Girl/Woman, Boy/Man

[Merle]

At what point do you think you become, or start to see yourself as, a Woman or a Man as opposed to a girl or a boy?

I'm 27 and I think most people would probably think of me as a woman yet I still think of myself very much as a girl... the only time that I would ever think of myself as a woman would be when reading about, or engaging in, some kind of gender equality type issue...

What about you all?

[Rudy]

I don't know. I'm 24, and consider myself a man. From the age of 16, up to now, each year, I look back on the previous year, realize that I totally wasn't a man then, but that I totally am now =D.

[binofhay]

27 as well and consider myself a girl. I don't know why but I don't like thinking of myself as a woman even though thinking of myself as an adult female doesn't bother me as such...Reminds me of the De Beauvoir quote "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." My referring to myself as a girl bothered my feminist professors because they said calling myself a girl instead of a women reinforced the sexist patriarchal image of adult females as ideally juvenile and/or submissive, but I pointed out to them that I will refer to technically-adult male peers as boys as well.

I don't know if I will ever think of myself as a woman because I am naturally quite child-like, in my mannerisms, the way I dress, my facial expressions (or so I've been told many times). I get mistaken as a teenager on a regular basis. For this reason other people probably think of me as a girl and not a woman. I think the fact that I have a low EQ has something to do with it. My mom is always comparing me to other people my age or younger but who are infinitely more "mature". It makes me feel pretty crappy.

[Monte314]

I think of myself as a kid... a kid who is not to be trifled with, but a kid nonetheless.

And I much prefer extended relationships to have that kidlike, "pal" feeling, where we can be sort of silly, and joke around. I prefer this with my employees (Ph.D. types) and my students. I see the workplace and the classroom as "we're all in this together" pursuits, where we will succeed or fail as a team.

On the other hand, in my church duties, I have to be a father-figure, so this requires that I maintain more distance, and act in a way that will allow me to function as a father.

With my children, I go back and forth between being "Fun dad" and "Father", as their needs dictate.

Finally, as many of you know, here in the Forum I oscillate between canine lunatic and ... whatever that other guy is (e.g., post #3 of To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.).

[JoshuaFairtex]

I'm 20 years old, so I would consider myself a young man. However I am a girl on Saturday nights on Robson street if you're looking for a good time and have some extra cash.










The latter was a joke.

[Merle]

27 as well and consider myself a girl. I don't know why but I don't like thinking of myself as a woman even though thinking of myself as an adult female doesn't bother me as such...Reminds me of the De Beauvoir quote "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." My referring to myself as a girl bothered my feminist professors because they said calling myself a girl instead of a women reinforced the sexist patriarchal image of adult females as ideally juvenile and/or submissive, but I pointed out to them that I will refer to technically-adult male peers as boys as well.



Yes, I would call guys my age 'boys' as well. And calling myself a 'woman' just doesn't feel right at all... I'm not sure why...I think in some ways I feel like the word Woman has connotations of responsibility and staidness but also a kind of voluptuous sexuality none of which are really applicable to me, and so calling myself a woman would be a lie in some way.





Merle added to this post, 0 minutes and 52 seconds later...

I'm 20 years old, so I would consider myself a young man. However I am a girl on Saturday nights on Robson street if you're looking for a good time and have some extra cash..

That made me laugh out loud lol

[Kisai]

I think its a private decision.

I consider myself a man, but that's because I have chosen to shoulder responsibilities. If I was a boy, I could give them up, but I can't without betraying who I am and my wife.

[rara avis]

Something about referring to myself as a Woman has always seemed too uncomfortably ostentatious to me... it had a heavy-handed, over-the-top feminist overtone to it. Like in using the word, I'd be making an overt statement about myself and my menstrual cycle. Maybe that's weird, but what can I say. It just seemed uncomfortable, clunky.

As I'm getting into my thirties, though, the word itself as a reference to me is starting to lose its foreign, uncomfortable, creepy sense - it's starting to seem more thoughtless and natural to refer to myself and the females around me as women. It magically has nothing to do with Andrea Dworkin anymore, it's just about having a different context, I guess.

I don't really cringe at the idea of calling females "girls" across the board - it just depends on the sense of intent I get from the speaker.

[demaugustus]

I've thought and felt as a man after my father died and I've had to start becoming a more permanent member of the workforce. I'm 24. But being a man is relative and is different for different cultures. As BostonIan says below, other adults have been deferring to me, who otherwise would not have.

I've had a few older men mistake me as in my 30's.

[BostonIan]

It was less about how I saw myself and more about how other people saw me. When the "old people" who had been towering over me all my life started deferring to me, I took that as the signal. If my memory is right, I was in my early 20's, maybe 22.

