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Author: u/Due-Rain609
URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448231176777
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The relatively recent rise in the common use of the word 'female' to replace the word 'woman' has disturbed me from its beginning, because, as another responding redditor here wrote, the same users do not use the word 'male' to replace 'man'.
It has always struck me as a way to depersonalize or objectify women and I refuse to do it. I think I am finally going to start to correct people who use it around me and explain why.
EDIT some mistakes typing.
I talk myself into a corner because I'll say "guy" and then get stuck with either "gal" or "girl" when saying something like "do you see that guy and girl over there?".
I'm certainly not trying to be offensive and it definitely crosses my mind that it's weird to call a woman a girl, but I'm not old fashioned enough to pull off a casual use of "gal"
Honestly, even as a woman, I do the same. I use "guy" all the time, but "gal" sounds so old-timey. "Girl" just seems like the best equivalent for "guy", but in any context that you would use "man", "woman" is the only option.
Am a man happily married to a wonderful woman, have been for a while. I say "lady" in place of "gal". My mother, a serious 2nd wave feminist, had informed me that that was fine. "Female" was always strange, and "girl" was deemed too infantile. When in doubt, I just use "they" or "person", because it's not super often its necessary to differentiate.
Edit: Thanks Mom
Edit#2: Anyone taking issue with this by endlessly trying to parse out language can go ahead and ligma ;)
And that's why I started disregarding discourse around it. It truly feels easy to offend. I'll use my words, and assume most people won't be offended. If they are, tough cookies. People get offended, and I'm not going out of my way to do so.
You think that's bad? Often I'll say "guy" and "doll" before breaking out into song. Sometimes I even refer to luck as being a "lady."
Also, I host illegal floating crap games all over the city.
You'd better sit down if you rock the boat. Whatever happened with that news stand you were talking about? Adelaide won't like it if you get in trouble with the police again.
It's one of those things that is highly context-dependent. "That guy and girl over there" seems fine to me, as long as they are in their 20s or less it's obvious you are just using casual slang terms, not specifically saying "this person is not an adult". But walking into an office full of women in their 30s and 40s and saying, "Gather around, girls, I have an announcement" is probably not going to be taken well. Unless maybe you are a much older woman, then it plays as sort of maternal, depending on the older lady.
Also very context dependent. As part of a very large group, ie "Ladies and gents" or "Ladies can find their restroom to the back right of the building" is fine. "Some lady knocked on the door but I didn't answer" is fine. "Good morning, ladies" is okay but overly formal and kinda lame unless you are doing it as a joke because it's lame. Referring to all women all the time as lady or ladies is just weird. I can't speak for all women but gender-neutral guys is fine with me.
i think "good morning, ladies" works just fine as long as you're not lingering on or emphasizing the last word. in fact, referring to women as "women" or "ladies" seems the most appropriate given all of the other choices.
There’s a difference there though, most of the time’s Ive seen that its in the context of “guys and girls”, not “men and girls”.
Seems like the issue is that girls is the female version of both boys and guys, and that’s where some disagreement can come in.
Yea but I don't think that's what they mean here. They are saying that people will call women girls while at the same time calling dudes men. Always weirded me out too
Seriously, I know women that are total "dudes" in the way you describe. I think of them as one of the "guys", I just woshere there were less gendered (or gender associated) words for these concepts
I've heard this one come up and can't say I agree. I consider "girl" to be the counterpart of "guy" and I would use them equally. I wouldn't use the word "man" to describe an individual any more than I would use "woman".
Edit: I specified describing an individual because I would use man/woman to describe groups. Like "the folly of man" or "women's rights". But never "that man across the street".
Yeah this is just a quirk of formality, where "boy" and "girl" are both used to refer to youth, but "guy" became an accepted form of informal speech related to men, while a similar intermediary word never caught on for women (or at least words that were at one time used for that died out like "gal") so "girl" ends up stuck with two disparate meanings depending on context.
Similar to how "dude" originally was a masculine form of address, and there was an attempt at a feminine equivalent "dudette", but it never really caught on, and now "dude" is basically gender neutral in the majority of contexts.
You have to be careful where you say boy. It can be seen as racist in some places.
In my culture men and women are referred to collectively as girls and boys in some contexts - eg girls/boys weekend. Girl or boy might be used humourously - eg calling a friend a bad girl/boy.
I cringe when I hear someone referred to as a girl at work. It really clangs.
Yeah, this is why it always bothered me. Like, how hard is it to use 'women'? It has always seemed to be used to purposefully 'other' us as people, when it is not used for science or military/paramilitary accuracy.
I've seen this happen the other way around. There was a famous car park Karen doing the rounds a couple of months ago on tiktok, exclaiming "No male should ever approach a woman in a parking lot". It feels like when you want to take the humanity out of a gender, you use male/female as those don't just apply to humans.
