"girlfriend"

[cos]

Someone on reddit posted with the title "I hate my girlfriend", and when I clicked I saw a post beginning with:

"So my friend and I were grabbing dinner last night after she had gotten into a tiff with her fiancée. I decided to grab my SO something since I was going to go see him right after. Went something like this."

Of course I originally thought this post was going to be about some problem with someone's relationship partner and had to back up for a moment and reinterpret what I was reading - clearly the poster's only romantic partner being referenced in this story is a man, and the only other woman in the story is not her relationship partner. Yet another of many, many times I've seen and heard this usage of "girlfriend", but this time, I took the time to write out my thoughts about it:

Not actually an answer to your question, but a tangential comment since you hit one of my pet peeves: It annoys me greatly when people use "girlfriend" to mean "friend who is female and who I'm obviously not actually in a relationship with because I'm also female".

Partly, it's confusing. It takes extra context to figure out whether someone means it that way, or whether they're using the more usual meaning of "girlfriend" to mean "female dating/relationship partner". You supplied enough context in your post, but people often don't; your headline, though, didn't have enough context, and when I first clicked I thought I was going to read a post about someone's, you know, girlfriend!

But aside from the confusing aspect of it, it also seems to imply a world where women never date other women. It feels heterosexist to me, not in an intentional individual way, but just as a more general artifact of a culture that presumes lgbt people don't exist and so doesn't take account of them in its language. People who say it are generally just saying it out of habit and not thinking of that, but I wish they'd think of that, and help stamp out this term.

Edit: I should add that I'm aware that there's another nuance to this IMO outdated term: it came out of the idea that one's male and female friends play such significantly different roles in one's life that it's worth having another word besides "friend" to communicate which kind of friend you're referring to. Otherwise, why not always just say "friend" instead? Unfortunately, I think that this word usage also helps perpetuate the idea that male and female friends should play such significantly different roles in a woman's life, that the gender distinction becomes almost more significant than the individual differences between the people who happen to be her friends. It reinforces this part of our culture. Fortunately, I think that this part of our culture is on the wane - which is another aspect of gender-role assumptions being on the wane in general. So this is actually another reason why I'd like to see this usage go away, as part of encouraging feminism, gender role freedom, and the idea that friends' individuality matters a lot more than their gender.

If you're interested, it spawned a very large discussion over on reddit, with some good subthreads.

Comments

[eccentrific.livejournal.com]

I'm going to argue the other side here. I hate the assumption that "girlfriend" means someone I am dating rather than a female friend. There are plenty of other good words to talk about my partner/date/SO/fiancee. And if I meant that, I'd use those words. (Also, same rant about boyfriend).

[cos]

I don't think that's "the other side", you just don't like these words' primary meanings at all. I'm not going to take a position on that pro or con. However I feel about those words, they're completely entrenched and I see no evidence that their meanings are changing or that there's a cultural change that's pushing them out, so I just accept them as reality.

If someone could make a really strong case for why we *should* change them, and it seemed plausible that that case would appeal broadly enough that there were a chance such a change might happen, then I'd evaluate the case and decide how much I agree with it. But "let's reclaim 'girlfriend' for this secondary meaning" - a meaning I think is inherently troublesome even if it weren't bumping up against a more established word in a confusing way - is not that case :)

But I see that as a tangent to what I'm talking about here, not an opposition to it. Even if there were such a strong case, it'd still be certain that the primary meaning of "girlfriend" would last for a long time, and it'd still be a good thing to help its secondary meaning go away. Particularly if the reason people don't like girlfriend and boyfriend is that they want to move away from gendered words for romantic partners; why do we need gendered words for friends?

[eccentrific.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm going to disagree with your usage of "primary meaning". I don't think the meaning you favor is the primary meaning at all when taken over a larger geography and social circle than boston area/suspects. For many other social circles, I think the meaning of "girlfriend" to be a female friend *would* be considered the primary meaning. Certainly, I was raised to use it that way primarily, not as a romantic partner. Which is part of why you pushing the other meaning got my hackles up a bit.

Personally, I have no objection to gendered words for either friends or romantic partners. Sometimes I want to use a gendered word (because sometimes gender is relevant) and sometimes I don't. I have the choice of which to use and that's all good with me. What I object to is tacking on an implied assumption that is totally distinct from the meaning of the word and then enforcing that assumption on people who use the word. Because there's really nothing about the words girlfriend/boyfriend that have anything to do with whether or not I'm dating/having sex with someone.

[cos]

Ahh, I can see why you'd feel the way you do, if your impression is that both meanings are equally used (or even that meaning #2 is more used). However, that's quite an anomaly you grew up with. Meaning #1 (where "girlfriend" = female dating/relationship partner) is overwhelmingly the primary and entrenched meaning of the word. You won't find any current dictionary that doesn't list it first. You can find abbreviated dictionaries or translation programs or phrasebooks that don't list meaning #2 at all; you won't find any that list only meaning #2. It's a very secondary meaning, across the whole English-speaking world.

(Long before we were born, meaning #2 was the primary meaning, but only very old people were alive when that was true. And in that time, gender distinctions were quite important enough to merit a separate word for friends by gender.)

[luckylefty.livejournal.com]

One thing I don't like about "girlfriend as a word for someone you're not dating is the completely extraneous introduction of gender. If this friend of yours is a tall white woman, why d you refer to her as a "girlfriend", and not a "whitefriend" or a "tallfriend"?

Historically, I think this usage came about in a world with such strict gender roles that the roles played by a female friend and by a male friend were so different that they needed different words. While I suspect you don't mean it that way, I always hear it as "my friend, whose relationship with me you cannot understand without knowing the essential fact of their gender".

[eccentrific.livejournal.com]

Gender may or may not be extraneous (as my being tall/white/whatever) depending on what you're going on to say about the person. And while I rarely feel the need to mention the gender of my friends, yes sometimes I need to in order to convey whatever I'm trying to say.