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 ^^
I feel like a lot of answers here are dancing around why people find it offensive without really addressing it.
As an adjective “female” is completely fine to distinguish between genders when applied to humans. As in “a female athlete” or when a form asks you to select “male” or “female” (ideally with additional options “diverse” and “prefer not to answer”).
Where it’s problematic is when it’s used as a noun. In English “a male” and “a female” is almost exclusively reserved for animals. For humans we have “a man” and “a woman”. Calling a person “a female” is often considered offensive because it carries the implication of women being either animals, property or at least so extremely different from the speaker that they don’t consider them equal. This impression is reinforced by the fact that the trend of calling women “females” is popular with self-proclaimed “nice guys” who blame women for not wanting to date them when in reality it’s their own behavior (for example calling women “females”) that drives potential partners away.
So in itself, the word “female” is just as valid as “male” and in some contexts definitely the right word to use but the way it has been used gives it a certain negative connotation.
In English “a male” and “a female” is almost exclusively reserved for animals.
But also important to remember that quite a bunch of people are note native speakers without the feeling for finer distinctions in meaning. Like for me, since I learned english mostly in a scientific setting, those words habe little negative connotation on their own. They became negative co-notated through the use of misogynistic communities.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t judge someone who doesn’t know better. I’m not a native speaker myself. I just wanted to clarify as good as I can because it seems like OP wants to make an honest effort to use it correctly.
quite a bunch
Speaking of non-native speakers. This is a phrase that’s clear enough and makes complete sense, but does come across as quite clunky and unnatural to a native English speaker. I couldn’t articulate why exactly, but “a bunch” doesn’t really take “quite” quite as well as some other similar words. “Quite a few”, or “a bunch” (without the quite) would have worked better here. Or just “many”, which is probably what I would have gone with.
I think it’s German slipping in. Thanks for feedback.
This might be a regional thing. For reference I grew up in Oklahoma and “quite a bunch” seems natural and familiar. In British English quite has the opposite meaning so I could see why it wouldn’t make sense in that context. I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t sound right to other Americans due to regional linguistic differences.
Yeah, seems like a more recent thing. Like if there were a bunch of varying ages then I’d just go males or females, but because of how meanings change I just don’t use it anymore to not even risk the chance of offending someone. If they find it offensive than who am I to say it isn’t. So I just removed it from my vocab outside of science, since I don’t want to deal with the drama.
Honestly, anyone who can speak a second language has a better grasp of what a noun and an adjective are than yer average English speaker. They’re just at risk of picking up colloquialisms from the manosphere, if they hang around in the wrong kinds of places.
Honestly, anyone who can speak a second language has a better grasp of what a noun and an adjective are than yer average English speaker.
Why?
Because you don’t have to have any formal education in your native language to speak it; you could blow off or fail English in school. But if you know a second language, there is a much higher chance that you had some formal education in the way of classes or books. You could still fail it or blow it off, but it seems like a reasonable assumption that you’d have a higher chance of having a grasp of grammar concepts.
sorry but I think you are misjudging just how much you learn both grammar and vocabulary from speaking a language natively and possibly misjudging how well education can teach someone a language
languages are these surprisingly complex and irregular things, which are way easier to learn by doing than by trying. often entering school you can already use tenses or grammatical structures that students learning English as a second language will struggle with a few years later in their educational journey, while you can spend that time unknowingly building up an even better subconscious understanding of the language.
Besides, from my experience, having basic Polish and extended English mind you, the tasks you are expected to do in the lessons of ones native language require a way higher degree of mastery than those in the second language of a pupil.
Also, it should be noted that non native speakers, or fluent speakers of multiple languages, can often borrow things from another language into English, either translating fraises literary (ex. once in a Russian year instead of once per blue moon) or using a unrelated word which happens to have a connection in the other language for other reasons (ex. castle and zipper both translate to “zamek” in Polish)
also mind that for a not insignificant number of people, though due to how more connected our world is today this has slightly decreased in the recent years, the level of English they ended up with from school is quite poor.
sorry but I think you are misjudging just how much you learn both grammar and vocabulary from speaking a language natively and possibly misjudging how well education can teach someone a language
languages are these surprisingly complex and irregular things, which are way easier to learn by doing than by trying. often entering school you can already use tenses or grammatical structures that students learning English as a second language will struggle with a few years later in their educational journey, while you can spend that time unknowingly building up an even better subconscious understanding of the language.
It sounds like you are confusing having an ability to speak and understand a language with having a formal education in a language, or just misunderstanding what I was saying. As you point out, people can already speak their native language (more or less) starting from the first day of grammar school. In fact, school isn’t necessary at all for a person to be a native speaker.