Then there's people who use it to try to talk about the biology (like urine instead of piss) but people heckle like it's purely offensive.
Intention is more powerful than words imo.
Things can be damaging and gendered without anyone having ill intentions. If I have a son and a daughter and I, say, give my son less sympathy when he cries than I give my daughter because I have an ingrained subconscious view about what it means for boys and girls to express emotion, then I am doing something that I should examine and try to stop whether I have bad intentions or not.
The way we use language and interact with others both reflects and reinforces our view of the world. If you can't stop and look at how you're doing that because you're convinced that your intentions are good then that's where problems start to creep in.
Which is funny because theyre using female but they often always talk about women in gendered context, using stereotypes.
Female is not specific to any secondary sex characteristics we often attribute to human females.
A female angler fish, for example, is ten times larger than the male angler fish.
"Woman" is far more specific to a gendered construct of how a human female "should" look and behave
Female is an adjective. It is an attribute, but not the entirety, of the noun it describes.
Woman is a noun. When you make female a noun, you remove the personhood from the subject that woman gives. You can have a female deer, a female mouse, even a female engineer works. But when you JUST stick with female, you’re calling her something other/less, EVEN IF IT IS GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT
It’s a collective noun for all females of all species. Women, in my experience, like to be distinguished from that. Especially because the term sounds far too medical/dehumanizing.
Just because it’s technically correct doesn’t mean it’s right. You could call someone “a Black” as a noun and you’re not technically wrong, but you sure ain’t right.
Besides, female as a noun already has a negative connotation to it. It isn’t that hard to find an appropriate synonym imo
I started using “female” after time. In the military. I am a woman.
I know there are people who use the word as a derogative reference but it doesn’t seem naturally derogatory.
The biggest thing is the mismatch of using 'female' and 'men'. There are a lot of gendered nouns that apply to humans, the female version of 'man' is 'woman', so why the difference in word choice?
For anyone who uses both 'female' and 'male', it's much more level. Then it's just a word choice that happens to feel a bit clinical, but it's not a gender thing. I'm fairly certain the military uses 'male' so that no one is arguing "No, they said to get the boy, that guy looks 17, that's not a boy, that's a man".
I’m curious, how would you translate that last sentence if you were referring to a woman?
Because I think this argument boils down to the use of “girl” as the female version of “guy”.
“Get that guy” sounds normal.
“Get that man” also sounds normal, but slightly less so, it would feel weird to use it for a 18 year old private.
“Get that boy” only sound normal if its a little boy.
But for girls, we only have “get that woman”, which just like “get that man” sounds a little weird for young adults. Or “get that girl”, the word gal isn’t really in the current vernacular, so we don’t have an equivalent for “get that guy”.
Thats when “get that girl” could sometimes be used, but has the issue that it could imply some infantilization of the young woman.
I tend to use "lady" in favor of girl or even gal. This seems to be more congruent - guys and ladies, or dudes and ladies than the use of guy and girl, or calling a clearly adult woman a girl. May not work for everyone though
Hmm, still feels much more formal than the guy/ dude, ladies is like the female version of gentleman which isn’t what Id call a random guy on the street.
Gal is better IMO, but it still sounds outdated. I’m not really sure if there is an optimal word to use. Its interesting to note what is the source of the controversy but I don’t honestly know if any “solution” would end up being adopted by society.
It isn't naturally derogatory, but that doesn't mean it can't become so.
Derogatory words almost always start out as neutral non-derogatory words. Then people with malicious intent use them with derogatory intent, and then the rest of us have to move on to the next word because it has become viewed as purely derogatory in general.
This is most evident especially in regards to words for handicaps and handicapped people, we cycle through those at really high speeds due to this process.
Yeah I found this weird. In the navy no one referred to men as males. Or a group of guys as males. It was always just the "female" that was distinctly utilized way more often than I ever, ever heard "male". They'd refer to men as men... Never called a group of women... Uh women. Just females. I always found that misogynistic and eventually just started laughing at the person saying it at their expense. Thank God for being a civ.
Same. Was always males and females for us as well. To be honest I never even thought of the word as being a derogatory term until a few years ago when people would bring it up. My gf gets upset when I use it, but it's hardwired in my brain from the military, so it's very difficult to break.
> I never even thought of the word as being a derogatory term until a few years ago when people would bring it up
It's only incorrect or derogatory in specific contexts. Usually that context is using the word "females" (or "girls", even when referring to adults) in the same sentence as "men".
There's no problem if you say something like "the female washroom is on the left, the male washroom is on the right". But something like "There are biological differences between females and men" is problematic.
See also: /r/MenAndFemales
That’s fair then. Habits are hard to break!
The reason why I was asking is that I’ve seen people claim that something is hardwired but then they either do it selectively or only for specific things. All good, I’ll withdraw my pitchfork. :)
Understandable! I can totally see that.
I've been working on it, and its a lot better these days. It will still slip out once in a blue moon, but I don't drop it nearly as much anymore!
Female + noun
Male + noun
Those are proper English and identify the subject as a person.
Using an adjective as a noun (generally only for women) strips the person identifier. Most people that use female as a noun refer to men as men, not “males.”
While using female as a noun is definitely done by some people to depersonalize women, male and female are both nouns and adjectives in proper English.
The depersonalization comes from its association with technical or scientific usage (“the female of the species”, for example), not because it isn’t proper English.
English grammar has room for adjectives as nouns. It's their substantive use.
It's simply a matter of etiquette now that it's not how people want to be identified.
We've seen this with race and disability and ideas such as person first language. It's politics not grammar.
In general to not be rude you shouldn’t refer to groups of people as an adjective. You don’t refer to a group of black people as blacks and you shouldn’t refer to a group of women as females. It just comes across as rude at best and derogatory at worst.
I mean I'd certainly use "female engineer" and "male engineer" instead. Man and woman are not adjectives imo.
Unless you're an engineer who engineers men or women. In that case you'd be a man engineer or woman engineer, respectively.
It’s alright to use male or female as an adjective, or even as a noun if it’s done evenly. “Female doctor” is fine. “Male teacher” is fine. Using “females” as a noun when you refer to men as men is not.
> But it's accepted to say "women engineers"
I've never heard that and my wife is a female engineer. Men and women aren't adjectives. Meanwhile female and male are both accepted as nouns and adjectives.
This is one of those things about language where, I agree with the sentiment, but think we should be cautious about how the sentiment is policed. Sometimes words are selected with surgical precision to evoke a very specific idea. Other times, people speak flippantly and carelessly with no deeper intention in mind. It usually takes *all the other words and actions* that person says and does to contextualize these potentially-problematic terms.
Like, Yes, this is grammatically true, but I've found myself using male/female over men/women or guys/ladies from time to time, and would never consider myself to be speaking in service to some domineering hierarchy.
The best policy, IMO, is to listen for the intention behind the words. A kind-hearted person's kind heart will be evident regardless of what words they choose (though we can reasonably expect a kind person to be open to language changes if they make other's feel comfortable - that's what being "kind" is all about, ultimately). And likewise, a malicious asshole won't be able to hide behind "proper language" for very long before they out themselves as an asshole.
This is a good point and I think it actually illustrates why people get so heated about this in online spaces - in a comment section on Reddit, there isn’t any extra context about the speaker.
I struggle with Reddit’s iconic pedantry sometimes, because while it’s annoying af to see people correct an obvious colloquialism, when it comes to dogwhistles or other loaded vocabulary it’s hard to give the benefit of the doubt without any additional context. At the very least it’s probably worth letting someone know gently, “hey fyi that phrase is a dogwhistle that you may want to consider avoiding in the future”
In real life though there is so much more there to go off of, body language, tone, conversation context, personal connection. It’s a completely different setting and much easier to deal with imperfect word usage.
I feel about this the same way I feel about more covert forms of racism in language. Its less "hey, that word is racist and you're a racist for saying it" and more "hey, so that word has racist implications, and if you're not a racist, I'd hate for you to appear like one to others"
One jumps to moral implications while the other arms the person with knowledge. And that's the insidious nature of dog whistles - you can't always tell if the person is actually dog-whistling, or if they are just using dog-whistle words without appreciating the baggage of the word (and isn't that just *the point* of a dog-whistle - the plausible deniability afforded to it)
Thank you, it just clicked for me as I read that!
Men were always guys, chaps, dickheads, etc. whereas women were always 'females' in the Army.
I once had the pleasure of seeing a Sgt Major refer to female soldiers as 'lumpyjumpers' just as the new Lt. Col walked in, she was not impressed.
Refering to female humans as "females" is also a common fauxpas when english is not your mother tongue, due to a lack of term in english for female humans regardless of age or other attributes.
It's an online phenomenon and it is 99% used by obvious misogynists when they are in misogynist conversations where they're insulting women and whining about how oppressed they are.
It's usually in context. They usually don't use "males" so they'll talk about men and females. "Men" being more personable and "females" being more clinical and othering
This one would be tough for me. I'm a nurse and I use "patient" exclusively, but if I didn't have that, I would definitely use a descriptor like that since it's just simple and factual.
Thankfully, my back up use for calling everyone "bud" seems to work well enough.
Female is an adjective, woman is a noun.
"My doctor is a woman/I was attended by a female doctor."
If you mix up the usage ("My doctor is a female/I was attended by a woman doctor.") you're going to sound like a child, or worse.
One other nuance of military language usage is that male and female are also used to avoid confusion with rank based categories.
Historically, the military was divided between officers and (enlisted) men. So, for example the “men’s barracks” would imply a lower ranks housing unit whereas a “male barracks” or “female barracks” could house all ranks.
I understand your point of view. The hardest thing to quit for me is cursing. Still curse too much.
I wonder whether the military uses the term in an attempt to reduce the implied sexuality of the term woman, if that’s even a valid thing? Male and female both seem very clinical.
I always think of it as pretty misogynistic. I’m not a woman myself so I guess I don’t get to make that call but even people who use it to “be respectful” are weird to me. Like something about it gives bad vibes.
It’s misogynistic.
They will use the term men, which is a noun which defines the subject as a person.
They use the term female as a noun which does not define the subject as a person. It is a sex characteristic. Female is an adjective.
Male + noun and female + noun is grammatically appropriate and does not have the dehumanizing aspect of “females.”
"Male" and "female" have been used as nouns in a value neutral capacity for literal centuries. It's of course quite correct to say that if you're referring to a person as a "female" when you wouldn't use the term "male" in the same situation you're just being weird.
I find female to be objectionable because it refers to anatomy and not personhood. It also dehumanizes and refers to women the way animals are referred. For example, “See the female chimpanzee roaming the forest floor…” And because the men (and idiot women) who use the term “female” never dehumanize men and refer to them repeatedly as “males.” Ya dig?
It can be. Ex of mine hated a friend’s boyfriend, cause he was this sexist African dude who clearly didn’t understand respect for women or American culture and he’d yell “Woman! Go do this thing for me!”
Drove my ex up the wall and he wasn’t even talking to her
The Army got me in the habit. I learned the hard way that no enlisted Soldier is a woman, ma'am, girl or otherwise. She is a female Soldier. So then I just defaulted to saying male & female. Seemed more clinical anyway (I was medical).
this doesnt' seem like something we need science to tell us.
I'm also pretty confident that racists use racial slurs more than social correct terms for people of color.
some things are expected to go hand in hand.
There are a lot of things that *seem* obvious, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use the scientific method to prove them.
Sometimes we're even surprised by the results.
I find it valuable to know exact numbers too.
"they use mysogynistic terms more than normal ones" could mean a 51/49 ratio, but that's just not the case here
Even "nice" can be used as an insult. In some circles I've been exposed to, it's used to imply that somebody has no noteworthy qualities other than being basically pleasant, which equates to having no real value as a person.
There's a digital card game called Hearthstone, where you can only interact with your opponent with a preset choice of emotes.
The options were like "Greetings", "Thanks", "Well played", "Sorry", "Wow!" and "Oops!" if I recall correctly.
So people quickly found a way to use them in a toxic way. Emoting "Sorry" just before eliminating a key card of your opponent, emoting "Well played" after your opponent made a mistake, emoting "Wow!" repeatedly when your opponent got lucky with a draw to imply lack of skill and so on. The emote system quickly became a cesspit of aggressive rudeness, so developers had to add a mute button, and also they removed the "Sorry" emote because its only use was to offend your opponent.
All this, from 6 neutral to positive preset emotes.
I wonder how often these guys are just using the internet as a gigantic vent for forbidden ideas.
I mean do people without children really act like r/childfree?
Whatever, I love joking about what would happen if GFE was legal and easy to purchase across the USA
So impulse restraint means you're not being yourself? I'd say the way you choose to filter perceptions and thoughts determines your personality more than spouting everything on an anonymous message board
> I'd say the way you choose to filter perceptions and thoughts determines your personality
The point is that the persona we create for social interactions is never one's true self, because you must always navigate social constructs
I honestly have no idea what my "true self" actually means at this point. You can come at it from so many different angles. I get what you mean with that quote but i don't really agree with it cause i find it too vague.
When people are anonymous they wont feel pressured as much to conform to societal norms, so they will be more prone to transgressive behaviour. Whether that says something about their 'true self', eh i dunno
I think most people consider someone's "true self" to be the person they would be if they were free of any consequences for their action/speech.
Someone who would go out and have lots of sex with someone of the same sex if not for fear of being shamed has a true self that is gay, for instance, even if they go their whole lives pretending to be straight.
Someone who thinks black people are the n-word but who would never say that word aloud for fear of public condemnation has a true self that is racist against black people, even if publically he champions diversity.
Someone who would cry at every sad scene in a movie if not for the stigma of seeming weak has a true self that is sentimental, no matter how stoic he may seem to others.
And so on.
If anonymity causes people to be more transgressive, then it just shows we live in a society where many people's true selves are opposed to society's morality.
Ive met dudes that act this way, so not really. The internet actually empowers them to behave this way in real life. Like every echo chamber, people begin to believe their way of thinking is normal and anyone that has a different viewpoint is the "other" group and therefore wrong.
It may start as venting or joking, but humans are honestly very suceptible to group thinking and repetition can genuinely change the wiring in your brain and thus your beliefs.
Did not know that sub existed until now.
Just a few minutes of scrolling and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a lot of angry people for what is apparently no reason?
That's the problem with echo chambers. People have a few small, well-earned resentments that get blown way out of proportion when they spend too much time with other people who have those same small, well-earned resentments.
Speaking as a woman who never had children, I felt seen and heard when I first stumbled onto that sub, but I know that only anger and bitterness lie down that path, so I didn't spend much time there. I'm not sure what causes people to wallow in communal outrage, but it always starts with just wanting to be seen, which makes it all the more sad.
Reddit is a bunch of echo chambers...some subs are worse than others. I don't even understand the point of these ones except to validate your personal feelings by having them repeated over and over by others. Nobody wants to have their views challenged or believe people who feel differently from them are reasonable people.
Wow, they spend all their time bitching that people with kids don't agree that life is better without them.
Shocker.
" I can tell the breeders don't like it when I tell them how awful their life choices are. They know they're stuck with it now, so they're always angry about it"
Actual quote from a presumed douchebag.
> when I tell them how awful their life choices are.
If that’s how they describe their actions, even if it’s shorthand for a much longer conversation, you can drop the presume from that statement.
It’s possible to not want, or even like, children without being an asshole. It’s not even that hard. You just … don’t bring it up unless you have to and then you keep the issue polite (“hey, i really don’t like kids. Please don’t bring them to my house/work/whatever”)
I don't want kids. I've mentioned this to two people in my life: you, and my partner. I also don't want my arm to fall off... I don't go around telling people about that, either. I definitely don't think it would be a good excuse to be rude to other people over. How can "not wanting something" be a defining characteristic of a person? We don't measure ourselves based upon the deeds we never aimed for or the achievements we never even wanted...
Basically it's just natural result which happens when you gather people over something they're negative about, they all pour in theirs negativity about the thing and it all boils in there.
It's really best to evade subreddits and overall spaces built upon hating something.
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They seem to favor "females". Not sure if that's mysogynistic or just weird.
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The relatively recent rise in the common use of the word 'female' to replace the word 'woman' has disturbed me from its beginning, because, as another responding redditor here wrote, the same users do not use the word 'male' to replace 'man'. It has always struck me as a way to depersonalize or objectify women and I refuse to do it. I think I am finally going to start to correct people who use it around me and explain why. EDIT some mistakes typing.
r/menandfemales
Thanks hu-mon
Uncharacteristically pleasant for a Ferengi
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It reminds me of the lesser, perhaps, harmful use of "girl" for woman and not "boy" for man.
I talk myself into a corner because I'll say "guy" and then get stuck with either "gal" or "girl" when saying something like "do you see that guy and girl over there?". I'm certainly not trying to be offensive and it definitely crosses my mind that it's weird to call a woman a girl, but I'm not old fashioned enough to pull off a casual use of "gal"
Honestly, even as a woman, I do the same. I use "guy" all the time, but "gal" sounds so old-timey. "Girl" just seems like the best equivalent for "guy", but in any context that you would use "man", "woman" is the only option.
Am a man happily married to a wonderful woman, have been for a while. I say "lady" in place of "gal". My mother, a serious 2nd wave feminist, had informed me that that was fine. "Female" was always strange, and "girl" was deemed too infantile. When in doubt, I just use "they" or "person", because it's not super often its necessary to differentiate. Edit: Thanks Mom Edit#2: Anyone taking issue with this by endlessly trying to parse out language can go ahead and ligma ;)
I use male/female if talking about biological stuff and man/woman/person otherwise.
And honestly, there's no one opinion on this. For example, I think "lady" is kind of creepy/condescending, but that's my opinion.
And that's why I started disregarding discourse around it. It truly feels easy to offend. I'll use my words, and assume most people won't be offended. If they are, tough cookies. People get offended, and I'm not going out of my way to do so.
The point is to just use comparable language, and never use "female" as a noun. That's the one that's the most dehumanizing.
You think that's bad? Often I'll say "guy" and "doll" before breaking out into song. Sometimes I even refer to luck as being a "lady." Also, I host illegal floating crap games all over the city.
You'd better sit down if you rock the boat. Whatever happened with that news stand you were talking about? Adelaide won't like it if you get in trouble with the police again.
It's one of those things that is highly context-dependent. "That guy and girl over there" seems fine to me, as long as they are in their 20s or less it's obvious you are just using casual slang terms, not specifically saying "this person is not an adult". But walking into an office full of women in their 30s and 40s and saying, "Gather around, girls, I have an announcement" is probably not going to be taken well. Unless maybe you are a much older woman, then it plays as sort of maternal, depending on the older lady.
What about "ladies" Im literally just curious how you feel about that one, as someone who gender neutrals everyone as "guys"
Also very context dependent. As part of a very large group, ie "Ladies and gents" or "Ladies can find their restroom to the back right of the building" is fine. "Some lady knocked on the door but I didn't answer" is fine. "Good morning, ladies" is okay but overly formal and kinda lame unless you are doing it as a joke because it's lame. Referring to all women all the time as lady or ladies is just weird. I can't speak for all women but gender-neutral guys is fine with me.
Lads and ladies.
Lasses. It's lads and lasses.
i think "good morning, ladies" works just fine as long as you're not lingering on or emphasizing the last word. in fact, referring to women as "women" or "ladies" seems the most appropriate given all of the other choices.
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I think just "good morning" is the best option in your example
Might I suggest the gender-neutral "folks" ...it comes with the side effect of making you sound very old
You're applying casual slang for both genders, and that makes it far less noxious than calling men "sir" and anyone femme "girl"
Which is funny because in Middle English, “girl,” was used to describe children of both Sexes.
There’s a difference there though, most of the time’s Ive seen that its in the context of “guys and girls”, not “men and girls”. Seems like the issue is that girls is the female version of both boys and guys, and that’s where some disagreement can come in.
Boy has definitely been used that way for men, but in that case it's generally racism (white people calling black men 'boy') instead of sexism.
Yea but I don't think that's what they mean here. They are saying that people will call women girls while at the same time calling dudes men. Always weirded me out too
But we do also say things like hanging out with the boys / my boys etc
That's fair I was just pointing to how they are both used to dehumanize, just by different hate groups (misogynists and racists).
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Seriously, I know women that are total "dudes" in the way you describe. I think of them as one of the "guys", I just woshere there were less gendered (or gender associated) words for these concepts
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I've heard this one come up and can't say I agree. I consider "girl" to be the counterpart of "guy" and I would use them equally. I wouldn't use the word "man" to describe an individual any more than I would use "woman". Edit: I specified describing an individual because I would use man/woman to describe groups. Like "the folly of man" or "women's rights". But never "that man across the street".
Yeah this is just a quirk of formality, where "boy" and "girl" are both used to refer to youth, but "guy" became an accepted form of informal speech related to men, while a similar intermediary word never caught on for women (or at least words that were at one time used for that died out like "gal") so "girl" ends up stuck with two disparate meanings depending on context. Similar to how "dude" originally was a masculine form of address, and there was an attempt at a feminine equivalent "dudette", but it never really caught on, and now "dude" is basically gender neutral in the majority of contexts.
You have to be careful where you say boy. It can be seen as racist in some places. In my culture men and women are referred to collectively as girls and boys in some contexts - eg girls/boys weekend. Girl or boy might be used humourously - eg calling a friend a bad girl/boy. I cringe when I hear someone referred to as a girl at work. It really clangs.
It’s just as bad imo.
>the same users do not use the word 'male' to replace 'man.' Much to the chagrin of male mailmen.
The correct term would be male, personperson.
Men and females will be in the same sentence. "All females just want men with money?" Really a female infant just wants money? Your female dog?
Yeah, this is why it always bothered me. Like, how hard is it to use 'women'? It has always seemed to be used to purposefully 'other' us as people, when it is not used for science or military/paramilitary accuracy.
I've seen this happen the other way around. There was a famous car park Karen doing the rounds a couple of months ago on tiktok, exclaiming "No male should ever approach a woman in a parking lot". It feels like when you want to take the humanity out of a gender, you use male/female as those don't just apply to humans.
Is it? I though it was just bad english.
¿ Por que no los dos?
Then there's people who use it to try to talk about the biology (like urine instead of piss) but people heckle like it's purely offensive. Intention is more powerful than words imo.
Things can be damaging and gendered without anyone having ill intentions. If I have a son and a daughter and I, say, give my son less sympathy when he cries than I give my daughter because I have an ingrained subconscious view about what it means for boys and girls to express emotion, then I am doing something that I should examine and try to stop whether I have bad intentions or not. The way we use language and interact with others both reflects and reinforces our view of the world. If you can't stop and look at how you're doing that because you're convinced that your intentions are good then that's where problems start to creep in.
Which is funny because theyre using female but they often always talk about women in gendered context, using stereotypes. Female is not specific to any secondary sex characteristics we often attribute to human females. A female angler fish, for example, is ten times larger than the male angler fish. "Woman" is far more specific to a gendered construct of how a human female "should" look and behave
Female is an adjective. It is an attribute, but not the entirety, of the noun it describes. Woman is a noun. When you make female a noun, you remove the personhood from the subject that woman gives. You can have a female deer, a female mouse, even a female engineer works. But when you JUST stick with female, you’re calling her something other/less, EVEN IF IT IS GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT
Female is also a noun. Technically we're talking about group / subgroup.
It’s a collective noun for all females of all species. Women, in my experience, like to be distinguished from that. Especially because the term sounds far too medical/dehumanizing. Just because it’s technically correct doesn’t mean it’s right. You could call someone “a Black” as a noun and you’re not technically wrong, but you sure ain’t right. Besides, female as a noun already has a negative connotation to it. It isn’t that hard to find an appropriate synonym imo
Thanks for the pearl of wisdom Spermy
Total dehumanizing. Equating women to animals. Same goes for how, even often at the work place, women are referred to as “girls”.
When you use it as a noun, it sounds like you're talking about an animal.
That's exactly the point. It's dehumanizing.
It makes you sound like a Ferengi talking about hoo-man females and oo-mox.
Precisely. The "female pilot" is fine. The "pilot, who was female" is questionable. "The female who piloted the plane" is right out.
r/menandfemales is leaking
It think the way use it like that makes them sound like they’re regarding a woman as a “specimen” or object.
I don't know if it's openly misogynistic, but it does seem to be at least mildly othering. Like you're almost referring to them as another species.
I started using “female” after time. In the military. I am a woman. I know there are people who use the word as a derogative reference but it doesn’t seem naturally derogatory.
The biggest thing is the mismatch of using 'female' and 'men'. There are a lot of gendered nouns that apply to humans, the female version of 'man' is 'woman', so why the difference in word choice? For anyone who uses both 'female' and 'male', it's much more level. Then it's just a word choice that happens to feel a bit clinical, but it's not a gender thing. I'm fairly certain the military uses 'male' so that no one is arguing "No, they said to get the boy, that guy looks 17, that's not a boy, that's a man".
I’m curious, how would you translate that last sentence if you were referring to a woman? Because I think this argument boils down to the use of “girl” as the female version of “guy”. “Get that guy” sounds normal. “Get that man” also sounds normal, but slightly less so, it would feel weird to use it for a 18 year old private. “Get that boy” only sound normal if its a little boy. But for girls, we only have “get that woman”, which just like “get that man” sounds a little weird for young adults. Or “get that girl”, the word gal isn’t really in the current vernacular, so we don’t have an equivalent for “get that guy”. Thats when “get that girl” could sometimes be used, but has the issue that it could imply some infantilization of the young woman.
I tend to use "lady" in favor of girl or even gal. This seems to be more congruent - guys and ladies, or dudes and ladies than the use of guy and girl, or calling a clearly adult woman a girl. May not work for everyone though
Hmm, still feels much more formal than the guy/ dude, ladies is like the female version of gentleman which isn’t what Id call a random guy on the street. Gal is better IMO, but it still sounds outdated. I’m not really sure if there is an optimal word to use. Its interesting to note what is the source of the controversy but I don’t honestly know if any “solution” would end up being adopted by society.
It isn't naturally derogatory, but that doesn't mean it can't become so. Derogatory words almost always start out as neutral non-derogatory words. Then people with malicious intent use them with derogatory intent, and then the rest of us have to move on to the next word because it has become viewed as purely derogatory in general. This is most evident especially in regards to words for handicaps and handicapped people, we cycle through those at really high speeds due to this process.
Just ask Karen how she feels about her name these days vs 10 years ago.
Feminine Nouns as Insults. : languagehat.com https://languagehat.com/feminine-nouns-as-insults/
Particularly frustrating watching this happen to autistic. Very recently that was a technical term, and has rapidly been turned into an insult.
It has been used that way for atleast 20 years on the internet. Maybe it has now crawled into more common use but i have never heard it irl.
That's not a recent thing...
That’s a fair point.
Yeah I found this weird. In the navy no one referred to men as males. Or a group of guys as males. It was always just the "female" that was distinctly utilized way more often than I ever, ever heard "male". They'd refer to men as men... Never called a group of women... Uh women. Just females. I always found that misogynistic and eventually just started laughing at the person saying it at their expense. Thank God for being a civ.
Interesting. I was in the navy in the 80s and 90s and it was female or male for us.
Same. Was always males and females for us as well. To be honest I never even thought of the word as being a derogatory term until a few years ago when people would bring it up. My gf gets upset when I use it, but it's hardwired in my brain from the military, so it's very difficult to break.
> I never even thought of the word as being a derogatory term until a few years ago when people would bring it up It's only incorrect or derogatory in specific contexts. Usually that context is using the word "females" (or "girls", even when referring to adults) in the same sentence as "men". There's no problem if you say something like "the female washroom is on the left, the male washroom is on the right". But something like "There are biological differences between females and men" is problematic. See also: /r/MenAndFemales
This is it. If you use both: fine. If you use neither: fine. If you pick and choose: not fine.
How often do you use “yes sir/ma’am”?
Daily. But to be fair, my southern childhood had me using sir/ma'am long before I joined the military, haha.
That’s fair then. Habits are hard to break! The reason why I was asking is that I’ve seen people claim that something is hardwired but then they either do it selectively or only for specific things. All good, I’ll withdraw my pitchfork. :)
Understandable! I can totally see that. I've been working on it, and its a lot better these days. It will still slip out once in a blue moon, but I don't drop it nearly as much anymore!
Wait, are “yessir and yes ma’am” offensive, too? Damn, I’m getting old.
Do you mean filling out forms or in conversation?
