The Vine: February 18, 2009
Hi Sars,
This is somewhere between a language and a societal question, so I figure you’re the perfect person to answer it.
What’s up with straight women referring to their female friends as “girlfriend”?This is hardly a new or rare thing, but it’s always confused me.Most women I know don’t call their male friends “boyfriends,” or even “guyfriends,” and men certainly don’t do it ever. I called a friend on it recently and she couldn’t explain why she does it, so we decided to ask you and your readers.
It just seems so antiquated and a little sexist to me.And confusing since “girlfriend” usually has romantic connotations.What’s wrong with just “friend”?
Let’s Just Be Friends
Dear Friend,
I don’t really know where that comes from, and I didn’t really hear it much growing up, either.It’s probably used to describe the make-up of groups of friends to a third party, i.e. “a bunch of my girlfriends and I went to” blah blah, and maybe this is just a Jersey/mid-Atlantic thing, but I have noticed a very slight difference in the pronunciation of “girlfriend” when it means “a romantic partner” and “girlfriend” when it means “friend who is female.”The latter gets elided a little more.
I’ve also noticed that it’s often used by people I would consider a bit more traditional than myself, for lack of a better term — women who might not have as many gay friends, so that confusion would be immaterial; women who might have partners or spouses who disapprove of their spending unchaperoned social time with men; women who themselves don’t spend that much social time with men besides their boyfriends or husbands, “approved of” or not.This is a generalization that obviously won’t always apply; it’s just what I’ve observed, that a woman who would never dream of having a man in her bridal party or at her baby shower is probably more likely to use the term “girlfriend.”
Less traditional women may feel less of a need to delineate the genders of their friends, because it’s just assumed that they have male and female friends both, the male friends are in fact just friends, and the distinction isn’t worth making.
But I am not a speech anthropologist, so I can’t say for sure, and I don’t know where it really comes from or how it came into widespread use.I agree with you that it comes off a bit antiquated, especially when you could just say “my friend, Lisa” and solve the problem that way.
Dear Sars,
My cousin has been married for 10 months. Four months ago, she admitted her husband has been beating her soon after their wedding. They visited a marriage counselor once, who told them to go on an already planned vacation (which ended up with my cousin’s husband’s tearing the hotel phone out of the wall so she couldn’t call security, among many things).
After six months, she finally couldn’t take it anymore and went home (halfway around the world). Unfortunately, her husband returned to his parents’ house (in the same country) and both families met and my cousin and her husband reconciled. Her husband refused to admit to any fault, claimed my cousin provoked him into beating her, but says he won’t do it again.Her husband claimed he would continue counseling but has never set foot near another counselor. My cousin is beautiful, talented, extremely outgoing and friendly — yet he seems to have her completely convinced that he is the only man in the entire world for her and without him she’s nothing.
My question is — can an abuser change? She claims nothing has happened since they reconciled, but as she’s lied to us about this before, I don’t trust her. I don’t think he has changed, I don’t think he will change. Of course, I don’t have any training or know anyone else in a similar situation so this is just a gut feeling I have.
She doesn’t say much about her husband to me and I feel awkward constantly asking how things are going. Aside from going to work, she rarely leaves the house and she never sees anyone except her husband. I only live an hour away from her but every time we invite her over she always has a different excuse. From the sounds of it, she just does whatever he wants to keep him happy — which is actually what’s she’s been doing since they were married, but that never stopped him from beating her before. If he’s not beating her now, I’m afraid he’s going to start again and it’s going to be even worse than it was before.
My cousin is sleeping with the enemy
Dear Cousin,
Yes, an abuser can change.Can change.Doesn’t, always; probably won’t on his own.I can think of an example: a guy had a short fuse, which he lit with booze on a regular basis, and knocked his family around every now and then, but eventually got his act together and quit it for good — but he didn’t just look around one day and decide to stop acting like a shitbag.His wife and his kids all put their feet down and told him, look, you come home lit up, we’re calling the cops.You get yelly, we’re calling the cops.You do it twice, we’re changing the locks and you can live in the car.He realized they weren’t bluffing and that was the end of it.
But everyone’s different; every situation’s different.Some abusers are just bad, fucked-up people; others come from backgrounds or traditions where they learned this behavior, and then the behavior is reinforced accidentally by the victims because the victims, rightly, are afraid, of the abuse, of losing the relationship, whatever.Not to let abusers off the hook by any means at all, obviously; there is no hitting, period, and your cousin’s husband is responsible for his own crappy behavior.
My point is that, if your cousin is holding very still and trying not to screw up and make him mad, while that’s a perfectly reasonable response to a horrible situation, unfortunately it’s not going to change anything in terms of motivating her husband to get correct.It just tells him he has that power over her.
So yes, her husband could change, but if your cousin doesn’t let him know that that shit is done with, he’s going to keep doing it, because he thinks he can.All he learned from the prior dust-up was that, if he hits her and she finally leaves, he can apply pressure to get her back via the families.Staying in touch with her and checking in regularly, even if you think she’s not telling you the truth, is the very best thing you can do in the situation, so that if he’s abusing her and she wants to confide in you in the future, she feels like she’s not isolated.But as far as his changing on his own…based on what you’ve told me, I doubt that’s on the table here, I’m sorry to say.
Hi there,
I am in what some would call a pickle. It’s a long story (aren’t they all!) involving having to navigate my way through the minefield of a seriously catty PhD program after maybe getting a bit too close to my adviser (not in the sexy-pants way, in the party-tastic, blow-and-Rx-drugs sort of way). I will admit it, it was some of the happiest times of my little existence. And not just because I was coked out of my mind but it was nice to be around him and see how his mind worked, etc. Cheesy, I know. I also — like maybe folks when in a blaze of blow — make silly decisions like sleeping with my adviser’s quasi-friends (which always ended amicably)…but again maybe not so good to be in such a close social ring with the people who hold your fate in your hands.