The children starting out in school don’t have a clue what a noun or verb is in the language. When someone reaches the point in school where they learn these grammatical concepts, they can do poorly at grasping them or forget about them after they’ve learned them and they are no longer part of the curriculum. They don’t actually need to know these things well (or at all) in order to speak, read, and write. High school students can write an essay in English that shows total mastery of the past progressive verb form without being able to tell you what it is.
On the other hand, when learning a second language (unless one does immersion), a person can’t rely on their native-speaker instinct and therefore will struggle to speak, read, and write if they don’t get the hang of formal grammatical terms to process their language input and compute the output.
reading through your comments I feel like the issue is of interpretation : what I , and possibly others , assumed you were trying to say is that non native English speakers have an advantage when trying to interpret the meaning of words , so sorry about that .
Thinking about it however , I believe I have been taught more about linguistics in my Polish lessons than in my English lessons . Unfortunately , as you have suspected many students will , I forgot a large portion of it , which I am especially unhappy about now that I am getting interested in recreational linguistics , I still remember some of it , with parts of speech (not to be confused with constituents (that joke would be quite a bit better in Polish as constituents literally means parts of (a) sentence in Polish)) being one of the most basic building blocks of language
Maybe it’s only true of my aging generation but we never really encountered grammar until we were required to learn French.
Interesting, english is my third language - but I’m just bad at grammar and spelling in general. Definitely learned grammar in school - just forgot all about it.
something I’d like to add is that while you were not told the rules, you likely learned quite a few of them subconsciously.
personally to this day I struggle with what present perfect and others are, but I can use them easily. similarly I can’t say which grammatical case is which in my native language but I have no issue using them.
Of course. But understanding why calling women “females” is a big red flag is not about your intuitive grasp of the language. We dehumanise people by nounising their adjectives all the time. Are you epileptic, or an epileptic, or just a person with epilepsy?
It’s harder to explain to someone with a poor grasp of English grammar, that’s all. People who are fluent or near fluent because they grew up hearing and speaking a language will often struggle to explain something like this. People who had to learn the grammar consciously probably would not.
Only biologists and coppers need to use “female” as a noun. Everyone else can speak proper, like.
ah I must have misunderstood your comment , I think you may have replied to a different comment than you have intended to ?
also just as a side note , one counter example is many autistic people , myself included prefer the term autistic person rather than person with autism , though to be fair that is moreso an adjective but the way you worded that sentence suggests its also incorrect in some cases yeah um
also I have never met a single copper , really must open myself to new experiences /j :)
I mean you could argue americans aren’t native speakers either. But on the other hand, they did what the british wanted to but couldn’t, purge much of the french from their language.
I would argue that US-americans are native speakers of US-American english, which is a bit different from english spoken in england.
I know that this is popular especially among Latin American speakers, but the phrase “US-American” is very unidiomatic in English and makes you stand out quite significantly. In English, the term “American” means someone from the United States of America. It’s clear enough because “America” is always a shortened form of that country, while the large western hemisphere landmass is collectively “the Americas”, since the anglosphere almost universally uses a seven-continent model with North and South America being two continents (and with some more “enlightened” people preferring a six-continent model merging Eurasia—but you’ll rarely find a native English speaker who refers to “America” as a single continent).
You got it, I just happen to have quite some friends from south and middle America and since it was important to them and make sense to me I took it over in my vocabulary.
Fun fact (that I have heard and was not able to verify with a quick search so take this with a grain of salt): the English spoken in the US is closer to the way it was spoken in Britain in the 1700s. The gentry made an intentional change to their pronunciation in response to the rise of the middle class, which filtered down to the masses.
Great explanation! Spot on.
I think you got this mostly dead on but I don’t know about it being because anyone thinks women are animals. I do believe the part you wrote about it being about difference/distance is correct though. In fact I think cops refer to suspects as male or female for the same reason. Man and woman sound nothing alike and are easier to say, so there must be some reason not to use those words. I think they say male or female to create distance between them, and not a person, but a gendered wrongdoer. That way they can apply any and all force without feeling as bad about it
This one is interesting because in the military it was pretty much the norm to use male or female for everyone, but in that case it wasn’t so much about distance as minimizing differences, as in everyone is a soldier or airmen first (sort of like comrade). I wonder if some of the police use comes from the relatively high number of veterans or the wannabe military stuff that the police have, or if they feel like it seems more professional.
If you’re building a military, de-individualization makes sense and builds cohesion. If you’re building a society or a relationship, de-individualization is gross and abusive when used with intent.
Well, the assholes that use ‘female’ like op described think we’re shoes, locks, purses, sandwiches, androids…
Animal would be a step up, really. At least that’s something that’s alive.
Discussion of offensive racial language
There’s a similar distinction with “black” in regards to race. Referring to someone as a black person or people as black folks is largely acceptable. Referring to someone as a “black” or people as “blacks” on the other hand sounds old fashioned at best and actively dehumanizing at worst.
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Ooh I found it a bit confusing as I collapse comments very often, and it looked similar to it
Male & female are sexes, not genders.
Can you explain the difference? Aren’t genders another way of saying their biological sex?
No. Gender is largely a social construct based on psychological, cultural, and behavioral mores, although given that there are differences in the brain between Trans and Cis people of the same biological sex, there does appear to be something of a biological component.
Biological sex is tied entirely to the genome, and may or may not match a person’s gender.
Not OP, but please, any answer you get, including mine, research for yourself. Most will just push their own opinion as fact. Or pass off someone else’s opinion as fact.
In many cultures around the world, these terms are interchangeable. In the US, they were (and for many/most, still are) the same thing until not too long ago. When people were doing gender reveal parties 20 years ago, no one was correcting them that’s it’s a “sex reveal not gender reveal”.
The modern usage of “gender” didn’t exist until the 1950s, popularized by John Money, and if you want to research that deviant pervert, be my guest.
Interesting ty for your input
In any society where male roles and female roles differ (e.g. fathers play ball with their kids; mothers teach their kids to sew), male and female are also genders in addition to being sexes. What else would you call these genders?
Gender’s not something I care about (social roles given to sexes). Honestly, I think it’s a worthless convention & conversation.
Sex is just what we call our roles in the creation of life. One sex carries the baby, the other causes the baby. This cannot be changed to the other. A female, regardless of their precious feelings & conscious identity, is the one that becomes pregnant. The male, even if he’s trans, is the one that causes the pregnancy.
When I ask for someone’s sex, I couldn’t care less about how they feel or what pronouns they’d like to be called by. I’m literally not referring to their consciousness, just what type of meat robot that consciousness is in.
Your response demonstrates why you’re not qualified to have an opinion on what is or isn’t a gender.
I’m qualified to know gender ≠ sex. Your opinion demonstrates why you’re delusional.
I was never disputing that, so I don’t see what what point you think you’re making.
What is the gender of a cis boy?
I guess the gender is “cis boy?” But I don’t care about gender. I’d consider gender a mental state. While sex is a physical state. Sex determines the part your body plays in biological sexual reproduction, under normal/usual/typical/common genetic circumstances. Aka you either get pregnant or you cause someone else to be pregnant.
Again, why the fuck does gender matter beyond an individual’s mental state? It’s literally a different matter from sex. Hence why trans is even a thing at all.
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They’re both.
No. Sex is just about biology. Sex is just about which part you play in the creation of life: do you carry the offspring or not? If yes, you are female. Gender is some dumb shit we made up.
Tangentially to the discussion at hand, I think what we’re running into with females being used in social-level discourse is the hunt for an inoffensive way to describe a potential mate, and to differentiate that word from the more general word.
When I was a kid, chick and all the other overtly misogynistic terms were going out of fashion. Later girls had some time in the spotlight, now it’s females.
One group is looking for a way to politely describe a concept that the other considers inherently inappropriate or offensive.
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And yet, they will dance around looking for anything else to say. It’s so bizarre!
I don’t think females has ever been used by males to describe a potential partner of the opposite sex, except for groups of males that are notorious for their misogyny. While yeah there’s been a bunch of different terms tried over the decades women was always on the table. It’s kinda telling that it’s been uncomfortable for some males for so long, especially since it’s the easiest choice.
Female as an adjective is perfectly fine.
A female patient, a female politician, a female customer, etc. That’s the best way to refer to those.
What’s bad is using ‘female’ as a noun: "A female. "
In general, you just don’t use adjectives-as-nouns to refer to people. You don’t call someone “a gay”, “a black”, or “a Chinese”. That is offensive, and “a female” has the same kind of feel.
(there are exceptions to the above: you can call someone ‘an American’ or 'A German", but not “A French”. I don’t understand why - if you can’t feel your way, best just avoid it)
Now, you could get around it by calling someone “a female person” - except that we already have a word for “female person”, and that’s “woman”. And to go out of your way to avoid saying “woman” makes you sound like some kind of incel weirdo, and you don’t want that.
And to go out of your way to avoid saying “woman” makes you sound like some kind of incel weirdo, and you don’t want that.
I’d just like to emphasise this. It’s not that using a different term is intrinsically bad, it’s just that the people who tend to do it are not cool and you don’t want to look like you’re associated with them.
When I was growing up, saying woman was offensive, because it made people feel old. So we would say “girl”. But now It’s flipped. Saying “girl” makes people feel too young, apparently.
I’m still kind of adjusting. The word “woman” still feels icky to me because I was berated for saying it as a kid.
Huh, interesting. Which generation are you from, out of curiosity?
I’m a millennial. It could also have been regional as well, I have no clue.
It’s ridiculous that a perfectly fine word is seen as insult used by a certain type of people.
It’s ridiculous that a perfectly fine word is seen as insult used by a certain type of people.
That’s how association works
I can have the best and most lasting solution to a problem ever, but my company still won’t allow me to put “THE FINAL SOLUTION” in marketing copy.
And they shouldn’t.
The VP of product messaged me a couple weeks ago after some back and forth about some work. She asked if I had some time to talk about the final solution. I went “uhhhh so long as we don’t call it that”
I’m like 90% sure she had no idea why that phrase is reserved.
So you say … The word describing a biological fact, and a national socialist euphemism for mass murdering millions of people are the same?
So you say … The word describing a biological fact, and a national socialist euphemism for mass murdering millions of people are the same?
Do you even hear yourself?
Engage in good faith or sod off.
If it has negative connotations, it’s not a perfectly fine word.
Negative connotations to whom? If those described do not like the term it should not be used. Basic human dignity, just like using one’s preferred pronouns.
I don’t think you’re disagreeing with me here.
Welcome to language my friend. Always has, always will.
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Yes. Life is a game of trying to guess which people are full of shit. If they say “feeeemales” and then turn out to be fine, great, I’ll probably give them a heads up not to do that.
Was there a non-judgmental era I’m unaware of?
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Bye-bye.
Yes. Language can show what sort of media people consume and the sorts of groups they socialize with, especially when it comes to the internet.
If someone is using incel language, there will be a strong initial assumption they spend time within incel circles consuming toxic content like Andrew Tate and will remain under that assumption until proven otherwise. Sorry, not sorry?
Interesting point with adjectives vs nouns.
‘a Frenchman’ would be more correct than ‘a French’. Because French is only an adjective, while American and German are both nouns and adjectives. But Frenchman is not gender neutral like German or American.
Could go with Francophone, but that’s any french speaking person so that includes canadians, africans, etc.
And, it would seem to make sense to go with Frank, but the Franks were originally germans, then expanded their territory to include France, and the name stuck there but not in their original territory, so is it really correct to refer to the French as Franks? Since no one does it, I would guess not.
Not a native speaker here. Would a French woman also be 'a Frenchman’s and if not, how would you refer to a French woman correctly?
“Frenchwoman” perhaps? But that sounds a bit dated to me. I’d probably go with “French person” or “French people”.
3 years ago, “man” in that context was considered gender neutral. More recently tho a lot of stink is being made about little language things like this. Theres no replacement word to use.
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Wow, this actually sounds very plausible.
Sensitivities during Covid ran high. A lot of things changed then. For instance in the software world removing the name “master” from git usage, and on the TV Show Survivor, the host not saying his famous line “come on in guys”. At the same time pronouns became a huge thing, and these seemingly gender specific or sensitive word terms were targeted.
You are correct, there was a round of this in the 90s or so, where job titles like “waitress”, “stewardess”, “policeman” were all adjusted. I see that as a very different round of language change.
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Yeah, 2020 is the time period I’m referring to. I had never heard of it being a thing until George Floyd and BLM movement in 2020, then GitHub changed in response to that.
I’ve been in IT for 35 years. And I never heard a single negative thing about branch names and master/slave terminology until 2020.
Perhaps you think that was set aside because IDE hard drives are dead.
Frenchwoman and Frenchperson are both ridiculous enough to try, but maybe go with Frenchie just to see if they’ll punch you.
includes canadians
Pffft barely, mon ami 😂
Québécois then.
except that we already have a word for “female person”, and that’s “woman”. And to go out of your way to avoid saying “woman” makes you sound like some kind of incel weirdo
Sounds more like a terf or “gender critical” person, but maybe that’s just my experience.
Fair.
Unless you’re a ferengi. /s
I think a big part that’s skeevy to me is that gender and sex are comparatively unimportant individual traits, referring to someone by their gender happens far more often for women and it’s a hold over of misogyny. There are much more interesting individual traits that identify us than our sex or presented gender.
You can soften “a black” or “a Chinese” entirely by adding “person” to the end of it. English is weird.
Right, because that makes it an adjective.
That’s werid because in french that’s not what we use in everyday life. We say “Un japonais” for example, not “Une personne japonaise” which kinda sounds unnecessary
My wife tells me that using as an adjective is just as bad and that I should always say “woman”, e.g. a woman politician and never a female politician.
I generally disagree and it seems fine and not disrespectful at all. But it’s somehat less up to me - I’m not a female.
My wife tells me that using as an adjective is just as bad and that I should always say “woman”, e.g. a woman politician and never a female politician.
Using a noun as an adjective is just weird, honestly.
I think that a good rule of thumb is: would you say “male doctor” or “male politician”? If not, is the professional’s gender relevant? Probably not, in which case it sounds pejorative to include it.
In some cases I would, and I would find it awkward to say “man doctor” or “man politician”. I don’t think it works at all, and I disagree with her that this really is the way most people try to avoid the naming.
But, kinda like pronoun; I guess I try to listen and be sensitive on things like how women and minorities saybtheyre sensitive about, including labels and etc.
“the suspect is a six foot, white male”
Sounds fine to me
“I was just visiting my friend, a six foot white male”
A little weirder. Context is everything.
Well yeah, why would I need a description of your friend unless it pertains to an upcoming story, and why not use his name if you know it? The cop can’t usually say “It was Steve what done it” because most places aren’t Mayberry.
I think that’s because the descriptors come after the noun in reporting. Similar to how documentation is done for other professions, like healthcare. If it’s out of the context of reporting, or other situations listed in the site below, it sounds grammatically strange or rude.
https://myenglishgrammar.com/lessons/adjectives-function-as-nouns/
Source: I’m in healthcare.
“the suspect is a six foot, white male"
think that’s because the descriptors come after the noun in reporting
No they don’t. The word “male” is the noun here.
Why did people upvote that?
Because it’s still acting as a descriptor rather than an identifier, despite playing the syntactic role of a noun instead of an adjective. It’s more about semantics in this case than syntax.
No it is playing the syntactic role of a noun. An object is a noun.
I know it’s playing the syntactic role of a noun, that’s what I said. But it’s playing the semantic role of a descriptor. The “thing” being described here is a suspect, one that is white and also male, as opposed to a male who is white and also suspected.
Syntactically, the word male was a noun. But semantically, it’s still just describing the suspect, rather than identifying the thing to be described.
“Suspect” is the noun
Both are nouns. Suspect is the subject, male is the object. You could replace it with, for example “the suspect is a cat”, and I think we can all agree “cat” is a noun. “six foot” and “white” are the adjectives in that sentence.
Both are nouns there. Suspect is the subject.
So you don’t think this argument would hold up if they said “Police are searching for a six foot white male”?
Cops (ACAB) are not a good example for moral treatment of others.
Besides, this is basically jargon. That has its own set of rules.
Because the police never try to dehumanize “suspects” and “perpetrators”.
Now, you could get around it by calling someone “a female person” - except that we already have a word for “female person”, and that’s “woman”.
I’m going to nitpick a touch. “Female person” includes girls. “Women” ecludes them.
And that’s why I say “bruh”
I’m probably the only person to not use that word like a frat douche, I just like calling my guy friends bro and I tried calling my female friends bro and they didn’t find that funny so now everyone gets bruh’d
there are exceptions to the above: you can call someone ‘an American’ or 'A German", but not “A French”. I don’t understand why - if you can’t feel your way, best just avoid it
And yet here you are confidently expounding exactly how this works. Why, if you know you don’t understand, are you weighing in on this like you’re an authority on it?
Because fluent speakers of a language know the rules even if they don’t understand them. Why can you have a big green dog but not a green big dog? Because that’s the way the language works.
To be slightly more specific, you can have a “green big dog”, but it does not convey the same idea as a “big green dog”. The latter is by far the more normal, and it conveys any dog which is both big and green. The former implies the existence of “big dog” as a specific known thing, like “big dog” is a category of its own more than merely a dog that is big.
As a general rule though, yes, follow the adjective order guidelines. There’s some fuzziness with it, but “opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun” should be used.
Yeah, but if I ask a third grader which way is right, they’ll know and they won’t be able to tell you why. This is normal.
Tbh I think it’s just because it sounds bad phonetically, since “a Frenchman” or “an Englishman” are both acceptable as well, but “a French” or “An English” just sounds dumb. Of course you can only do that to white countries, don’t try it with China.
Now, you could get around it by calling someone “a female person” - except that we already have a word for “female person”, and that’s “woman”.
We did have a word that meant that and everyone knew it. But that word has changed into something else.
You okay buddy?
Female person doesn’t mean women.
The word has changed so it’s not correct to say that.
Unless you’re someone’s doctor, it’s almost never relevant to discuss someone’s sex. Gender is how we refer to people in most contexts, and when it’s important (e.g. discussing pregnancy) it’s not rude to make a distinction.
I’m talking about this
we already have a word for “female person”, and that’s “woman”
Except “woman” has always meant “adult presenting as female”
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And why isn’t “a male” just as bad?
It is.
And what’s intrinsically wrong about those two as a noun?
Because you’re reducing people to their characteristics of identity.
Why is it ok to call someone “a fire fighter“, “a journalist”, and not “a female”?
Because those are characteristics of their chosen functions.
It seems pretty easy to me, and I’m not even a native speaker.
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“I had coffee with one of the males at work”
“There’s a male waiting for you downstairs”
“I need to see a male about a dog”
All of them would be weird as fuck, and yes, they’d sound demeaning. They don’t have the same weird-incel vibe, but that’s just an accident of culture.
Right. This is the best way to figure out if it sounds weird.
If you would use “man” then the word to use is “woman”. If you would use “male” then “female”.
So if someone asks is the doctor male or female? No problem. Even if they ask “is the doctor a male or a female?” Still no problem. Kinda odd but certainly not offensive.
The problem arises when someone says “men and females” that does sound weird and kinda insulting. As would “women and males”.
If you would use the word man, use woman.
If you would use the word male, use female.
Typical male behavior!
There’s no reason for you to feel attacked by the previous sentence, right?
Not really offensive on its own, but it carries a reductive and dehumanizing vibe, depending on how it’s used. And the ones who use “female” instead of “woman” are often incels and/or misogynists, giving the term a bad conotation.
Also, Ferengis…
I always think of the ferengis when people use men to describe men, and females to describe women.
this! an example of someone always using it in a such a way is Andrew Tate. watch any of his videos where he mentions girls and you’ll immediately understand
Episode is so stupid, I can’t not laugh.
Jeez, mark that NSFW please
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It’s potentially offensive when people say men and females, which is often why it comes up online. Using either male or female as a noun is dehumanizing, in that it’s not commonly used to refer to people, but mostly animals (law enforcement and military use them as nouns, but they’re also intentionally distancing themselves from the people in reports).
Basically, “women” feels weird for a lot of English speakers, but “girls” sounds creepy, so they try for something else. Just go with women, 99% of the time, it’s perfectly fine
It’s mostly this, I would say. But in general there’s a valid context to use male/female and another valid context to use man/woman or girl/boy or lady/gentleman.
Most people are not going to hold someone speaking English as a second language to task over it. But if you’re speaking natively, there’s no real excuse not to know when it is right to use the correct term.
But that’s just my own opinion.
“women” feels weird for a lot of English speakers
Why does it feel weird? (not a native speaker here)
Because there’s no good equivalent to “guys” for women, and women often feels too old/formal. If I’m talking about a group of 19 year olds, then they are women and men (and there’s no good word for NB adults, other than “adults,” that I can think of, either), but 19 year olds still feel younger than women and men. “Guy” is any age and denotes a peer or relaxed relationship, but “woman” and “man” don’t have those connotations. I would talk about the man who works at the bank and the guy who works at the coffee shop, as an indicator of familiarity, if that helps. If you speak a language with a formal you and an informal you, it feels like a similar distinction to me, though those are also all different.
“Guys” can refer to groups of women, and I definitely call my sisters guys, but if you talk about “a guy,” it isn’t gender neutral where I’m from.
“Lady” singular denotes age, but not formality, though the formality difference between “lady” and “ladies” is hard (I could absolutely see someone saying “some lady was an absolute asshole at the gas station today,” but “two ladies were absolute assholes at the gas station,” is weird).
Gals is the term that matches guys, but it seems like it fell out of favor when women was promoted as a response to the use of girls in a negative way to describe women (adults) in an infantilizing way. Like it was common to say men’s sports and girls sports in the same way that incels use men and females.
FYI: Ladies goes with lords, as in lords and ladies.
I know gal is considered an equivalent, but the only people I’ve ever known to use it were Girl Scout leaders and square dance callers, so it doesn’t feel at all equivalent to me. I don’t know if this is widespread and/or why the word never gained as much traction as “guy,” but I definitely don’t enjoy being called a gal. It feels infantilizing and othering to me, like when people say “and dudettes!”
Interestingly, gal comes from “girl,” whereas guy comes from guy fawkes. I would have made a very unwise bet that “guy” was older.
Terms for the sexes/genders are treated differently. In the US, the only term I can think of that has been used derogatively for men is ‘boy’, and only in the context of racism for disparaging adult men who are black.
On the other side, most of the terms have been used negatively in different contexts. Women were often called girls to infantilize them. Gals was used to avoid formality. ‘Ladies of the night’ spoiled the term ladies because of the association with prostitution.
On the flip side a boys club isn’t disparagingly to infantilize men, as shown in the song ‘The boys are back in town’. A girls night out is generally not seen as a negative, but calling women’s sports in college girl’s sports is while men’s sports tend to just be called sports.
So while there are exceptions, other terms for men terms tend to not be used negatively like other terms for women do and that is why women’s terms tend to fall out of favor over time while men’s stick around.
This is why I love the word “y’all”
Thanks!
woman reads as “wo-man”
women reads as “we-men”English is weird. I blame the British.
