@GMTplus7 - Exactly! You hit the nail on the head.
Insisting on calling someone a word they don’t want to be called is just childish. What is wrong with being polite and respectful of people’s wishes?
In my bubble:
boys and girls: equivalent
men and women: equivalent
ladies and gentlemen: equivalent
guys and girls: not equivalent
you guys: gender neutral
y’all: gender neutral
Husband and I refer to our grown sons as “the boys.” We never refer to any other grown men as boys. I agree sometimes context matters.
@Ali1302, I’m not a radical feminist by any means, but I am a female structural engineer. I didn’t want to be called “girl” in my 20s or 20s, because the men in my department weren’t referred to as “boys.”
Once when I accompanied my dad on a site visit, another engineer asked me, “Are you daddy’s little helper?” I said, “I guess so - I’m just finishing up my master’s degree in structural engineering.” That shut him up.
Another time when I was discussing a project with a civil engineer, I told him I needed to check with my supervisor about a specific issue. His reply? “Oh, you have to run to daddy to ask for his help?” So yes, I am a little sensitive in this area. There’s no excuse for nonsense like that.
^I don’t think you are being especially sensitive. fwiw. How we use language impacts how we experience the world. imho
Just don’t call me ‘Ma’am’…
or late to dinner.
I totally see where MaineLonghorn is coming from. Too many times patients referred to me, the female doctor, as a nurse and the male nurse a doctor. Harder to put patients in their place, however. It is harder when one is put down. Today’s women physicians do not seem to have a sense of any comradeship- old boys network. It is good when the current generation can take for granted they will be accepted (although there is still discrimination and other bad things) but I wish they understood how tough we had to be.
@MaineLonghorn I could care less what your occupation is, the word girl is a generic term.
If you feel sensitive on being called girl then that shows there’s a problem with you.
Also, you mentioning your father and the way you “shut him up” was rude. If you’re that disrespectful to your father then that just shows what type of person you are.
Do you enjoy being arrogant and narcissistic to others?
@Ali1302, you should read more carefully. I “shut up” the other engineer who called me “daddy’s little helper.”
@wis75, my FIL went to medical school on the GI bill in the late 40s. He noticed a cute girl and asked a nurse about the “candy striper.” The woman informed that the “candy striper” was a year of ahead of my FIL in medical school and a lot smarter, too! Of course, they ended up marrying a couple of years after that. 
"@MaineLonghorn I could care less what your occupation is, the word girl is a generic term.
If you feel sensitive on being called girl then that shows there’s a problem with you.
Also, you mentioning your father and the way you “shut him up” was rude. If you’re that disrespectful to your father then that just shows what type of person you are.
Do you enjoy being arrogant and narcissistic to others?"
@Ali1302 re: your post which I’ve repeated above - although you are a few hundred posts into CC, you haven’t picked up on the fact that we tend to be a friendly, helpful bunch here. A lot of your posts today seem inflammatory. Maybe you are having a bad day. Maybe you need to get with the program and be less inflammatory. Also, you might want to slow down a little and work on your reading comprehension before writing up an attack on another poster. MaineLonghorn was NOT referring to her father but to a coworker of her father.
Post #67, especially this:
“Also, you mentioning your father and the way you “shut him up” was rude. If you’re that disrespectful to your father then that just shows what type of person you are.”
Huh? Too many tourists under the bridge today? 
@doschicos, thank you! Yes, I’'m glad most people on CC are friendly and helpful! That’s what keeps me sticking around here.
The only reason women today are treated with the respect in the workplace is because older women insisted on being treated with the same respect as their male colleagues. When women like Maine don’t insist,there is the danger all women are treated like “little helpers” and that is a huge problem.
MaineLonghorn: Thank You!!
Not only was @MaineLonghorn not referring to shutting up her father, she didn’t even tell the other guy to shut up.
Referring to anyone old enough to be completing a graduate degree as “daddy’s little helper” is rude. Saying that you are completing a master’s degree is not.
Who failed reading comprehension?
When I was working with my dad, a few of my male friends were also working with their dads. We were all apprentices or journey(wo)man plumbers. I can’t tell you how many people said similar things to me as they did to ML. Granted, I was fairly young but around the same age as the guys. Even when I was in college, people would ask if it was “take your kid to work day” (in a patronizing manner like I was a 5 year old tagging along) when I was working alongside my father.
No one ever said things like that to or about the young men I worked with.
And this was in this decade.
I’m old enough to remember when people would routinely refer to someone’s secretary as his “girl.” As in, “ask your girl to get me a cup of coffee.” (Except at the very few law firms that refused to hire women as secretaries and had only male secretaries; there were still a couple of places like that in the late 1970s.)
The last time I heard the term was at a deposition about 10 years ago, when someone from out of town asked me to have “the girl” (meaning the receptionist) call him a cab to take him to the airport. I told him that here in New York we don’t call secretaries and receptionists that anymore.
So if we aren’t supposed to use the word girl then what am I supposed to call my son’s girl friend?? I’m sure not going to refer to her as his significant other…
What bothers me is when people call their breasts the “girls”… ugh.
“Girl” is different from “girlfriend”…
But on that note, I do think we need a new word or a more comfortable word for adults in longterm and/or cohabitating relationships. Using girlfriend and boyfriend in that context is just kind of strange to me. It doesn’t seem like a substantial enough term.
Personally, I called Mr R my partner then and I call him that now. I only call him my husband when I’ll have to explain that we’re married if I just call him my partner (ie when I just added him to my bank account or when he goes with me to doctors appointments).
American English hasn’t caught up to our lived reality yet. That’s why there’s not really a female equivalent for “guys” or a commonly used term between girl/boyfriend and fiance(e) or husband/wife. (Though in my circles, partner is very common since so few people are getting married and getting married changes so little that they just keep using the term.)