hok382@houxa.UUCP (12/13/83)
I guess I don't mind whether my friends call me a woman or a girl or a guy or whatever (when I'm unsure of what to say--and a lot of times I'm not sure whether to use girl or woman or what--I go with the circumlocution "people of the female type", which is a nice light touch, I think). But I do get offended when someone in a meeting says he'll "get his girl on it" (or even if he's been re-educated to say "gal"). He's not meaning to give offense and you probably couldn't even convince him that his attitude is offensive. I guess that I see the girl/woman issue as a symptom of the deeper problem and that all the flak about it just distracts from the real problem, and I hope I have enough sense to figure out fairly quickly just how annoyed to get at any given instance of the word "girl". p. carstensen