Asklemmy

43739 readers

2211 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

250

Is "female" offensive? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

287 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I am not a native English speaker and I have sometimes referred to people as male and female (as that is what I have been taught) but I have received some backlash in some cases, especially for the word "female", is there some negative thought in the word which I am unaware of?

I don't know if this is the best place to ask, if it's not appropriate I have no problem to delete it ^^

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'd say it's a tone and context sorta thing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Definitely.

[NOT OKAY] "Hey guys, check out those females!"

[Okay.] "There were seventy-five males and sixty females in the study."

[NOT OKAY] "Gonna go out with my favourite females tonight" (unless you're a girl in a girls night out and doing a comedic take on the bro culture)

[Okay] "The shoplifter was ~170cm tall, female, wore large sunglasses and ran surprisingly fast for someone in such high heels smelling so strongly of chardonnay"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Why is the third bad

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

It makes them sound like specimens, dehumanizes and objectifies them. Kinda analogous to saying "I'm taking my offspring to the movies" instead of "I'm going with my son to the movies."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

See I don't think that is wrong either. Technically accurate words are valid substitutes for orthodox ones, especially in a comedic sense.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Idk I'm not sure about the rules myself but I imagined it as a man saying that to a bro who would reference the first dude as "a guy" while still referencing women as females.

So essentially it's just about consistency. For me at least. Either "man / woman" or "male / female".

Idk I'm not the language police

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I think the people who "infected" this word just have the general mindset of human relations being no different from any other animals, e.g. they subscribe to how Jordan Peterson explains human behavior by comparing us to lobsters. They tend to take human ideas like trust and altruism (love, if you will) out of the equation and view relationships only as evolutionary transactions. So they probably wouldn't have any problem referring to themselves as males any more than they refer to women as females.