Gray Matters by Stuart Carlson and Jerry Resler for September 28, 2022

“I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer.

Why can females be called guys but we can’t call guys girls?

I’ve heard “Boys night out”, but you’re right…it would be guys or buddies/buds. Not boyfriends. Wonder why?

It just doesn’t sound right.

Sometimes the term “friendboy” or “friend boy” shows up. I’m thinking of this line from one of Robert Johnson’s recordings: " … friendboy Willie Brown …"

Just don’t call me “Dude”. I have a really good cold stare..

“Buddy” is acceptable, but “boyfriend” somehow imparts a sexual vibe.And that ain’t happening!

Even guys having a “bromance”, which I find mighty strange, won’t refer to their bromance buddy as a boyfriend. Nope, we prefer to call them buddies.

Should have started with that.

Most men are just not comfortable calling each other ‘boyfriend’

Boys will be boys is still an excuse though.

The word “boyfriend” is much older, and goes back to when boys and girls (except for close relatives) were pretty much separated from each other (I’m old enough to have attended schools that had been built with separate front doors for girls and boys), and constituted fairly different subcultures. So “friend” already covered different territories depending on whether a boy or girl said it.

That sounds like a question for that rabbit hole we call the internet.

Because there is absolutely, positively no need to call them anything but a friend. Doesn’t matter what gender they are, they’re a friend.

Male, female, gay, straight, purple with pink polka dots…….it DOES NOT MATTER. They’re a friend.

Personally, I have never really liked it when women call them girlfriends. Even as a child I was saying to myself “it makes no sense to say.” Unless you’re romantically involved, there is no need, in my eyes, to differentiate it.