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Give her a picture of your ex. B****s love that :D.
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And how much money do you have to spend? Because I'd go with buying something Jazz-related because I guess it must be very important to her considering you didn't mention anything else of what she likes.
Or give her two tickets for a concert and hint you'd love to go with her.
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OP, if your friend is a gamer, bring her "no" present, but instead offer to buy her basically any game off Steam that she wants as long as it's multiplayer so that you can play with her. (Note: You may need to buy a copy of the game, and you maaaay end up where she picks a game you hate, but fingers crossed.)
Note that this is different from just handing her cash or generic stuff, because you're getting her something that she can enjoy with you (and others) for much longer than a perishable item like money or food or w/e would last.
Edit:
Unless she already has it or hates RPGs, you cannot go wrong.
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All girls are different dude, what does she like? What interests her? What does she talk about a lot? Maybe work off of that.
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Make a CD of music, some you know she likes, and other stuff you think she'll like.
Or, how about looking around some shops with her when you meet up seeing what she mentions she likes, then sneaking away for 5 minutes and getting it on the sly. It's still a surprise, she'll definitely like it, and you look very thoughtful.
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In the USA. It's considered insulting by many. The problem isn't that you're stating the fact that she's female. The problem is that you're reducing a person to JUST female.
Here is a poll on the subject. Take a look: http://www.squidoo.com/calling-women-females
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I live in the USA too, and have traveled to many different states in it. Never have I heard anyone that considers being called 'female' offensive. Please explain how I am reducing a person to JUST female. When I call someone tall, am I reducing them to JUST tall?
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First of all, I don't know why you started talking about butts. Second of all, those links you sent seemed to be discussing the issue, not condemning the use of the word female. It appears that some people don't like it and some people do. To me, it seems like overreacting and political correctness gone crazy (again). I get that different words sound better in different situations, but that doesn't mean that one of the words is dehumanizing or offensive.
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YEAHHHEEEEHHEEEYYEAHHH. It's a party in the U-S-A.
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what's degrading is men and women thinking we can't handle being called "girl"/"female", which can both be true and meant without any malicious intent at all. seriously, stop trying to censor others. if a girl has an issue with it, she can make it known herself.
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I actually think most women can handle it very easily. Most are quite used to it and just let it go. I'm saying that using the word is dehumanizing, not that women object (which many do.) The point is that it's hurtful, intentional or not, and whether the woman being called that thinks of it that way or not.
Maybe I've seen more of the reaction than most because I spent so much time with grad students majoring in English?
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if you do think that we can handle it, then you could just leave it up to us to decide for ourselves what to think about it, rather than tell us it's dehumanizing and hurtful regardless of "whether the woman being called that thinks of it that way or not". that almost implies that you think you know better, and in my eyes that is far more offensive than being referred to as female (which is simply a biological truth).
i'm not offended in either case, i just found it rather amusing someone who seems to think the word "female" as offensive and demeaning to women ended up saying something rather demeaning anyway, whether intentional or not.
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I'm saying that it's an objective truth that "female" refers biology that is not specifically human. That objectively makes the term dehumanizing when used as a noun referring to a woman. Whether or not you personally are offended by that is subjective. I am not trying to address whether or not specific women are offended/hurt/insulted, but whether or not men should be referring to women with a noun that simply categorizes them as having the same body parts that roughly half of all horses, dogs, cats, et cetera have.
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and i'm saying that we (women, girls, females) can choose for ourselves whether it is offensive or not. don't disregard what i wrote before my personal feelings about it. no one should be censoring anybody else, sure if someone is getting picked on by someone who is truly being malicious then by all means it's fine to step in and say something about it. but that isn't the case here, and seems very rarely so as far as i'm aware.
and why males specifically? why do women get the right to say "females" and males don't? that seems rather discriminatory.
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I don't understand why you think that women are the only ones who can think about this properly. That seems to contradict your second paragraph.
Your second paragraph makes a good point though. I didn't mean that women should say it and not men. I was focusing on men saying it because men are more likely to use it dehumanizingly, since they're referring to someone other than themselves. It's like a white person using the N word rather than a black person using the N word. It seems less offensive from a black person, even if it is just as detrimental to use it.
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"I don't understand why you think that women are the only ones who can think about this properly. That seems to contradict your second paragraph."
that's a nice strawman you have there. of course men can, too. your argument was that it's dehumanizing and offensive to women, my counter-argument was that the people the word "female" is directed at can decide whether they're offended by it themselves and act accordingly. they do not need other men and women patronizing them by saying it's dehumanizing and offensive regardless of what they personally think. i've said this three times now, i don't know how to make it any clearer to you.
