Do you refer to your friends as your girl friends?

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I don't, but I have known some women who refer to their platonic female friendship group as their girl friend(s). Personally, I find the term confusing since it can leave me wondering if the person I'm talking to is on about a romantic partner or a close friend. Usually I can figure it out based on the context and how they say it, such as if they say "gurl" instead of "girl". Still, I find it a little odd that people do this.

However, I think that it has fallen gradually out of common usage over the years, so I'm wondering how common it is here. I typically call my friends either "my mate" or "my friend" and use pronouns after that statement such as "My friend, (name), she...".

To a certain extent, I am straight-passing (I am openly gay but usually assumed straight). With that said, typically when I come out the response is "Ah OK" or "Yeah I called it / This is news?" rather than surprise. I think that if I were to call a close friend my girlfriend or refer to my close friends as my girlfriends it probably wouldn't be interpreted as platonic and some of my friends might even become creeped out if I did that.

I have never called female friends, girlfriends. It probably has something to do with me being bisexual (technically pan, but I am old and have been calling myself bi for so long it's grandfathered in now). In my reality, if someone has been my girlfriend, it was because I was dating them.

Way back in the age of dinosaurs, everyone called adult women "girls." We of that generation fought long and hard to be considered women and to be treated as adults. It was so patronizing. A nurse giving a talk about birth control (and yes, the pill didn't used to be available and birth control wasn't so easy as it is today and abortions were illegal across the entire USA.) said to us, all adult women gathered there, "Now, girls..." We were all treated as little girls.

I pointed out we were no longer girls and we were there for a discussion of adult birth control and she needed to remember we were/are women.

This was long, long before any known sexual identity crises or active gay rights movements. There was no internet or facebook. You only knew what was in your home town area, or big news from the city.

This is just me, not wanting to be infantilized.

I cringe when I see adult women referring any adult women as a "girl friend." D*amn it, we are women. And it doesn't matter what your gender identity or sexual orientation is. You are still a woman. Unless you are transgender and that is for transgender people to decide how they want to be referred to.

No. I just call them friends.

No.

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No, in English I would never refer to a friend as girl friend. Girl friend is a romantic term for me.

In Norwegian we have the terms venn and venninne. Venninne kan mean both romantic girl friend and platonic female friend, but it was more commonly used for romance in previous times, so the people saying it are usually rather old.
To me non-romantic venninne is something little girls and women older than me have (and also something little girls or people older than me say). It's unnatural to me and makes me uncomfortable. Friend or venn suffice.

No bcuz I don't understand the relevance their gender has when referring to them
I also don't think gender is anything to go on where you separate gender when talking about people because it seems rude to me to do that about someone like I view their gender before them as a person

I just call them friends. The reason I say that I want female friends is because I want other female friends on the spectrum who are HFA and like what I like. Girl friends sounds romantic. I’m straight.

Considering that all of my recent friends have been male, that would be kind of awkward if I did

Never did it back when I had female friends, but granted that was in elementary school.

Just to say I dont have real friends

Just ones who happened to like me enough to hang out with me in different high schools


but nothing now except those..


Who knew me only 1 year in 10th grade before i moved or only 1 yr in gr 8 etc
etc and that too only during the lunch break or bus stop



They call themselves friends but someone you get to meet about 1ce every 2 years is not really a friend are they..


N share nothing in ur daily life except t
Me or them will message or call once in a blue moon ..

living vastly different lives in different cities or countries...

where they wdnt have anything in common at all except the few memories.

So is that a friend? I am guessing the ppl here have actual friends not someone they only knew in grade 10 or 11...

So whatever I say isn't really applicable to begin with ..

No, and I always found that to be a rather weird custom.

When I was still at school I always referred to my friends as my girlfriends, it was sort of our thing, they referred to me as a girlfriend as well. I don't have any friends now but if I did I would still refer to them as my girlfriends.

No I’m gay so that would be confusing. I just refer to the few female friends I have as friends.

I have female friends. But the only person I would call a "girl friend" is my girlfriend. To me, the words girlfriend and boyfriend, even with the space, make me think of romantic/sexual relationships, not platonic friendships.

I don't have any friends but I would not call them girl friends if I did. Referring to female friends that way is just not something I ever internalized; it seems more like an old-fashioned term. I've not heard it used in my generation nor in younger generations.

No, I never do. I notice a lot of the older generation do it though. I just get slightly confused at first, thinking they are referring to their romantic partner. Same-sex relationships are so normal to me now I don't think twice unless I know they are already in a relationship or something.