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From: sunny@sun.uucp (Sunny Kirsten)
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: On the Interpretation of "girl"
Message-ID: <1699@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 20-Sep-84 23:01:22 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.1699
Posted: Thu Sep 20 23:01:22 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Sep-84 03:36:29 EDT
References: <212@gitpyr.UUCP> <318@hou2g.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 35

Greetings:

	I use a very simple criteria for calling someone a girl versus
calling her a woman.

	If she constantly refers to her mother, she's a girl.
	If she evidences independent decision making, she's a woman.

	Likewise boys versus men.

	Adulthood is the issue.  The titles reflect which side of that
fence a person occupies.  All of the above relates directly to a one-to-one
personal interaction.

	Many of the interpersonal interactions which occur in our everyday
real life world, relate to positions rather than to people.
Presumably, at work, you should be relating to the position of the person you
address, or refer to.  Thus, when the President calls a female secretary a
girl, or a male secretary a boy, he or she is indicating his or her power or
authority over the lesser *position*.

On the other hand, at the company's Friday night beer bash, when people are
presumably interacting on a personal level rather than on a positional level,
(well, this particular example is purposely the most ambiguous situation),
then we should all be equal *people*, as opposed to heirarchial positions, and
the use of boy or girl becomes personally offensive, rather than a reflection
of positional power.

All of the above is complicated by the *traditional* and typical social
structure whereby men in general have more *power* than women, and often
abuse it when they needn't, asserting that power thru the use of derogatory
terms, such as "girl", indicating a lack of adulthood in the object.  The
last word carefully chosen to imply the associated "objectification".
-- 
{ucbvax,decvax,ihnp4}!sun!sunny (Sunny :-> Kirsten of Sun Microsystems Inc.)