[Merle]

Something about referring to myself as a Woman has always seemed too uncomfortably ostentatious to me... it had a heavy-handed, over-the-top feminist overtone to it. Like in using the word, I'd be making an overt statement about myself and my menstrual cycle. Maybe that's weird, but what can I say. It just seemed uncomfortable, clunky.



Yes, I agree with you about the clunkiness and the sort of 70's era feminism vibe the word emanates. I think that's part of why it doesn't seem to fit me either.

From the guys the general consensus seems to be that with the shouldering of responsibility, and within roles of responsibility, comes the feeling that you are a man.

[AliTree]

i think i will always consider myself a girl.

[altoid]

I've thought and felt as a man after my father died and I've had to start becoming a more permanent member of the workforce. I'm 24. But being a man is relative and is different for different cultures. As BostonIan says below, other adults have been deferring to me, who otherwise would not have.

I've had a few older men mistake me as in my 30's.


I've often heard it's common for people to only think of themselves as adults after their parents die. I can't speak from personal experience though. I do consider myself more of a "girl" than a "woman." Not a child, but not quite a real adult either. I'm in some sort of maturity limbo...:p

[NItsuj]

I dunno, I think it would really come down to the ability for you to support yourself that makes you a man. When I was in college, since I was still living with the support of my parents, I didnt feel like a man. Now that I have my own job, place, etc, I feel like a man.

The less dependencies you have, the more 'manly' you are I guess. That's how I figure it anyways.

[LaoTzu]

I still think of myself as a 'boy'... And my 'boy' is 15 and almost a 'man' himself :P

I have pondered this question many times, and I think I will consider myself a 'man' on that day I decide to end my anti-authoritarianism and join the rat-race. That will be... never ....


So I guess I really am a Toys R Us kid after-all.

[Sesquipedalian]

I think a lot of people determine whether or not they are considered a "man" or "woman" by whether or not others consider them a "man" or "woman". I consider myself a man... a young man, but a man nonetheless. I call adults by their first names (no more of this "mister surname") and have the look of an adult so I think most people consider me an adult. I know I'm young and don't truly have adult responsibility yet, however.

[LaoTzu]

... my father died in '90, and that didn't change anything for me. And I have been living on my own dime for over 15 years. That didn't change anything for me either.


I think I read too much Peter Pan back in the day...

[amberlinen]

23 and I'll say I'm a woman if I need to choose between girl/woman; I don't mind being called girl or woman by other people (I do hate it when people say "young men" and "girls" at the same time). There are some weird sexual connotation with the word woman but I'll just ignore it.

I love the feeling of being an adult and get to decide my own path and responsibilities. My determination came very recently, around last year. Before that being a girl or woman was not an issue compared to my anxiety and depression about my future.

[Noehelia]

First of all I did not include my sex on my sense of identity until I was 25. I regarded myself as human, not a female. Afterwords I embraced my feminism more (not that I ever questioned it, just in the question "what are you?" i would never answer "female"). This had also implications in my speech since I would not choose the female version of a word to characterize me.
Now, on the question. I am 31 and I think myself as a kid (see, I am still doing it, not showing my sex) and people perceive me as much younger anyway. In fact, my boyfriend is 27 but he looks older and he calls me kiddo.
I have already thought that if I died I would not want the newspaper to write "yesterday a 31 years old woman died". On the other hand the word "girl" has the meaning for me as someone less than 16 years old which apparently I am not (although I may feel like it). In my language we have a different word that shows an age between a girl and a woman which is something like "young lady", so that is what I would like to be called on the paper.

[JohnDoe]

It seems alot more acceptable to call a woman a girl (lady possibly being a good compromise?) then a man a boy (guy being a good compromise). Just an observation.

[Storm]

I'm 24, and I use the word woman to describe myself. I've never liked the word "lady" much because it sounds to me like a left over from the Victorian age. I think I started considering myself a woman when other adults started treating me as an equal and not a child or "young adult."
Oddly, while I use the word to describe myself, I feel like I'm still earning the title.
Being 24, I don't have these odd notions of the word being tied up with feminism or some sort of sexual conotation. It's just the word for an adult female. Now that I'm an adult, I'm a woman. It's quite simple.

[Callistemon]

I'm 24 and feel myself to be a girl. The fact that if I was on a news report I would be referred to as "a 24 year old woman" bothers me. It's for that reason I don't rob banks.

[Vagrant]

19 years old guy.

I'm kinda between both pronouns -- I use them interchangeably when referring to myself, as well as with my peers. I'll always have my inner kid, but at the same time, it's tempered by my maturity.

[MaleVolentworld]

I'm 26, have a baby face, act like a child around my family always joking around and consider myself a young man rather than a boy.

Funny thing is, when I was 25 and preparing to travel alone to Israel, my aunt was at my house to see me off and she said something along the lines of, "You'll get muscles and come back a man", which I was offended by.

