Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Rite of passage.
Elizzybeth:
--- Quote from: ruyi on 13 Apr 2009, 20:42 ---Huh, I guess there's a similar ambiguity for girls=>women, except for some reason it doesn't seem like as big a thing. I guess we have that biological marker, menstruation? And it kinda snowballs from there. You become a woman in our society when you can maneuver sexual relationships I guess??? Or maybe there just isn't that big a dichotomy set up between girls and women in the first place.
That might make sense, since 'women and children' (and old folks) are the categories that need to be protected or whatever.
--- End quote ---
Just to play devil's advocate for a minute, I would like to point out that there's an in-between, catchall term for boys / men, which, though a little informal, is probably more common than either of the other terms: "guy."
Women don't have a term like that. I definitely sense a dichotomy, personally: most of the time, people refer to me in the third person as a girl (whether "that girl" or "us girls"). When I worked in a flower shop, I was always "girl," a la Eliza Doolittle (a role written, by the way, for a 49-year-old woman). But, notably, when I worked at the zoo, I was either "lady" or "woman" (as in, "Give your toy to the woman"). When I wear a suit and teach, I am "woman."
Is that difference based on an assumed level of professionalism? Or attire? Or assumed age (at the zoo, parents primarily referred to me as a "woman" when speaking to their children, who likely couldn't tell much difference between a 17-year-old and a 27-year-old)?
Regardless, I doubt most twelve- or thirteen-year-old girls really start getting called women when they start menstruating. I would definitely argue that western society doesn't place much more--if any--value on the onset of puberty as a social marker of "womanhood" than of "manhood."
imapiratearg:
--- Quote from: Sam on 13 Apr 2009, 20:49 ---Sam Beam doesn't count >:c
--- End quote ---
Sam Beam should count.
pwhodges:
Kipling had some ideas:
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
Oh, and isn't 'guy' nearly genderless these days?
Elizzybeth:
Maybe. But I don't think it can be used in situations where there's ambiguity about whether to call someone a "girl" or a "woman" in the way it can be used in an analogous "boy" / "man" situation.
Tom:
Dude is still way more gender neutral than guy.
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