Anyhow, it got ugly when one of my adviser’s actual friends developed a wicked bad crush on me (there were very sappy, unnerving emails written and many attempts to kiss me in bathrooms). I tried to handle it like a lady and remind her that we both had girlfriends and that we were awesome friends. I got the point right about then that maybe I needed to reel it in. I stopped hanging out so much and ended up breaking things off with the dating of the quasi-friend (and ended up in the throes of a do-over relationship with an ex that I just needed to kill me until I was a bit more dead).
All seemed peaceful and happy. I would occasionally hang out with adviser and crew. And harmony seemed to abound. This last summer two things happened, and in this order: 1) the do-over broke up with me in the most heinous and inhumane way (I am talking having to move in the span of two weeks, despite the fact that my name was also on the lease, because the ex just went wonky, but I shan’t regale you with the details) and 2) I had to start TA-ing for my adviser for a huge month-long intensive class that is taught every summer.
Despite the honor of it all, the gig pays like shit which meant I had to take up a desk job ASAP after teaching was over, and so the day after the class ended I found myself exhausted from the break-up/move and the pacing of it all…coupled with a new job and a ton of papers to grade. So, it took me a bit longer than the other TA to get them back to the students.
Now, that said, I always made time to meet with my students and advise them on their writing, etc., and I, of course, turned in their grades, but I really like to write tons of notes and bibliographies/reading lists for them and that was just taking some time. My adviser got a bit terse with me. I apologized profusely (explained that with a new full-time job, I was doing them as quick as possible) and had them in by the end of the week. He apologized for having to be so terse with someone he works with, I responded that I didn’t even take it personally and it was all in the past.
Except it doesn’t feel like it is! I get a total cold shoulder, I mean, he hasn’t even spoken to me since this email throwdown. Not even at the Christmas departmental party. And, the affect (or at least my paranoia) seems to be spreading. It seems like I am being pushed from the fold. It bears mentioning that the aforementioned break-up was with another student in the department. But, dude, she cheated on me and really put me through it during this break-up so I can’t imagine what she could be saying nasty about our break-up. Then again, she is kinda off and thinks that everyone is trying to kill her in some way or another, so who knows.
And this is sorta the point!I have no idea why I am being treated like a smelly cat. Or, how to deal with it. Do I roll with the “it’s only awkward if you let it be awkward” (slightly dissociative sure but whatever) and just greet everyone at the next departmental soiree (it’s in a week!) like nothing ever happened? Do I ask my adviser what is up? I have profusely apologized to him but that’s not working so part of me feels like talking is a bad idea. But, let’s face it, I am a worrier, I fret about everything and this is killing me.
I come to you for social graces and etiquette abounding!
Thanks,
Death by PhD
Dear Death,
Your colleagues think you’re an unprofessional drama queen who doesn’t observe boundaries and doesn’t complete work on time. And…you are that.Not that your advisor’s much better, but that’s not the letter I got, and this is your workplace.You snorted coke with your boss, you slept with his friends, you made some bad decisions in your personal life that negatively affected your work, and now he’s distancing himself, and while he should have done that ages ago anyway, it’s time for you to take the hint, not just from him but about the entire donnybrook.I took a reaming back in the day for calling in with the Sam Adams flu one too many times, and I was mortified and miserable, but I’d done it to myself and I knew it; you don’t seem to get it.You don’t get to shit where you eat and then go around asking everyone why your food tastes like shit.
I’m giving it to you sugar-free right now because you’re acting like you think your advisor’s coolness is the result of something entirely separate from everything else in your letter — like you inadvertently insulted his late mother or something.It isn’t.He’s tired of dealing with your shit and it’s time for you to suck it up.So, just in case you haven’t figured these things out for yourself: 1) don’t fuck your colleagues; 2) don’t fuck your boss’s colleagues; 3) don’t do drugs with your boss, or get really drunk, or consent to make-out sessions with his friends when you aren’t into them That Way; 4) don’t let your personal life splatter the hems of your co-workers; 5) do your shit on time and correctly without making excuses; and 6) if you, a human being like the rest of us, biff one of the first five things in this list, apologize, vow to do better in the future, and stop drawing attention to the goddamn situation.
Go to the party.Have one glass of wine.Talk about inconsequential or departmental things with a few colleagues.Make vague but firm excuses.Leave.Do not apologize anymore, do not worry the bone of the situation with any third parties, do not mention your ex to anyone, do not make a scene if she is present.Chin up, eyes forward, do your work, keep it professional.Do this day after day.Either your advisor will warm back up to you, at which time you should set firm boundaries for yourself about socializing with him and his friends, or he won’t, which who cares as long as he’s doing what he needs to do as far as supervising your work.
You are what you do; we all are.What you do now is grow up, and remember that this too shall pass, which it will, and you will be fine.
Tags: boys (and girls) etiquette friendships grammar the fam workplace
(Here I am again!) I’m just going to write one more comment. I’ve been thinking about your letter, Death (has this turned into an Emily Dickinson poem?) and I want to put it this way: you have lost your center. People who should have guided you pushed, and over you went. It was your job to not give in and theirs not to be like they were. Sometimes you find yourself in scary situations like that. Once you recognize it, the goal is to get your power back and leave (if not physically, than in some other, probably more difficult way). Keep trying to find your center, and keep building your strength so that this kind of thing doesn’t happen. Shift your focus from what other people (in your department, online, etc) may be thinking about you and how they treat you to how to start acting like a responsible person. It takes. A lot. Of time. No one can say anything to you that will change that. And, sadly, it’s likely that no one except you will notice or care when it happens.
