During the 'partner' discourse I kept seeing cishet women say they can't use 'boyfriend' because it feels juvenile/adolescent but I don't see lesbians say this about 'girlfriend' and I'm wondering why.
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Replying to @benjanun_s
A bunch of reasons One of which is the double standard that calling an adult man a "boy" is seen as much more presumptuous and potentially insulting than calling an adult woman a "girl" "Girlfriend" feels less belittling than "boyfriend"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @benjanun_s
Also, the word "girlfriend" was originally coined to mean platonic relationships among women, a "friend since girlhood", and this was seen as something that men didn't need their own word for
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Replying to @arthur_affect @benjanun_s
"Girlfriend" to mean a heterosexual romantic partner was basically men appropriating the term, as was creating the term "boyfriend" by analogy
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Replying to @arthur_affect @benjanun_s
So, as you allude to, there's much more of a history behind the word "girlfriend" used among women with an intentional ambiguity of the level of intimacy involved "Girlfriend" is organically lesbian culture, let's say, while "boyfriend" is a recent import into het culture
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Anyway it's obviously a thing One of the biggest laugh lines in the movie Young Frankenstein is Frau Blücher revealing that the original Dr Frankenstein "vas... MY BOYFRIEND"
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