Appropriate terms for men and women

General Chat
21

Possibly you’re speaking down to Daniel somewhat, but that’s not really my place to say. I moreso meant the spirit of the debate was not being honestly represented.

I’m not personally insulted. I feel you’re either not being genuine or else you have blindly accepted an overly simplified and popular narrative.

Maybe this was the wrong word. Perhaps demeaning or disingenuous might be more appropriate? I feel it’s the topic itself that is disrespected rather than any individual person. Although the bird comic could be interpreted as calling Daniel a predator who is deaf to the cries of the mice (women).

It is my own inferring from your posts that you seem to adopt a sort of white knight persona, always defending the poor oppressed women folk from the evil pariarchy (or any random guy)

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Sorry if my post is still kinda vague. My perspicacity and ability to deeply reflect subject matter is not what it was a decade ago. I will endeavour to elaborate further any points of confusion.

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What does the word “insidious” mean to you? From what I understand, it means “subtle or unnoticeable, but harmful”, and that is fitting for the usage here.

Even in this thread, many people don’t acknowledge there is an issue, but on a large scale, subtle language choices like infantalization cause tangible harm.

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Insidious is meant to be of something that is much more severe than this. While the word’s definition is matched up well, it needed context isn’t really found. Also if something is insidious it means that it is harmful with harmful intent usually. This has not yet been harmful and was said in an innocent nature, so calling it insidious isn’t exactly the most accurate to me. But I guess word usage is just arbitrary in the end.

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Insidious does not imply intent at all.

In fact, insidious harm is very likely to be of this sort - not intended but happens anyhow.

Furthermore, insidious sexism is severe.

Something I’ve been grappling with is the way it was done in this case though.

One the one hand, it’s right and proper call out sexism whenever and wherever it rears it’s head. On the other hand there are different ways that this can be done.

The insidious damage done in this case is carrying on the culture that every time someone posts something relevant, that’s an invitation a free-for-all on their thread with diversions about typos and correct use of language.

This is very disrespectful, and in this instance if I were the OP I’d be thinking “screw them, they can do without my contributions”.

I admire the way the OP in this case just took it on the chin, acknowleged the input. fixed his video title, and said no more.

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26

What is it that is disrespectful? I re-read but I couldn’t follow too well, sorry. Not to say you made a mistake.

Real sexism is simple injustice, but it’s hard for me to see the sexism here. Perhaps you could enlighten me?

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There are two questions here.

What made the response to the OP’s post disrespectful?

  1. Leaping onto a typo and carrying out a conversation about that in a thread about an enthralling go match.

  2. Making a general statement about the insidious sexism in a way that invited the subsequent discussion, then responding to posts about in the way that we all did - completely off topic in that thread, and not even applicable to the original instance of insidious sexism (which in this instance was imply a translation error).

This is a bigger topic - and one that is really important to understand, because the actual harm occurs when people don’t understand it.

Benjito’s link is one good starting point: infantilism

When you refer to all women as “girls” you imply that collectively they are immature and not of the same status as “men”. A mindset formed like this leads to the acts of direct sexism that are easier to recognise, but if you don’t change the underlying mindset, it’s hard to eliminate the acts…

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28

About the “girls” thing… Idk, like I said, it’s pretty arbitrary. Where I have been growing up both young men and women are commonly referred to as boy or girl in the same way that older people will call younger males “son”. While, I am younger than her (and obviously a boy) and would not call her a girl for the sake of respect to my elders. But I don’t see a huge problem with calling a young woman of her age a girl if it’s not trying to make a statement that women (or the individual) are like children. It happens all the time, and a few older women I have met like being referred to as a girl. Though those may be a bit wack. And I apologize for getting caught up in the convo. I have a passion for debating so I tend to hop in on them. Sorry.

:dango:Dango emoji

Edit: I was actually talking about the word insidious when I said something was arbitrary. Ignore that mistake

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29

The problem doesn’t occur when young men and women are referred to as boys or girls, if they are genuinely “young”.

The problem happens when usage extends the idea of young beyond what is reasonable, so it becomes a diminutive.

When older males call a younger male “son” it usually is diminutive. The usage emphasises the seniority of the older male. “Now listen here, son…”

The problem happens when this gets generalised, and it is “habit” to call all women “girls”. This is where the lack of respect kicks in - a lack of consideration for whether the woman involved in fact has earned more respect than that by merit of her years.

The translation error that occurred was that the OP of the other thread was looking for a term that meant “female person” and chose “girl”. While it is true that a girl is a female person, it’s also the case that the term “girl” brings with it connotations of immaturity (not obvious to a non-English speaker).

When a group of people chose to always refer to women as girls in any given context, where the term “man” is implied for the male person, then that brings with it the connotation that women themselves are are not equal in status to men.

And that is the insidious problem - the fact that it’s insidious is evidenced by the need to spell it out here.