And now, since that’s all I have to say about that topic ever, I’m gonna jump in on this “girlfriends” song, because no one has mentioned the song by Pebbles…
After reading these posts, I considered my own use of the word “girlfriends” and came up with the following: I don’t say it very often at all, but when I do, like other posters, I use it to refer to my very closest female friends. Much like “boyfriend” when used by females in a romantic way, “girlfriend” used by females in a platonic way suggests an established relationship that is closer and more constantly in contact than the relationship that you might have with other friends in your life.
I’m a Navy brat who spent her formative years in South Texas, Louisiana, and Southern California and the last 8 in Boston. So I’m sort of a linguistic mishmash.
I have PhD, and everything Death described sounded familiar to me. I know a lot of people who have similar problems in grad school. I think PhD programs disproportionately attract two kinds of people: people who think graduate school is more accepting of free-willed, free-spirited people, AND people who might not be as socially skilled. I don’t mean that all grad students are nerds, but the single-minded focus needed to complete a dissertation requires nerdlike skills. It’s that combination of an anticipated free pass on wild behavior and nerdiness that gets a lot of people in trouble — that’s a reason, not an excuse. But it’s a reason all the same.
@Death, although I think the criticism from Sars and a lot of the readers is harsh, the ultimate advice is good: keep your head up, keep your shit together, kill everyone in your department with kindness and dignity, and create a life for yourself outside of your department. Treat your PhD program like a job, and you’ll be fine.
Regarding Cousin’s letter, I wonder if the abused wife has been socialized to think that women are supposed to submit to their husbands and not provoke them into violence. I decided to find out more about that toad, Rick Warren, when Obama asked him to do the invocation, because I thought there might be SOMETHING there (although his homo-bigotry is enough to make him disgusting in my eyes), and I read that he believes that the only two reasons a woman can divorce her husband, according to the Bible, are adultery and abandonment. Some follow-up on that revealed that that is not an uncommon teaching among Warren’s ilk, and while I’m sure there are people who belong to similar religious organizations who don’t follow that teaching, the fact that someone as well-known and powerful as he is openly advocates “just leaving temporarily until he cools off and not provoking him” worries me. It probably partly explains why some women take so long to leave abusers. If Cousin thinks this sounds familiar, she might consider taking a different approach when they talk. Maybe not, I don’t know, but she got the message that she doesn’t need to leave him over this somewhere, and talking to her about how women do not deserve to be treated like chattel might be useful.
PhD – I’m in a PhD program too, and everything K said sounds like me, too. It’s hard to imagine snorting coke with my adviser (who definitely does not do that kind of thing anyway, and neither do I). There are some drama queens and prima donnas in my program, and not only does no one like them, but they get passed up for the good research assistantships and conference panels most of the time, because no one wants to work with them. I share my office with a guy who is both a drama queen and a prima donna and it makes me want to gouge my own eyes out with a paper clip. He and his fiancee have screaming matches in my office when I’m in there, and then transition to making out with no warning WHILE I’M THERE. Our office is the size of a medium walk-in closet (seriously), so they are pretty much sitting in my lap. Shudder.
Linda – I was nodding along with everything you said. That letter definitely read “cutesy” to me, too. Sometimes I think it’s easier to see that kind of attitude from the outside.
I’ve thought about my use of “girlfriend” to mean platonic female friend and came to the following conclusion: I only ever use it in the plural. There’s no ambiguity between platonic girlfriends and romantic girlfriends because if it were the romantic type it would be singular and with the platonic type it’s only ever plural. “I went out with my girlfriends.” “I’m having some girlfriends over tonight.” If I want to refer to an individual female friend I don’t say “my girlfriend” I say “one of my girlfriends”. “Who’s Liz? She’s one of my girlfriends from college.” “I’m going to a movie with one of my girlfriends.”
And as others have said, I only use the word to refer to my small circle of close friends.
I’m Midwestern and non-traditional and say ‘girl friends’ in the plural sense when talking about going out with a group of female friends. I *do* actually say ‘guy friends’ when going out with a group of those, too. I guess I could start saying, my chick brigade or something, but I’ve not had folks get confused with what I’m saying. Would ‘chick friends’ be less sexist, then?
Death, I have to ask, are you a guy or a girl? Not that it matters, but I feel like different comments to you have made different assumptions, and I only agree with 50% of them.
Anyway, yeah, that sucks. It’s really, really hard to be in a phd program, and start off on the wrong foot. I didn’t do it, but I can think of one or two students in my program who just can’t recover from some of the crazy stunts they pulled when they first came here.
At various times I’ve had crazy inappropriate sexual tension with a lab mate, but I just can’t go there. I dated some one in a close department once. Never dated anyone I’ve had the same fellowship with. I am known among the grad students as being a bit of a crazy partier, and throwing the best parties, but if my adviser is at a department party I won’t even look at booze.
Just keep not being a fuck up, and party with people you don’t work with. It makes life so much easier.
@autiger23, I love “chick brigade” and will start using it whenever possible.
@autiger23: I don’t even use the term girlfriends (probably because i mostly hang out with guys) but I totally want to start using “chick brigade” (and I have no idea why!)
death, I’ve done the grad-school thing a couple of times too, and do not enjoy the personality of most academic department members. Your biggest offense? Turning something in late. In academia, it’s the worst possible thing you can ever ever do and they will latch on to that and drill you into the ground if you ever do it again.