"men are more likely to use it dehumanizingly"? that's assumption, and stereotypes men in my opinion. it doesn't matter who says whatever it is, if one group is excluded from using words in certain contexts then everyone should. and just because something seems less offensive doesn't mean it should be perceived as less offensive. if you are an english major yourself you should know that hundreds of words in the past that used to be offensive no longer are, and vice versa. offensiveness is mostly relative, you can't push your thoughts on words on anyone else because someone else just might not feel the same way about it as you do.
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I never said it's offensive to women. I said it's offensive. It dehumanizes women in a way that should be offensive to men and women alike, including me. My argument did not create a straw man. You're focusing on it being a women's issue, but I'm focusing on it being an issue of how we define people. I focused on men's use of the word because I see men using it in that manner and rarely women, but there's no need for that focus. I think the problem is a problem no matter who it comes from.
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so then, it's offensive to you. you can't just say something's "offensive" and let that be the end of it, there has to be a subject to that offence.
your argument about me supposedly saying that men can't make up their own minds was a strawman. you twisted what i said to make it appear that i had said something else, and then went on to argue against it... that is a strawman. if anything, the fact that i was arguing against you pushing your 'female is wrong' agenda upon someone else would imply that i think people in general can make up their own minds.
i do understand where you are coming from, just so you know, i just think it's bollocks for various personal reasons.
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I misunderstood you then.
I thought when you said, "and i'm saying that we (women, girls, females) can choose for ourselves whether it is offensive or not," that you meant that you were allowed to be offended and I wasn't.
I'm seeing the argument as being about something objective that everyone could discuss. I think you're seeing it as something personal that is about the person who is offended (or isn't offended.) I know everyone can make up their own minds about anything, but I think some things are true regardless of opinion. I think the misuse of "female" is in the same category as "paper is made from trees," but actually taking offense to that misuse is personal and subjective, as you say. I probably misused the word "offensive."
Anyway, this seems like a good stopping place; do you agree? I'm not sure there's much more for us to talk about. If not, continue. =)
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well, you misunderstood that, too. because it never was just about me unless i specifically said something was my personal opinion.
as i said earlier, morality and what people consider to be "right and wrong" is relative. because you and the majority of the people on an online poll (which, to be fair, has such a small pool of people it's hard to get a good idea of anything, and can easily be passed around specific groups of people) find the word female used as a noun offensive does not mean it should be considered offensive to everyone everywhere, or that you have the right to tell people they're not allowed to use it that way.
i'm seeing it as something personal because it is. an individual either is or isn't offended by it. there is no collective wrong or right here.
sure, this is a good stopping place...
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I never said it was just about you. Not sure what you're getting that from.
Beyond that, I think we can agree to disagree. I believe in more objective meaning than you do, and you believe in more relativity than I do (or at least see the issue from that perspective more than I do.)
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I don't find it that offensive. Are males offended by being called males? I think male/female is a good term to use when you don't want to say girl/boy (young) or woman/man (adult), but speaking about the gender in general. If anything I think "chick" would be more offensive.
Sometimes I do call myself a "gamer girl" but only because nobody ever says "gamer woman", girl makes me sound like a little kid though. I also refer to myself as a "female gamer". But then again I have a degree in Biology 8)
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"Female gamer" makes sense because "female" is being used as an adjective instead of a noun. You're not a "female," you're a "gamer" (a specific kind of human) that is female.
Men might be offended by being called "males" if it happened very often. It doesn't.
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Well looking at the topic, female gift advice, it would seem to me he is asking for advice from females (girls + women), and one could say he is using it as an adjective - he needs a certain kind of advice, female advice. He refers to his friend as a girl in the message (as she's a teenager). But I am a "female", both as an adjective and a noun. Being a female is more important to my identity, who I am, than being a gamer.
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"Female" actually is an adjective and has only recently been commonly misused as a noun. It has been used that way so much that the noun definition (the one I've been complaining about) has been showing up in some dictionaries recently. So, yes, you're right - if I understand you correctly.
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This is one of the most idiotic replies I have ever seen. If a female takes offense to being called a female, well that's on her. Have never once ran into a female being upset at being called such. And even if I had, the simple fact is it's TRUE. If they don't like truth, they need to re-evaluate themselves.
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"never forgets a bad gift(Bioshock seemed like such a good idea at the time)!"
then buy Bioshock 2 :)
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Something bioshock related, then hide the real present inside.
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What do girls like as gifts, besides me ofc. Also something that that wouldn't cost me a fortune and takes under an 2 hours to get, I'm kind of in a hurry..
Background: She's 17, a close friend whom I haven't seen in quite some time, charismatic, likes Jazz, sympathetic, playful, over-flirtatious, and never forgets a bad gift(Bioshock seemed like such a good idea at the time)!
Thanks for all the advise, in the end I just went with my gut.
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