While we’re at it, loose and lose. Somehow taking away an o makes the vowel sound longer and makes the consonant voiced?
Contextual irregularities.
There’s a loss connection in there that ties into it.
Very mish-mash sort of stuff, eh?
Just say ladies. That’s polite.
I’m torn here. It’s a good way for me to talk about my peers (early thirties) in the third person, but it doesn’t quite fit for second person for me. (Edit: ”guy” is also not great for second person, now that I think about it, so maybe it’s more equivalent than I realized. Though for plural third person, it still isn’t 1:1, imo. “Two guys in my class” has a different connotation from “two ladies in my class,” but I can’t put my finger on why.)
“Ladies” feels formal/salesy (if someone addresses a group of women I’m in as “ladies,” it feels like they’re either a server for our group dinner or trying to quickly build rapport) to me, whereas “lady” can often feel straight up rude ( “hey, lady!” sounds like Bart Simpson said it vs. “hey, ladies!” which could mean so many different things depending on the context, but seems less annoyed at least).
While generally true, there are some people from older generations that associate ladies with prostitution as in ‘ladies of the night’ and find it offensive.
Yes, I have known quite a few and they are in their 60s to 80s right now.
What about when specifying the gender of your friend? “My woman friend” sounds really weird to me. I usually say, “my female friend” because it sounds more natural, but I don’t want to sound like an incel/misogynist.
For what it’s worth, I say “my male friend” as well.
Nonono, it’s always okay to use it as an adjective, so that’s fine!
As a non-native speaker I find woman more offensive than female. Noun male/female puts all as equal. Girls, boys, birds, ponies. Woman, though, seems to be de-attached. Especially when talking about humankind it’s common to refer to humans as just „man”. „No man been there”, „for all mankind”, „dog is a man’s best friend”. As it applies to man only and woman doesn’t count
This just seems women are more touchy about this stuff then men.
Someone called me out on reddit for using the word girls for women and it was sexist because it is infantising, and it was stupid because they were making out I don’t call men boys. When I absoultely do, in fact I do it more than the alternative. Really the only way I was sexist on that is that I don’t do it as much as I do with men so if anything I should do it more.
But you can’t win, someone’s always going to be offended
Context is important. If I say: “Sexual dimorphism is when a species has two distinct sexes, male and female,” I dont think many would find that rude. Now, if I say “Im so sick of females telling me what to do” you might get some cocked eyebrows.
The way I explained it to a chronically single friend who used this word problematically all the time, and made him stop: Female is a word that describes gender and/or sex. My wife is female, and so is my dog. My wife is literally a woman, and my dog is literally a removed, so if I speak of my wife with the same sterile language that I speak of my dog, then my wife would easily conclude that I have no respect for her. I then asked him how the dating world was treating him, he said “bad”, and I said “of course, because you treat women like dogs”.
Never heard him say it again.
This is a good way of describing it for non-US or non-native speakers. The context is important. If you are speaking in an environment where linguistic sterility or pedantic exactitude are paramount, use female because that is the correct term. Things like studies; medical, statistical, anthropological, etc. If you are in a social situation, use a non-sterile term like woman for an adult, girl for a child, or some other non-pejorative colloquial term. If “chick” or “dame” or “babe” are acceptable to the girls/women of the social circle, go wild with them, if not, don’t. This is viable advice for any pronoun or colloquial reference, no matter the gender/sex of the people around. Their emotions matter.
Also, if you are speaking with physists about physics, object pronouns become appropriate because no matter how offended people get, they have a volume and warp spacetime, so therefore they ARE objects. 🙃
It really depends on the context. When used as an adjective, it’s fine. For example, the sentence “My female coworker has brown hair.” is correct. However, when it is used as a noun, it can be dehumanising. For example: “A female at my workplace has brown hair” is dehumanising. It can be used as a noun when talking about non-humans (“After mating, the female will lay her eggs.”) or in medicinal context when referring to people with uteruses.
Not English native here, please don’t be too harsh for asking this.
I’ve heard male very often as noun, and doesn’t seem to have a negative reaction. Is one “generally” considered worse to use than the other?
Yeah it’s tricky. Using “female” as a noun in a non-biological context is often used by incels and misogynists in order to dehumanise women. Whereas there isn’t the same trend of certain groups using “male” to dehumanise men, or at least I’ve never heard of it happening in real life.
In a vacuum, both would be the same, but because there is a much larger trend of using “female” to dehumanise women than using “male” to dehumanise men, it’s not a true double-standard.
And as long as you’re not being a dick, especially if English isn’t your native language, then people will know what you mean. But if you are consciously trying to make an effort, then don’t use “female” and “male” as nouns to refer to someone’s gender.