So. Lay low, keep your head down, get everything in on time, and get out of there. Seriously. If you don’t think you can do that, get out and go somewhere else now before they make that an impossibility.
I too, am going to phase “chick brigade” into my general vocabulary.
I think I mentioned this in my previous post, but to the poster who asked if the word girlfriend distinguishes between types of friends, I’d say that for me, it does. Or, it’s about the types of things you do with a friend. The friend who comes over bearing junk food and a few seasons of “Friends” on DVD? A girlfriend. The friend who was not at all embarrassed to accompany me to a New Kids On The Block concert last year? A girlfriend. But the friend who has to bring the boyfriend/fiance along unless he has better plans? Not a girlfriend, even when we hang out alone. It’s not the same dynamic.
I am viewing Cousin’s letter through my immigration perspective, I am wondering whether a green card or immigration sponsorship is at play in the relationship. You mentioned that she went halfway round the world to go home. I know too many horror stories of individuals who are trying to stay in a marriage because the abuser is sponsoring them for a green card, and if they leave the abuser, they fear they will lose the card. Under US law, victims of domestic violence can get relief under the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act), which essentially lets the victim disclose the abuse, but still stay in the US. (And yay to VP Joe Biden for authoring VAWA when he was in the Senate; it’s one of the few laws that exists solely to protect persons who are otherwise powerless, and not to help a lobbyist.)
I realize I’m projecting, but after reading Cousin’s letter twice, I can’t stop thinking that this might be a factor.
Garli —
Death is a girl. (At least that’s what I infer from the statement, “I tried to handle it like a lady.”)
See, in the context of smelly cat, sexy-pants, pickle, silly decisions, and a surfeit of exclamation points, I took “handle it like a lady” with a grain of salt as to its indication of Death’s gender.
I grew up in eastern Vermont and never heard ‘girlfriend’ used except in a romantic sense. I now live in western NY, and ‘girlfriend(s)’ in the ‘girl(s) I hang out/have coffee/shop with’ is standard usage. I fought it for a long time, but after 15 years it finally entered my vocabulary too.
But I still refuse to call soda ‘pop’.
Sarah the Elder
Thanks. Can I plead brain death by grad school killing my reading comprehension?
@F. McGee – I would love to see the church take a hard line with abusive husbands (/spouses, don’t mean to be sexist here…) and stop the ridiculous “just let him cool off” nonsense. That does not apply in abusive relationships! Sure, if your normally healthy and functioning marriage has hit an argument, go cool off. If your spouse is hitting you? That is not the answer. There is no “cooling off” from abuse. I wish more churches had programs for not only helping/sheltering abused women, but also programs to help the husbands – counseling, therapy, etc. “Let him cool off” can bite me.
I’ve noticed (being a religious person, myself) that the verses about marriage that are most often quoted have to deal with how the wife is supposed to respond to her husband – but in many cases, there is a corresponding verse about how the husband is supposed to respond to his wife. That part’s just sort of glossed over, but I can assure you that it doesn’t say “go ahead and smack her if that’s what you want to do, /cuz you’re the MAN.” Uch.
I’m Canadian/British and I would only use “girlfriend” in the romantic sense. When I think about the women I know who use girlfriend=friend, they have large circles of aquaintences and friends and use girlfriend to add an extra shade of meaning. Whereas, I, the introvert, use the word “friend” rarely and by itself, regardless of gender.
I’m Canadian too, and pretty much agree with Sars’ list of people who use ‘girlfriend’. Obviously this isn’t always true, but that’s been my experience–tends to be older people who wouldn’t automatically think a woman might have a romantic ‘girlfriend’. I remember once my father made a comment about how I was going on a road trip with my ‘girlfriend’ and I was like, what? I did have a girlfriend at the time, and it wasn’t that girl!
I’ve only heard “ladies” over fifty say “girlfriends.” People of our generation, not so much. I am from CA, though, not the south.
Cousin can try to stay still and not ruffle husband’s feathers and “behave” all she can try, but that still won’t stop him from beating her. He’ll yell at her for breathing his air if he needs an excuse.
Problem is, she will have to decide to leave him and there’s nothing you can do about that. Stay in contact with her, secretly if you have to (he’s driving off any method of escape or friendship or family that he can for a reason, and that’s to keep her under his thumb), and if she says she wants out, help then, but…unfortunately, you can’t force her to suck it up and go.
I’ve had Death’s letter stuck in my head all night, and Linda’s response. At first I agreed with Linda with the whole “thinking it’s cute” angle, but now I think that it’s more about pretending that the whole thing doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it does.
@ Death, about 10 years ago after a long period of self-employment where I was only accountable to me, I started in a job, and basically through words and deeds gave the impression I was a wild-living, hard drinking type of gal who slept around, broke men’s hearts and moved on, etc etc.
Which I kind of was – but I also had a heart of glass, which had been recently broken, a generally sensitive nature I was going to great pains to hide, shedloads of unexplored emotional issues, and all in all, far less self-knowledge than most other people my age.
When I started dating someone from that workplace about 6 months in, my boss as a “joke” spread rumours about me that caused the breakup of the relationship overnight: having inadvertantly painted myself into a corner re my own reputation, I had no way of convincing him otherwise, and Bossman, with much more face to lose (not to mention I suppose possible legal implications) refused to withdraw or deny the rumours.
I wanted to quit, with venomous words and all guns blazing, doors slamming etc… but I realised if I did, I’d not only still be minus one potential boyfriend, I’d also be minus one job I needed, and otherwise liked.
