opinion, that 
doesn't reduce its offensiveness one whit.

Now, I'm not sure how much that has to do with our discussion of "girl".
Personally I consider it a much less clear-cut case than the use of "boy"
I described above.  But I'm not sure that you can always fault people for
reacting angrily to other people's "unintended" use of offensive language.
----
Prentiss Riddle
{ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle