I recently saw a post on Facebook that I thought was a joke, perhaps part of the manosphere, talking about how we’ve perhaps finally learned to call women women, rather than girls, but at the same time, men have become boys. I thought it was just amusing or silly grumbling, and forgot about it as soon as it scrolled.

But I just heard it in the real world. Stephanie Ruhle, the host of Money, Power, Politics on MSNOW, just ended one segment by saying, “I’m only letting these boys leave the group chat now because I have a great woman coming up to talk about the unrest in France.” I’m not sure if she really emphasized the word “woman,” or if that emphasis was only in my mind (and she’d shown no disrespect to the two male guests), but it immediately recalled that post.

I try not to get worked up over specific words — other than those which are simply the wrong words (see my earlier commentaries on “literally,” “fulsome,” and more) — and I really couldn’t care less if you call me a man or a boy or a guy or whatever. I just found it worthy of comment that apparently it is actually happening, and I hadn’t noticed.