A lot of the reason why “Female” has a bit of a negative slant, is because of the kinds of people/communities that overused the word.
Those groups used female as a way to say that women are only useful as somewhere to put your dick. There didn’t really seem to be a group using male in a dehumanizing way, so it doesn’t really have the same negative feeling.
Kinda like how if someone just comments “Jew” on a post it can feel negative, but if they say “Canadian” or “Bulgarian” it feels neutral.
Can you give some examples?
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Using human nonspecific terminology to describe women is dehumanizing. They are women, not “females”. The only people who use “female” as a noun mean it the same way they might call a woman a “hoe”. It’s a word you use when you deliberately want to minimize the existence of another person. Literally referring to a woman like she is an object, or livestock…
Using human nonspecific terminology
to describe womenis dehumanizing.What an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one.
Of course you think “women aren’t human” is a funny joke…
Touch grass, incel.
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I get that you’re being practical here. You’re not technically wrong, and the people who are disagreeing with you really are arguing points of nuance.
But they aren’t wrong either. That nuance matters in certain contexts.
You can pick this hill to defend. Or you can learn something that you didn’t know about the people in your online community, and probably your IRL community too.
Embrace learning something new. It will almost never be a waste of your time.
Ah, I understand now. You think that “human nonspecific terminology” and “dehumanizing terminology” are oxymoronic. Let me help clarify this for you with a lesson in reading comprehension:
“Human nonspecific terminology” refers to terminology that isn’t used specifically to refer to humans. For example, nouns like “male”, “female”, “subject”, or “specimen” can refer to humans, but they can also apply to things like plants and animals. Casually using these terms socially is generally thought of as dehumanizing and disrespectful.
This is opposed to respectful human terminology like “man”, “woman”, “participant”, or “person” that almost exclusively refer to humans.
If a man thinks of himself as a man, but refers to women as “females”, people tend to assume he has less than an acceptable amount of respect for women, since he uses less human terminology to describe them than he would to describe himself.
This is why I preferred math over English classes.
That you shouldn’t call a human woman “a female”?
It’s super context dependent. Asking “How do I ask a woman out?” Vs “How do I ask a female out?” say very different things about you.
Using it as an adjective in some cases is fine, never use it as a noun, unfortunately due to assholes using it that way it now has a negative conotation.
exactly this
It’s kind of like the difference between talking about people who are black and referring to someone as “one of the blacks”. It’s subtle, but the latter is objectifying where as the former is descriptive.
It’s even more subtle than that. We’ve defeated most actual injustice in our society, and now people are scraping the bottom of the barrel to find injustice to fight against.
I have some bad news to tell you about capitalism
hmmm, that’s an assessment I can’t get behind, lol
This is the dumbest thing I’ve read this year.
It sounds fairly scientific in a crunchy or incel way. As others have highlighted here, there are times it can be used, but generally, I’d stick to “women” or “ladies” for most situations. It flows better and avoids potentially negative connotations. That said, if english isn’t your native language, I’d expect native speakers to cut you some slack; english can be a difficult language to learn, and the language is always evolving, particularly around gendered language right now. Sounds like you are putting the effort into learning it, though :)
Typically it does flow better, but I have a little mental stumble every time someone uses “woman” or “women” as an adjective. I know why they’re doing it and I can’t really fault them, it just… feels off.
Mostly just by association. It sounds very incel-y.
And the infamously misogynistic Ferengi.
Humons just don’t understand Ferengi culture.
It’s an adjective not a noun when talking about people. The sort of people who use it as a noun tend to be misogynists and so when people do it they’re often unknowingly writing with a misogynist accent if that makes sense.
“I have a female friend.” (As in “I have a friend that’s a woman.”) “I’ve talked with a female today.” (As in “I’ve talked with a woman today.”)
The first one is fine, because isn’t using the word as an adjective. The second one is derogatory, because it is being used as a substantive.
So stating a fact is derogatory?
Where the fuck do y’all get your information?
Found the incel lol
Considering I read the initial statement to my mom (60) and she said wtf?
Y’all just assume. Hope ya don’t go through life with that kind of outlook you will never make friends
“My mom said it’s OK” is just telling on yourself, my dude.
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Lmao this incel can’t stop commenting in here 😂
What do you mean by facts? How is female defined by you? Because I doubt you genetically test for XX chromosomes before you say female, right?
I think there are plenty of words that can be factual, but also unkind. And that is all that this is about. I would at the very least find it odd if someone used “human specimen” instead of calling me a man, though it is factual. I think trying to use the words that describe people the way they see themselves instead of hanging onto some logical ideal is a normal transition languages make over time and is a kinder way to be.
When used as a noun they’re how you refer to non-human animals so when you use them for people it sounds that you don’t think men/women are human
