Being referred to as a girl

[Genericusers]

Earlier a woman maybe in her 50s said "let the girl come past" referring to me, a 30 year old woman. I do look younger but still, 20 something.

Am I being unreasonable that this bothered me a little?

I hate lady. I know a couple of people who call me this and I cringe every time.

Give over 🙄

I work on the premise that you are a girl at school, a woman once you leave, in how I would refer to a female.

So I'm not surprised at your feelings, even though no malice was meant I am sure.

Where I'm from, people often say "boy" when they are referring to a man. Usually informally eg "the boy came to the house to fix the boiler" or "the boy at the train station sold us a ticket" etc. Sometimes "old boy" if it's a very elderly gentlemen.

He’s YABU. We are all in our 60s my mother still refers to us as ‘the girls’

It's just a turn of phrase and I'm sure no malice was meant by it - especially if she was talking to the dog!!

I'm nearly 60 and still say 'girl's night out' or girl's weekend away' even though the 'girls' in question are the same age as me.

You'd hate me. I refer to all the men and women at work as boys and girls but then I am at least 30 years older than nearly all of them. So to me they are kids.

You are being very unreasonable. What term would you have preferred? Woman? female? Lady? Human? Adult? Person? Can you see how hard it is for people nowadays? I can’t believe this trivial everyday conversation bothered you. I would say girl too. If I go out with friends I would say ‘I’m going out with the girls’ and I’m in my 40s.

The usual sexist test applies: would you use the equivalent word for a male? I doubt the person would have said boy about a 30 year old man
I completely disagree.
The term ' boy' or 'girl' applies to adults where I live without anyone getting worked up about it. Ds who is 27 was getting past a few people in the pub and someone said ' mind, yer back Fred, let the boy through. Then I needed to go through, it was ' OK, lass coming through'
Dh was referred to as the old boy!
Nobody was offended, nobody was demeaned.
Don't come to my neck of the wood OP, you'll be upset everyday.

Yabu

I'm in my fifties and where I live it's a turn of phrase

Honestly I sometimes think people look too hard to try to find offence

Yabu op. You’ll know when they say ‘woman’ you’re showing your age, I remember it well!!😂

Believe me you’ll love to be referred to as a girl when you’re 52 like me!

Surely if its a woman using the term its not casual sexism

*in what place would you say to move aside because “let the boy pass” to a 30 year old bloke?(

Er... in exactly the same place that you'd say it to a 30-year-old woman?!

It's just a way that older people tend to refer to younger people. I'm 47 and I'll frequently refer to women in their 20s/30s as 'girls' and men in the same age group as 'boys'. I wouldn't do it in a professional context - I wouldn't say 'I've got a meeting with Liam, the boy from Marketing' or 'Can you send the draft to Katy, she's the girl we met at the conference'. But if I was out and there was a group of 30-year-old men in a bar, I absolutely might say something like 'Oh, it looks like the boys over there are about to leave, so we could grab their table when they go' or something like that. My friends and I also have a running gag about describing footballers as 'a nice boy' now that we're so much older than them, usually followed by us adding 'I bet his mum's really proud of him'.

My mum refers to all her own friends as 'girls'. "I went for a coffee with Sylvia yesterday and she wouldn't let me pay for a thing! She's always been a great girl." My mum is 80.

DP's mum was talking about someone from her church a while ago who had recently been suffering from mental health issues and said "She's a lovely young girl but she's all on her own in that house". DP, wondering how a 'young girl' could afford to live a four-bed house in London alone and expecting her to be a startlingly youthful millionaire, said "How old is she?" and DMIL said "Oh, I should think 50ish?"

Apparently it’s ‘internalised misogyny’ 😆

YANBU, it's demeaning and infantilising. "Lads" for men isn't the same at all, because men aren't the oppressed sex.

At work or with friends I almost always refer to the men as 'lads' and the women as 'girls'. But in Ireland many of us refer to a group of people as "lads" regardless of gender.

I hate this in work. Men referring to competent, adult, senior women as good girls!

I called a colleague out on it recently - he said he saw our new CEO is some girl from Edinburgh. I expressed my shock that a child had been hired for such a senior position.

No one ever talks about that boy in accounts when referring to a forty year old man!!!

infuriating and infantilising

Nope. I will never want to be patronised in the work place.

I am an adult woman. I haven’t been a girl since I was in school.

Oh my gosh. I've heard it all now!

Around here you're an "old girl" or "old boy" if you're retired.
Confused me no end when I moved here. I thought people meant they'd all gone to the same public school or something.
So God knows how dogs cope with the complexities of the English language.

Feels like OP woke up this morning and decided to be offended today.

I would probably say girl even though I could see you were a grown woman I wouldn't mean to be patronising.

I suspect it is most days to be honest.

it might depend on the work place. I work in a male dominated environment which sometimes feels more like a golf club than a place of work. Sexism isn’t overt but i see it every day. Particularly in senior meetings where women are I. The minority and need to really push to be heard.

because of this I will never refer to a woman as a girl at work - I call men men and women women.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2021/08/09/why-calling-women-girls-is-a-bigger-deal-than-you-may-think/?sh=266cd0a12fda

I call my Dds "the girls " even though they are grown women with husbands,partners houses and jobs !