Here’s my two cents. It’s hard for people to keep up with the euphemism treadmill. There was a time when the word “female” didn’t have the negative connotation that it does now mostly thanks to co-opting by incels. It should also be stated that the word “male” doesn’t have the same negative connotations and it’s similar to how there’s slurs for black people but none for white people.
So why do people find “female” offensive? Well for starters it’s dehumanizing. Women is a less academic term and female implies some biological essentialism. I think the crux as to why it’s a big deal now is that women do not refer to themselves as females in the manner that men do. Men do not think of themselves as males, they do not call other men males, men call themselves men. male and female are simply outdated terms.
I suspect one day as society moves towards a more genderqueer position men and women will become unacceptable to say too. Idk. Like I think we need to acknowledge that there is such thing as a euphemism treadmill, that languages change, words become offensive or nonoffensive over time, and like all we can do in order to be a fucking decent human bean is to conform to society’s standards as to what is acceptable as according to the treadmill. Unless it’s some shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused. Then in those specific instances we got to run against the treadmill. But in this specific instance, we need to run with the treadmill on this one. Nothing feels better than conforming with society.
“Women” is fine as a noun, but what should be used as an adjective if not “female”?
I’m going with comrade Feinberg on this, i use woman for the gender identity, feminine for the social role and female for biological characteristics. If you need an adjective relating to woman, it’s womanly, if you need a noun relating to feminine, it’s fem / femme, if you want to use female as a noun you better be talking about a dog and not a human being.
But also don’t talk about dogs like that
Ehh, calling a female dog a bitch makes me feel like an old-time British lady
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Honestly, it’s mostly just a concept from some throwaway paragraph from Feinberg’s Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue that i’ve ran with and then spiced up a little.
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It’s a good read, i think we even have a sticky about it today.
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Isn’t this about using “female” as a noun?
Yeah that’s how I understand it. Like saying “that’s a female horse” is normal and fine.
The issue is saying “look at that female over there” or “she is a female”. That’s the dehumanizing shit, “look at that woman” or “she is a woman” is far less weird as well.
It’d been something Redditeurs have been doing since way back in the SRS days - weird nerd shit.
I swear brd used to look different. Was there some kind of ip controversy or something?
I think the biggest difference is that brd isn’t massive.
But I also vaguely remember there being a different brd too early on? Whatever it was, this one was the main brd for most of SRS’s relevancy.
Maybe it’s the shading or something that’s making it look weird to me? Like it looks basically right but there’s just something different.
Or maybe I’ve changed! 🤔 😧
Because of the demeaning usage as a noun, some people are starting to get uncomfortable with even using female as an adjective, and you will hear people use “woman” as an adjective like “she became the first woman triathlete” which isn’t really right but it’s not that bad… I dunno, I’m a guy so take my two cents for what they’re worth, but I don’t think we should surrender the entire word “female” to weird online fascist nerds
I think as a whole we should try to make language gender neutral. But I can think of better hills to die on. Like most people are conscious of referring to women as female, even women. As we become more aware of it then I think things will start to change.
I’m not big on hard grammar rules so in the contexts that I see it used in “woman” does add extra meanings like, adulthood and agency while “female” might not.
There was a post a week or two ago about “men having sex with females” which kinda made my ears prick up. Because female can include the concepts of babies and corpses when woman seems to rarely be used to include those things.
So it feels easier for me understand using the term woman when referring to a group of that should naturally exclude members who would be included when using the term female.
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This is something that trips me up, especially when I’m speaking.
I tend to use some version of “oriented towards women” or “stereotypically 'women’s [such and such]” but using “feminine” (and “masculine”) can often work too.
I try to avoid saying “female” as an adjective because it is biologically-essentist and exclusive of all women. But it does make for clunkier wording often.
sometimes it’s rephrasing entirely like “first woman in space” rather than “first female cosmonaut”.
if it’s relevant to bring up biological norms then female and male are fine as long as you’re not trampling over trans people, but we should certainly avoid constructions like “men and females” which the
and incels use without thinking.
I’ve seen the use of ‘fem’ or similar used for the adjective to be more inclusive and less awkward. A ‘fem space’ is inclusive of trans women, where as a ‘female space’ very well might not be in many cases, and it’s harder to know without specifically asking. Just what I’ve been seeing in use lately.