Stop calling her your girlfriend ... again or is it still?!

Followers of this humble site may recall that we got some stick a little while ago from the local feminists about the predeliction PJ has for referring to his lovely girlfriend as .. well his girlfriend.  In fact the uncomplimentary emails turn up fairly regularly but we just haven't mentioned them.

The problem is that these emails were long on complaints but short on any solutions that don't involve some sort of physical harm to PJ in particular and all men in general.

So it was very nice to receive a comment from punter Felicite on this issue. She wrote:

"Re: what to call your girlfriend:
 
Marry her, problem solved! "my darling wife" "my beautiful Bride" "the inimitable Mrs J"

Since feminists, but hardly anyone else, are so interested in this issue we thought we would send the Ed to our local vegan feminist collective to get their response.

"My!!" snorted the young dreadlocked topped 'lady' "she's not 'your' anything she's her own person. Put her in a dog collar and take her for a walk why don't you"

Ed: "Well .... she won't like it but if you think we should .... "

Young dreadlocked topped 'lady': "I was being sarcastic!"

Ed: "Really!?, good thing you told me. But what about the rest?"

Young dreadlocked topped 'lady': "wife and bride imply women are things to be owned and are a continuation of the oppression of women by the fascist male power structure ..."

This diatribe went on for some time. Obviously bride and wife are out and, according to the Ed,  it appeared that the word 'inimitable' was lost on our local feminists who are idealogical and not intellectual.

So Felicite you can see that despite your excellent, but possibly expensive, suggestions the 'controversy' just won't go away.  Oh when will it all end ....?

Stop calling her your girlfriend!

We have only been around for a little while and already we are causing controversy.  The feedback is coming in thick and fast - er thin and slow - er anyway we have received some from the punters.  

So far most of the feedback we have received has been generally supportive.  People seem to like the idea behind the site which is pleasing.  We would also like to say thank you to all the people who let us know about the spelling and grammatical errors - we had to let our proof reader go and he is now homeless so I hope you are pleased with yourselves.  We would also like to acknowledge our friends and family whose feedback seemed to fall into the "I can't believe you could produce something so professional looking, I mean did you really do that yourselves!" (Not quite sure how to take that - Ed).

But we didn't expect the reaction to PJ referring to his "girlfriend'.  Several people have objected on her behalf and demanded that he call her something else.  The problem seems to be that a person of PJ's middle years shouldn't have a 'girlfriend'.  One person even asked us whether she is '15 or something' (she's young but not that young - Ed). 

PJ's reaction was 'well what am I supposed to call her?'. This caused a bit of a debate here in the Winepunters Engine Room. What does a middle aged person call their 'partner' without feeling like a goose or upsetting all and sundry? We can't use names because not everyone wants to be publicly associated with our website. We thought of 'hornbag' but our lawyers thought the makers of Kath and Kim might sue. So after much argument we came up with the following options:

The Boss - this was supported by the ladies who liked the idea of their men referring to them in this way; 

The Hot Chick in my life - PJ sulked until this was included; and

Partner, Life Partner, Significant Other - The objection to these was that they lacked any passion and was summed up as "might as well say tap washer for all the romance they create".

So we have a problem.  Since we couldn't get any agreement it's over to you to come up with the right way for us to refer to the people in our lives. Send us an email with your suggestions. We will give a bottle of wine to the person who suggests the term we end up picking. In the meantime PJ says he is going to use 'girlfriend' or any of the possibilities listed above randomly throughout his articles and conversations. Don't say you weren't warned.

What do you think?  Send us a comment