So, I did PRECISELY what Sars describes here: I cleaned up my act, held my head high, cut out excess info about my personal life, choices etc, and got on with the job… 12 months after the breakup, no way would any of my co-workers (including Bossman) have ever dreamt of trash talking about me even in fun, and the whole incident just faded away in their memories.
I left on great terms after four years and while the incident hurt like hell for months after the event, it taught me a lot I’ve since found invaluable about reputation, perceptions, boundaries, and consequences.
Sorry for the novel, but I feel for you, and I hope you come out of this with style. It won’t be easy: it WILL be worth it. Good luck.
@Cousin: Like Sars and others have mentioned, the most you can do right now is keep the lines open between yourself and your cousin. It’ll take a while before she realizes that staying still and only breathing on his okay won’t work – and when she does get up the nerve to run, she’ll need someone she trusts to help her get out of there.
And if your cousin is staying put purely for the green card, I’d get some of the literature and give it to her – let her know that the card won’t get taken away just because she leaves him for her own safety.
But most important, right now, is letting her know that there’s someone out there who’ll listen, no matter how her husband cuts off her contact with the rest of the world.
@Death: it occurred to me last night that your advisor’s behaviour may also have been noticed by his colleagues and he may well have been informally “advised” to pull his head in and start acting more professionally. Other than that I’m with the keep your head down and work like hell brigade. My only other piece of advice would seriously be to think about laying off any form of drugs (including alcohol) – PhDs are stressful enough without adding chemical effects into the mix. And if you do have to cut loose, do it somewhere your work colleagues can’t see you.
On Death: I’m a professor, and we often see students who get a particular charge out of social contact with the faculty–not just the “we may be colleagues someday” kind of socializing, but the “this makes me different from the other students because I have an in” kind of way. Such students do tend to think of themselves as being in a “close social ring” when they’re actually hangers-on to one (that social ring isn’t skipping a beat with Death’s absence from it, after all), so this sounds to very much like what Death is describing. And the problem is that that’s generally counterproductive within a department, because even the faculty member (who really is a self-indulgent ass) that’s doing coke with this year’s play-student doesn’t respect him/her, and the rest of the faculty are going to be more impressed with students who devoted their time to producing excellent work to get ahead and developing a usefully collegial relationship with their cohorts.
Death, I agree with Sars’s and most people’s comments here, and I especially like the idea of seeing if you can reduce your professional connection with your current adviser; if you can work with somebody else, turn in everything *quickly* (on time and short beats the hell out of late but bigger), and behave with consummate professionalism, you’ll have somebody on the faculty to say “Actually, Death’s really had it together this semester.” I also don’t see any mention of your fellow students, and I’m worried that means you prioritized partying with the faculty over developing professional relationships. Start doing the latter *now*–consider giving time to a student committee or something and being the quiet useful member. Above all, avoid making your drama somebody else’s problem or even somebody else’s time sink, and that includes relating the saga to them. Even colleagues who find the story vaguely interesting in a juicy way aren’t going to remember you as somebody they should hire in a few years. That’s the goal you need to be working toward now.
My grandma was born and raised in Chicago and now lives in the suburbs. She refers to my friends as my “girlfriends” ie: Are you going out with your girlfriends tonight? She also refers to my married male cousin’s guy friends as his “boyfriends”, which I don’t think I have ever heard from anyone else. I personally tend to have more female friends than male friends (no idea why, it just always worked out that way) and will use that in conversation with Grandma, but I can’t remember using it in other contexts. Now, she also refer to my sister as being “boy crazy” and uses “boyfriends” to indicate that my sister dates too much.
re: girlfriends
I am 30, female, and raised in the northeast, and I never have been comfortable using the term “girlfriends” to describe my female friendships of any kind, but I heard it about equally as much as just plain “friends” to describe the same groups. I’ve always had a lot of strictly platonic male friends in addition to the expected close female friendships and never felt a need to make that distinction. I have friends who do use the term, though, and I can’t pinpoint anything unifying them specifically that separates them from the people who don’t use the term in that way.
I do recall being in elementary school and hearing my mom (who was raised in northern Vermont and then lived most of of her life in Connecticut, and whose siblings I’m sure I’ve heard use the term “girlfriends” for female friendships) refer to me “having a girlfriend over” or something and totally being embarrassed because even at a young age to me it meant something romantic. Regardless of the implication of homosexuality (which I don’t recall having a problem with ever), I was at the age of dating being icky, and it made me very uncomfortable!
As a formerly abused wife, I think KPP’s idea of an emergency kit was – mostly – excellent and among the very best pieces of advice on that topic.
Keeping the lines of communication open is important, but might not always be sufficient: I was uncomfortable talking to my friends, even those who assured me they were “there for me,” because I felt that I had brought the situation on myself – either by “setting him off,” or simply by virtue of the fact that I was still in the situation. Spousal abuse victims often come from abusive homes, so family support is not always a viable option. (Cousin doesn’t specifically say that there was family pressure to reconcile, but I get the feeling there was.)
There is a HEAVY shame/self-blame (on the abusee’s part) aspect to most abusive relationships. I was not able to see that it was ABUSE, and not just “a hot temper, over-reacting,” until my then-husband tried to slam a glass bottle into our three-month-old son’s head. After almost five years, that was the first time I called 911. I had always thought his rages were somehow my fault, at least in part; seeing him try to assault a helpless infant was what it took to open my eyes. For a lot of abuse victims, talking about it isn’t much of an option because they have been programmed to believe it’s their own fault and haven’t yet had an eyeopening moment like that.
Another huge part of victims’ hesitance in leaving is often financial, so KPP’s suggestion is one of the most practical in terms of what the victim is likely to need. I would like to add two caveats to it, however, if Cousin is reading:
1. Please don’t give your cousin cash. If her husband finds it, he’ll (a) just take it for himself and (b) demand to know where it came from, and most likely (c) “punish” her no matter what she tells him. Better option: Give her a prepaid debit card. He might still find that, but the money won’t be sacrificed. If she’s afraid of hiding a debit card (I would have been), get sneaky – give her a gift, in his presence so he doesn’t have any question about where it come from, with the money/debit card hidden inside it. Behind a framed photo, stuffed into a little teddy bear or a hollow ceramic figurine, wrapped in plastic in the soil of a potted plant – something that he will never think twice about, that she can keep in plain sight and grab-and-go if she needs it.
1a. Please don’t be surprised or too bitter if she leaves him, uses the (your gift of) money, and then goes back to him.
2. Most importantly, PLEASE do not put the addresses of “safe houses” on a piece of paper. In most cases, you won’t ever know the address unless you work there or are a police officer, but if you DO happen know the address, please don’t write it down. That puts not only that particular victim at risk, but all the other inhabitants, including children and the staffers of the house. People have been killed because of those locations being leaked. Phone numbers are best, but give them innocuous-sounding fake business names – a phone number without a name is only likely to make an abuser suspicious and angry. “*B*est *W*omen’s *S*hoes” for the *B*attered *W*omen’s *S*helter, etc.
Thanks to everyone who cares about this issue and doesn’t judge or blame the victim – maybe through your examples, the day will come when victims don’t blame themselves.
@Death, I do think that you are using “cutesy” language to distance yourself from what must hurt like hell. And, I have to agree with Jane that the pain you are feeling is that you were a professor’s play thing. I am a social worker, so I just have to say the following: professor’s should never inagurate a student (even grad student) into a world of drugs. By nature the student cannot say no to their mentor. MENTOR. And then to drop them socially without warning, well hurts. There is a power differential here and you my dear (what lovely gender you are) and on the business end of it.
My best advice: be kind to yourself, you did not get in this situation all by yourself. Nor, should you blame everything on others (which it doesn’t sound like you are doing). Stop thinking about it, as last year’s plaything this ring of professors probably have. Be witty and charming with all of your professors, yes maybe you should think of working with someone else closely for a while. But we ALL make mistakes. Don’t get stuck in being harsh on yourself or others, just keep moving forward and toward normalcy.
About the ‘girlfriend’ thing – I only ever hear it from older people (led to some confusion when I was younger when people asked me about my girlfriend, or talked about theirs). I’m 23.
@elayne: your reply touched me deeply. i so admire your strength and eloquence, and the bravery it must have taken to see yourself and your child to safety! i also have an itch to break your ex-husband’s kneecaps, but I suppose that would be counter-productive. Thank you for the excellent advice to Cousin, and best thoughts for getting on with your life, in all ways. *wipes away tears*
elayne–Thank you for weighing in with more detailed solutions for Cousin. I was worried that providing an emergancy kit could cause more trouble if it were found so I’m glad that you had suggestions on how to better hide it as well as with phone numbers, etc. I was concerned about the chance of leaving a “trail” as it were.
Also, good for you for getting out of your bad situation. I’m not sure what else is appropriate to say, but good job, it sounds hard as hell.
@Cousin: one phenomenal resource for survivors of domestic violence and loved ones who want to be able to help is the National Domestic Violence Hotline: http://www.ndvh.org/ and 1-800-799-SAFE.
I can only echo KPP: good job, elayne, both on your advice to Cousin and for your work in getting to a better place in your life. Neither of those things could have been easy. I hope Cousin’s message of love and support gets through sooner, rather than later.
“At first I agreed with Linda with the whole “thinking it’s cute” angle, but now I think that it’s more about pretending that the whole thing doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it does.”
I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive; I think you’re undoubtedly right that that’s part of it. But it’s always sort of my assumption with these things that the person may well be crying on the inside. It’s a crying-on-the-inside kind of world. But the whole thing of reaching adulthood, to me, is learning that other people expect you to be able to manage that without splashing it, as Sarah said, all over everyone else. It’s not that you can’t be sad, and it’s not that people can’t be sympathetic because you’re sad. It’s that…okay, you’re sad. Now what? Because the objective isn’t to solve the mystery of your behavior; the objective is to solve the problem of the consequences of your behavior, you know?
Of course, I say all this from experience, so I’m not remotely blowing it off. It’s just…this, to me, is the battle. Everybody really does hurt. You have to figure out how to handle it.
I was actually only talking about the “smelly cat” sort of language in describing the whole thing. I don’t think in retrospect that Death finds any of it cute or funny, but it’s awfully hard to write flat out that you acted like an ass and have pretty much made your own life a living hell. It’s a defense mechanism, we all have them. My particular brand (inherited) is the pretend the ugliness never happened.
as i consider myself a non-traditionalist girl who has more male friends than female (and always have) and use “girlfriend” to descibe my platonic female friends, i disagree.
i refer to my ladies as girlfriends because i like the way it sounds and i absolutely do not care if the audience thinks i’m gay. or bi. or whatever.
@Linda: i was oddly asking the question of “now what?” or at least trying to in my correspondence. as isn, how does one re-enter any kind of scene where they have made tiny infractions on the social order? maybe that did not come through for you. maybe it did and you felt like i needed to hear grow up again. and that is just fine. and, yes, i get that everybody hurts, i beleive that was a concrete blonde song of something of the 90’s. everybody hurts, yes….and we should all try to do better after we have hurt someone. don’t you agree?