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30

What I’m focused on is that it’s arbitrary. Some places you can just call anyone boy or girl and some places you have to be more polite and courteous. Disrespect is arbitrary. The rudeness or “infantilism” of calling a woman “girl” is arbitrary. Whether or not it is sexist or just a weird evolution of slang is arbitrary. I’m not talking about movies here, I’ve heard older men casually call my Papa “boy” and even “laddie”. If the person in question finds it rude then stop doing it. If the person is good with it then proceed as they have allowed. Who decided whether it is sexist? The sexism is almost always about the intent. Rarely has anyone been sexist accidentally. I say, if the perp has bad intentions to spread harm then put them down. If the perp offends someone, find out why and if it was actually injustice on their part. If the person in question has a problem with it then talk to them about it. I am just 14, but I have some sense of what is fair and what isn’t. And when I see something unfair, I call it out.

PS thanks for reading my replies and responding and stuff. You’re one of my favorite mods. ^-^

Edit: :dango: dango

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This thread prompted me to look up etymologies for insidious and insinuate.

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32

Probably many people would say “I’m dating a boy/girl” / “my boyfriend/girlfriend” when talking about a 20 year-old adult. But Choi Jeong is almost 27, this is becoming a bit too old to be called that way. Especially for a go player, 27 is not young anymore.

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33

Old people call me “girl” or “young lady”. I don’t obesess over it or find it insulting. If an old person thinks I still have a lot of life and potential in front of me, I’ll take it as a well-wishing and hope they’ll prove right :slight_smile:

I think the term “girl” has lost its original meaning in many languages and it is used more widely. However, if I talked about a 27-old, I would say “young woman”. If she were 23 or so, I might say girl.

In Greek, I would use terms like “girls” in contexts such “I’ll have a coffee with the girls from work” and none is under 35. However, I wouldn’t use “boys from work” because it refers to boys or very young men. I would use “kids from work” meaning “everybody at every age except the bosses”. Funny how I’d use “kids” but not “boys”, though. Maybe because older generations referd to girls as “girls” and to boys as “children”. Therefore, I guess there must be an implied meaning when I say “girls”, although I am so used to saying and hearing it that I don’t perceive it.

I wouldn’t say “women from my office” because it wouldn’t refer to my colleagues in this context (to have a coffee) but to “female people, as opposed to”. I wouldn’t use “men from work” either.

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Thank you for the contribution to the topic as a female. :pray:
:dango:Dango emoji

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It depends who I’m talking to and if I’m including myself.

If my much younger female colleague calls me a girl I don’t mind, because we’ve built that rapport.
If my male colleagues called me a girl, that wouldn’t fly.

Or, I would say a female Go player beating a male player is “a win for the girls!” but I’m counting myself in the term and using it consciously to subvert the traditional negative meaning.

However, I know google translate is inaccurate, I know foreign languages are tricky, and I wouldn’t demand heads on platters for mistakes like that.

Also, it’s good to remember other cultures exist and they may have more or fewer terms for any thing that we take for granted has one or five.

For the record, it drives me crazy when men colleagues say “πάρτε τις κοπέλες του γραφείου να συνεννοηθείτε”, which is a different term for girls (κορίτσια would be the term applicable to the rest of the discussion), but it’s used locally to mean “the women who do the clerical stuff, not the important employees, which of course are men”. It’s a term meaning young unmarried woman, between girl and woman, and I find it much more insulting in certain contexts.

tl;dr languages are complicated, sexism is a real problem.

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36

It is also very appropriate to call your boss, boss.
However that doesn’t mean that the word isn’t loaded with other connotations in certain contexts (see video below), which it has to be pointed out, are usually only visible during verbal discsussions and it does not carry over well in written discussions, which is why it is always a good idea to point things out and ask for clarifications before getting offended or accusing people of having bad intentions. The written word is, unfortunately ripe with such misunderstantings, while the verbal speech is usually much more clear when someone is being snide/taunting or joking. E.g.:

Sometimes we know the reference, sometimes we don’t. It happens. Which is way it is always good to double-check with the other person.

It’s the latest social media fad, it will pass, don’t worry.

That is arguable, even for English, but before we go into the linguistics (yet again :slight_smile: ), we should always remember that a lot of people usually translate those terms in their own languages, when reading/understanding them. In my case the Greek translation of insidious is not implying bad intent. It is very clear about it.

There is a new/different topic now about it, so I guess that is the point exactly and I will agree with you that a good approach with such off-topic issues would be to private message the OP, instead of publically calling them out, before making sure that their mistake was intentional (and with bad intentions at that).

Since you mentioned that you are very young, I’ll point out that this is also arguable for a lot of people (a good hint is the word “systemic”), but I won’t get into that.
Just be aware of it, it will save you a lot of trouble.

Yeah, in a lot of contexts it just means “people/folks your are working with or your are familiar with”, a company of people, of sorts (since it can substitute the word “παρέα”), that can contain both men and women. You hear even really old people with grandchildren say to each other “let’s go kids” or “I am going out with the kids”, when talking to their peers/friends.

It is a nice local oddity :slight_smile:

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Just to point out… You didn’t say anything that I hadn’t considered. A bit rude to say that you had to spell it out. I get I’m a kid, but I’m not an infant. But that’s off topic. :frowning: I also don’t know how to dm here…

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Click their name and click message

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39

I feel dumb now. Lols. Thanks!

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It’s the opposite in Australia. Men will often “go out with the boys” but saying something like “right kids listen up” would be very demeaning unless said jokingly with very close friends. We also often use “guys” as a gender neutral term to refer to all those in the room, but a few women take offence to this since “guy” is technically a masculine term.

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