Apparently then I am not a man until I am a bodybuilder, I am quite slim. I suppose other people's idea of what a man is or supposed to be, makes me shy away from calling myself a man.

To be a man, according to some:
- you need to be physically strong
- you have to drink alcohol
- you have to sleep around
- you have to be aggressive, swear
- you have to talk about women alot of the time

Another strange thing at my previous job was when a colleague said I was different, in that I was genderless, neither male nor female.

A girl is innocent, a woman is not. All the women here want to be innocent again :)

[notoppings]

You are a wo/man when you are insulted when someone calls you mam or sir. Up to that point I think that the majority of us wish to think of ourselves as responsible young adults.

[invicta]

In my 20s, I didn't feel I had the life experience that gives the term 'woman' its more serious, adult connotations. I wasn't comfortable then with the term woman. Now I think a woman is immature or childish if she calls herself a 'girl' at age 36. I also think that if a full grown man refers to women as girls that he is not really living among adults, either.

Woman is a word to grow into.

[Harmony]

I'm a chick, and guys are dudes. Screw all this PC stuff. =P

I really hate being called ma'am... Makes me want to look in the mirror to see if I look like I'm 60 years old...

[Moriarty]

I don't think it's an arbitrary number so much as it is a state of mind influenced by life experiences and an inherent capacity for insight. That's not to say that the more experiences you collect, the more insightful you become; elder isn't a synonym for wiser since what a person does with those experiences will vary. Owning the right "tools" is one thing..using the ones you have is quite another.

[Merle]

I have already thought that if I died I would not want the newspaper to write "yesterday a 31 years old woman died".
That's exactly what started me thinking about this ages ago; I saw something in the paper about a 22 year old "woman" who was killed in a car accident, and I thought... oh god, they'd call me a Woman too if I died, how awful!

[binofhay]

and I thought... oh god, they'd call me a Woman too if I died, how awful!

Ahahaha...hilarious that the local anchor referring to you by that name on TV takes a priority of awfulness to you dying. :laugh:

[Vagrant]

Another strange thing at my previous job was when a colleague said I was different, in that I was genderless, neither male nor female.

Hah! I used to struggle with this problem when I was younger. I used to think I was androgynous, because my thoughts really are pretty gender neutral. The fact that I could very easily fool somebody on the net about my gender (unintentionally) confirmed that thought. Then I realized that it's because I don't follow any defined role for gender.

I think almost every INTJ I've known is in a similar boat -- if you didn't know what they looked like, you couldn't tell what gender they are unless they told you.

I really hate being called ma'am... Makes me want to look in the mirror to see if I look like I'm 60 years old...I've had little kids come up to me and say, "Mister..." and it always makes me chuckle a little bit.

[probity]

I have a hard time thinking of myself as a woman. I don't have enough life experience to feel worthy of the title. Other people keep insisting I'm a woman now or at least a young woman and I think they must be crazy. I'm 20 years old, can't they see I'm only a girl?

[questionableme]

I remember at my high school graduation, the valedictorian asked at one point in her speech, "When did we stop thinking of ourselves as boys and girls and start thinking of ourselves as men and women?" And I just looked around and thought, really? That guy cleaning out his ear with his tassel thinks he's a man?

Males have this term "guy" that somehow applies to any male at least, say, 16 years old. I'm not sure if there's an analogous term for females. Maybe I should start referring to all women as "gals" and see if anyone flinches.

[Fox]

When ever I take a look at what's under my pants (which is about every 20 seconds) I know I'm a man.

[invicta]

Males have this term "guy" that somehow applies to any male at least, say, 16 years old. I'm not sure if there's an analogous term for females. Maybe I should start referring to all women as "gals" and see if anyone flinches.

I never like the term 'gal'. It sounds like dialogue in an old Western movie. Goofy, corny. Howdy Pard, how's them gals doin back at the ranch?

[blossom]

I would agree with all of the previous posters who have mentioned that it is a combination of life experiences, insight, responsibility and personal growth. I'm 27, and I definitely think of myself as a woman and have done so since about the age of 25. However I also have a lot of life experience, I was married for 7 years, am now the sole support of myself and my son living in a state with no relatives or long-term friends nearby for help, I've experienced death, I separated from my parents religion and went through the subsequent temporary estrangement when I was 19, and many other things that culminated in my thinking of myself as a woman. It wasn't something I ever strove for, just something I became--sort of like waking up one morning and realizing that the word fit who I was. It also coincided with an acceptance, appreciation and discovery of who I was as a person.

My boyfriend is also 27. I definitely think of him as a man although he does not have the same life experience as I do or any children. Part of what makes someone a man to me is their view on life--taking responsibility for their actions, planning for the future, being settled and secure in who they are and what they want out of life, and having achieved some of the goals they set out to do.