@death: “how does one re-enter any kind of scene where they have made tiny infractions on the social order?”
Wow. If you seriously think what you’ve done (repeatedly and over a number of months, based on your letter) constitutes a ‘tiny infraction on the social order’, you have not *begun* to grasp what you’ve done wrong or how it’s affecting the people in your department who have to deal with you.
It’s not a bit of wonder they’re shunning you; it’s probably the only way to make you understand that there are problems with your behaviour! Or at least insulate themselves from your destructive deluded self-centredness til you actually (not just paying lip service to the idea) get it.
‘tiny infractions on the social order’. Mother of god.
@ (Another) Catlin: Please (and I do mean this literally) how is what happened such a major offense? Maybe you can explain it to me? I hate to think that I am honestly down-playing the situation.
@death: Perhaps things are a bit more open in your neck of the woods, but if I knew of anyone doing coke/prescription meds, let alone getting a bit frisky with what amounts to their boss’s BFF, I would distance myself from them professionally as quickly as possible. This wasn’t “oh I was so drunk, I flashed my office party while wearing a lampshade on my head!” This was partying hard, multiple times, with illegal substances and within a social network that has heavy influence over your life. On top of which, you allowed a romantic relationship to wreak havoc over your professional life and had to be taken to task for it.
These aren’t tiny infractions on the social order – yes, your advisor was right there with you all “yay, blow!” Yes, your advisor’s friends were willing participants in the situation(s)…doesn’t matter. Bad judgement abounded all around, in big ways. I’m not saying you’re a bad person (far from it!), but there are such things as bad choices. I applaud you for seeing the situation and rectifying it – now keep it up! People have screwed up far worse before, and will again. You cannot change how people will see you – Sars’s advice is sound. Talk work-stuff. Do your assigned tasks well and on time. I actually am with whoever said to not even have one glass of wine at work functions – that will only remind certain judgemental so-and-so co-department types that “boy, the last time I saw a drink in her hand she was completely coked out of her mind” or whatever. Be the person you ARE, now, and the bad taste in their mouths of the person you were being will fade out of memory. I’m sorry it’s taking a while, but I think you’re on the right track.
(I hope my comments don’t offend you, that’s not my intent at all. The situation as you described it is pretty stark, to me, but the worst that anyone really got up to in my graduate program (that hit the rumor mills, at least) did not involve professors with students, and no illegal substances beyond some weed. Small potatoes, but I’m in flyover country, in a small city. The crazy just runs in different directions.) :)
@ Death
The reason I called you out on the cute language was because I found your account exhausting and kind of irritating and it made me roll my eyes….which is how you came off to me, a stranger, over the internet through a short letter. Multiply that by a thousand and that is maybe why your colleagues have stopped acknowledging you.
I think where people are a little confused is that you swing wildly from asking what you did in the letter, to admitting you screwed up huge, to then saying these are tiny little problems. I think Krissa covered how these aren’t small issues, so I would just point out that I think your main mistake is seeing this as a “social order” problem. This is a workplace problem where socializing is part of the job. Your coworkers are the ones having a problem with you, even if you thought of them as friends.
More importantly, this is a good lesson in the “just because my boss does it doesn’t mean it is okay”. I still think it is a really good possibility your boss got taken to task for getting inappropriate with a subordinate and that is why you are getting ignored.
Notice the language. Boss. Coworkers. Job.
Also, I really think you have an opportunity here- you are still in a subordinate position, so continue on the right path and you can build a new reputation so that someday you will be a respected colleague. Your boss may have completely wrecked her own reputation already.
Good luck with this.
oh my dear “Death”! you really have worried yourself into a tight corner. does the phrase “it’s only awkward, if you let it be awkward” mean anything to you? i know it’s hard, but really there are many grad programs that operate how you describe and everyone is just fine in the end. i have kissed way too many people i shouldn’t have (inside and outside of my department). i flirt too much, drink too much and just about do everything too, too much. and without tears and panic. the key: i really do love the people i go to school with (some i have loved on in a more direct manner) and while messy, i always have my non-school friends to balance it all out. intense thoughts often lead to intense everything and if you can at all, remind yourself that you can duck out for a breather at any point and come back renewed and ready to do good solid academic work. and that is the point of this all, right? if being friendly with the people in your department makes your work better than by all means hang out and socialize with them. if it doesn’t that lay low and work on your own for a while. i am loathe to give advice but maybe you just need to have more of a sense of humor about all of this. this is school, not forever. and a well placed apology can and often does clear you of most things (if you mean it and back it up by doing better). and for everyone freaked out by love across seminar rooms and drug use, dear sweet mary clutch those pearls a bit tighter why don’t you. not a big deal. unless you can’t handle yourself, and then by all do means refrain!
focus on your work and you will be fine.
@death, what concerns me about the sort of dismissive language you’re using about this situation is that I’m worried you may be talking about it the same way to your colleagues — “I made some silly decisions and committed tiny social infractions, but everyone’s so mad at me!” Not only is that dismissive of how upset they apparently are and the inconveniences that those bad decisions may have caused them, it also makes it very hard to take you seriously when you say that you recognized the need to reel it in, you do get the errors you’ve made, etc. If you’re having trouble getting them to recognize that you’re trying to straighten up and fly right, it may be because you’re still telling them that you don’t think you really did anything that wrong in the first place.
