Arla advert - "our girls"

[YouCantBlameMeForTheDeathOfSumner]

It's an audio advert that comes on between podcasts. A man refers in a saccharine patronising tone to "our girls" and there is a moo, so that we understand he means the cows.

It makes my skin crawl. I have always vaguely disliked the "girls" and "boys" usage for people's pets but not enough to think about it much. Suddenly, in context with all sorts of other nonsense, it seems to be adding up to some sort of cultural implication that femaleness is itself animalistic. Cows who give milk are not heifers anyway, they have all calved so why aren't they saying "our women" anyway?

I hated my team being referred to as "the girls" at work (when I was in an industry that did that) but it felt a little bit precious to object. Now it just feels that we're all being roped in together as infantalised, useful sub human objects.

YABU - get over yourself, "it's just an advert", humans are a class of animals anyway, there is nothing to be gained by thinking through anything like this

YANBU - yes it's gross

Women I think is universally accepted as referring to humans.
Girl and boy much more flexible and applied to animals. Lady and gent to inanimate objects.

I have no problem with this advert.
The cows are female and rather than implying female-ness is animalistic its meant to show that the female cows are treated with respect.

Could be worse. Could be ‘our lactating persons’.

This. I'm a single parent with 2 dd's and female dog. I always say it's a household of girls including myself and the dog. It's pretty universal whereas women isn't. I'd never call the dog a woman 😆. If I'm meeting friends from work I'd say I'm meeting the girls. Far worse things to get upset about. I think it shows affection to the cows referring to them in that way

Could be worse. Could be ‘our lactating persons

Or chest-feeding bovines.

You're overthinking this. It's very standard to use 'girls' and 'boys' for animals. It's anthropomorphism, that's all. It's giving animals human qualities, not giving humans animal qualities.

The age of the animal is irrelevant. Nobody says 'Good man' or 'good woman' to their dog, no matter how old or what the reproductive status of the animal, because we simply do not apply those terms to animals in English.

The fact that you think the transition from 'girl' to 'woman' is marked by producing offspring is a lot more troubling than someone calling their cows 'girls'.

Girls and boys for animals is fine.

A woman is an adult human female and the word is not related to animals in the same way.

There are many hills to die on, this is not one of them.

I think you may be over thinking a little… it would be fine to call an adult male dog “good boy” for example.

If I’m talking to the horses it’s “ladies please, you can’t both get through the gate at once, have some patience” whereas the ducks are always definitely “come on, girls.” So I’m obviously species-ist, but can’t say I’ve ever actually given it much thought. I would have agreed that woman is specifically an adult human female; but maybe I’ll just start yelling “woman!” into the fields instead when I go out pet-herding.

My neighbour has two daughters and two male dogs. So it’s always “the girls” and “the boys”.

I'd say it's the hierarchy thing. Mares are always in charge. They'd be insulted by girls 😆

I call my pets 'the boys' and 'the girls'.

He says, “Our girls always come first”. Barf.

I completely agree.

If the animals are male/female it’s fine to call them boys/girls.
There’s nothing sexist in it.

They would have been female cows and so ‘our girls’ is accurate.

I say someone’s a girls girl if they’re a woman who supports other women, I’ll say a girls night out and I support the ‘this girl can’ campaign.

As long as you aren’t using it in a derogatory sense, then it’s fine.

So some people do actually listen to the adverts on podcasts then? Blimey.