Tangent

[bubosquared]

I was gonna post this as a comment in Ruth's journal, but then the server went offline and now I have nothing better to do than sit here and type in my LJ thingie.

Now I, personally, am not bothered by being addressed as a 'guy', but then I've always felt 'one of the guys'. But then, Ruth doesn't have my gender identity issues, so if she refuses to be a guy, I'll do my best not to address her as one. [Note how I said I'll do my best. I know I'll often slip. Feel free to cough loudly when such is the case.]

Aside: I spent at least 15 minutes trying to figure out how to call the chatgirls then, because "y'all" - I've used it, and it made me slap my head every time I cought myself at it - is just far too American for me. Yes, I'm a language-snob. I'am fully aware of this.

Lastly, Ruth, if you don't want to be seen as a 'girl', I'll do my best not to call you one, but I am a girl, and I'd like to have the right to identify as one, thanks. You made a good point about the 'guys' thing, but I personally don't see the harm in identifying as a girl even though I'm 20. I am not a woman. I'm a girl.

Comments

Re: gendered language and gendered realities

[(Anonymous)]

1. Ruth, you're assuming that a word as used alone means the same as when it's used as part of a phrase. Now, I don't know if it's a regional difference or if language has shifted in the last 10 years or not (anyone else in upstate NY in the late 80's?), but to me the phrase 'you guys' is as gender neutral as 'y'all', while the words 'guy' or 'guys' in any other context is not. Now, I'm living where "y'all" is used instead of 'you guys', so maybe language has shifted back to make it more gendered than it was. But I think 'you guys' can be gender neutral, even if it isn't currently.

It is possible for seemingly contradictory co-meanings to co-exist. Just think about the phrases 'I could care less' and 'I couldn't care less'. Literally, they don't mean the same thing, but they're colloquial usage is interchangeable.

2. Girls aren't necessarily children, they're also adolescents and young women. And your railing against the usage of 'girl' seems to stem in part from an unexamined assumption that there isn't a comparable use of the word 'boy'. I think it's fair to say that in informal speech, you find 'boy' used to refer to men in the same way as 'girl' refers to women. (Although, I admit that my perspective is filtered through African-American speech patterns, and maybe that isn't as true for other groups of anglophones.) Anyway, the use of the word 'girl' is like a dimunitive in this case, and a diminutive isn't prima facie bad.

WitchQueen (http://www.slashx-files.com/blog/)