@death: You know, I have a really tiny and close-knit department. Some of the profs are very friendly toward students and we often socialize together. I think you need to reset your internal ‘dumbdumb meter’ and stop sticking your neck out for the chopping block. I say this as someone who has had mildly tipsy revelry, said a few things out of line, and immediately felt it (and apologized for it) the next day. It doesn’t go away; you just put time and hopefully some redeeming accomplishments and behavior between you and it and get some distance and hopefully some perspective on How Not To Be An Unprofessional Twat During Your PhD.
I suggest that, in terms of your department, you keep your pants, mouth, and nostrils zipped, keep your head DOWN, put your nose back to the grindstone and start turning out some things that will make you feel like a serious PhD student again and that will make your colleagues consider you as such.
@death: from another perspective, I work in a graduate school. I also went to graduate school, and this whole discussion really bothers me. Everybody does the same stupid shit in their twenties like kissing too much or smoking pot with a teacher/boss/advisor or sleeping with a bad choice of people. Grad school isn’t any different. I’m also not so naive to think it doesn’t happen where I work. But still, …. jesus. I work with grad students trying to find funding — do you know how many students come through my door who have the grades and the potential, but can’t get to where you are for lack of money? Who have to stop in the middle of their degrees to go work? Do you know how lucky you are to even still be IN graduate school, let alone have a TA-ship? Frankly, I don’t think that snorting coke and fucking the faculty are even on the same level as having one glass of wine too many at the department Christmas party and then having a snog with one of the adjuncts, but I’ll let that pass. All of my colleagues work so hard at this thing called Improving the Graduate Experience, where we talk about mentors and living wages for grads and useful degrees; and then I go and read this. Yeah, I’m taking it a little personally, because this is my livelihood; it’s what I do for a living. You don’t deserve our effort, if this is what you think graduate school is. Either start living up to our efforts on this side, or drop out, so someone else who will take it seriously can take your place.
Two weeks later and my mind is still boggled over Death’s attitude, and then more boggled by the “tiny infractions” comment.
Death, do you realize that some people manage to get well into adulthood without snorting ANY coke at all? Or snogging all of our mentor’s friends? The fact that you think these behaviors are normal makes me wonder if you have (perhaps unconsciously) chosen to keep company with others who are equally chaotic, with the result that you don’t realize how non-trivial your behavior might seem to those who are not so chaotic.
@Jennifer, I think you are boggled for maybe the wrong reasons. Sounds to me like Death called it quits on the bad behaviour not too long into it…there was a statement about reeling it in and realizing that he/she couldn’t handle that sort of lifestyle. Which I have to say is admirable. Sure, some people never try any drugs at all…but most of us do a tad of experimentation. And, I don’t even think that Death was trying to say it was normal. Maybe it was/is normal for some of the people he/she was hanging out with (and that is everyone’s morality call in the end), but the question seemed more like how do I get back into the business of being just a student when I was “once” and friend/student.
I am saddened that most everyone has just preached their morality to Death and not given him/her any suggestions on how to hold your head up when you feel ashamed about a few things. We all do stupid things, the task is to figure out how to 1). not obsess about them and how to move on and make the situation have a positve effect on your life.
My suggestions to you Death:
1). Relax, everyone messes up.
2). Focus on all the positve things you have accomplished as a student.
3). Learn the art of boundaries.
4). Remember that desire to act like a “lady” and decide what exactly you define as a dignity and spiritually grounded way to continue on living.
5). Congratulate yourself for even trying to change…Most people never even try.
@bex – have you even read the other comments re: Death’s situation? Because the majority of them *do* offer advice. Unfortunately, there really isn’t any other advice to offer other than “cut the shit and act like a professional”. I get that it’s not the most palatable thing to hear, but I think you’re badly misconstruing what others have said here if you characterize it all as “preach[ing] morality”.
And fwiw, I disagree with the majority of your list of suggestions. In order:
1) Death doesn’t need to relax. Death clearly needed the fallout from this experience to be a wakeup call to the fact that actions have consequences, and we don’t get to just wipe everyone else’s memories of our stupid crap just because we think we’ve beaten ourselves up enough. Death needs to use this as a learning experience, but not be relaxed about it. That’s…sort of the problem many of us saw in hizzer letter in the first place.
2) Oh fine, but this seems dangerously close to reminded Death that s/he’s a special little starfish and that being so special is what counts. Hard work counts. Patting yourself on the back for hard work isn’t useful; continuing to churn out good work is.
3) Agreed.
4) I think this kind of phrasing opens the door for a lot of “I live my life by MY rules!” talk that bypasses real introspection into how those rules work/don’t work with the realities of Life in a Society of Other People.
5) Gag. I know we’ve turned into a culture of backpatters, but it has to stop at some point. Realigning one’s behavior to fit the basic tenets of professionalism isn’t a noble or noteworthy feat. It’s what the rest of us do without being told.
Bex, Death said that she feels she just committed ‘tiny infractions of the social order,’ which I do find boggling. Accidentally cutting in line because you didn’t realize the person standing there was in the line – tiny infraction. Getting distracted and forgetting to say “thank you” when someone holds the door – tiny infraction. Doing blow with your advisor and making out with all his friends, even though you don’t even like them that much – not so tiny. People will notice, they will be affected, they will form opinions, and their impressions will persist.
Also, yes, in her original letter she talks about reeling it in, but she also says that that period was one of the happiest in her life – I found that part boggling, because to me it sounds like she was living in chaos and spilling her shit all over other people.
So sure, Death gets credit for trying to correct her errors, but my point was simply that she doesn’t seem to take them seriously enough to begin to understand how to correct them.