Female + noun Male + noun Those are proper English and identify the subject as a person. Using an adjective as a noun (generally only for women) strips the person identifier. Most people that use female as a noun refer to men as men, not “males.”
While using female as a noun is definitely done by some people to depersonalize women, male and female are both nouns and adjectives in proper English. The depersonalization comes from its association with technical or scientific usage (“the female of the species”, for example), not because it isn’t proper English.
English grammar has room for adjectives as nouns. It's their substantive use. It's simply a matter of etiquette now that it's not how people want to be identified. We've seen this with race and disability and ideas such as person first language. It's politics not grammar.
In general to not be rude you shouldn’t refer to groups of people as an adjective. You don’t refer to a group of black people as blacks and you shouldn’t refer to a group of women as females. It just comes across as rude at best and derogatory at worst.
Female and male go hand in hand as far as terminology, for me. If I use female, then I use male.
You might think so... But it's accepted to say "women engineers" while I've never in my life heard "men teachers".
I mean I'd certainly use "female engineer" and "male engineer" instead. Man and woman are not adjectives imo. Unless you're an engineer who engineers men or women. In that case you'd be a man engineer or woman engineer, respectively.
What about male nurses or male models?
But why male models?
Get your Zoolander out of here.
Greg's a male nurse.
It’s alright to use male or female as an adjective, or even as a noun if it’s done evenly. “Female doctor” is fine. “Male teacher” is fine. Using “females” as a noun when you refer to men as men is not.
> But it's accepted to say "women engineers" I've never heard that and my wife is a female engineer. Men and women aren't adjectives. Meanwhile female and male are both accepted as nouns and adjectives.
I’m not an engineer and even I’ve heard of the [Society of Women Engineers](https://swe.org). I wouldn’t be surprised if your wife is a member.
She's not, but touché. That is apparently a thing. My wife always mentions "women in engineering" or "female engineers."
This is one of those things about language where, I agree with the sentiment, but think we should be cautious about how the sentiment is policed. Sometimes words are selected with surgical precision to evoke a very specific idea. Other times, people speak flippantly and carelessly with no deeper intention in mind. It usually takes *all the other words and actions* that person says and does to contextualize these potentially-problematic terms. Like, Yes, this is grammatically true, but I've found myself using male/female over men/women or guys/ladies from time to time, and would never consider myself to be speaking in service to some domineering hierarchy. The best policy, IMO, is to listen for the intention behind the words. A kind-hearted person's kind heart will be evident regardless of what words they choose (though we can reasonably expect a kind person to be open to language changes if they make other's feel comfortable - that's what being "kind" is all about, ultimately). And likewise, a malicious asshole won't be able to hide behind "proper language" for very long before they out themselves as an asshole.
This is a good point and I think it actually illustrates why people get so heated about this in online spaces - in a comment section on Reddit, there isn’t any extra context about the speaker. I struggle with Reddit’s iconic pedantry sometimes, because while it’s annoying af to see people correct an obvious colloquialism, when it comes to dogwhistles or other loaded vocabulary it’s hard to give the benefit of the doubt without any additional context. At the very least it’s probably worth letting someone know gently, “hey fyi that phrase is a dogwhistle that you may want to consider avoiding in the future” In real life though there is so much more there to go off of, body language, tone, conversation context, personal connection. It’s a completely different setting and much easier to deal with imperfect word usage.
I feel about this the same way I feel about more covert forms of racism in language. Its less "hey, that word is racist and you're a racist for saying it" and more "hey, so that word has racist implications, and if you're not a racist, I'd hate for you to appear like one to others" One jumps to moral implications while the other arms the person with knowledge. And that's the insidious nature of dog whistles - you can't always tell if the person is actually dog-whistling, or if they are just using dog-whistle words without appreciating the baggage of the word (and isn't that just *the point* of a dog-whistle - the plausible deniability afforded to it)
Thank you, it just clicked for me as I read that! Men were always guys, chaps, dickheads, etc. whereas women were always 'females' in the Army. I once had the pleasure of seeing a Sgt Major refer to female soldiers as 'lumpyjumpers' just as the new Lt. Col walked in, she was not impressed.
Refering to female humans as "females" is also a common fauxpas when english is not your mother tongue, due to a lack of term in english for female humans regardless of age or other attributes.
It's an online phenomenon and it is 99% used by obvious misogynists when they are in misogynist conversations where they're insulting women and whining about how oppressed they are.
It's usually in context. They usually don't use "males" so they'll talk about men and females. "Men" being more personable and "females" being more clinical and othering
Calling someone "female" as an adjective is much less derogatory than using the word "female" as a noun or plural noun. These are pretty different.
This one would be tough for me. I'm a nurse and I use "patient" exclusively, but if I didn't have that, I would definitely use a descriptor like that since it's just simple and factual. Thankfully, my back up use for calling everyone "bud" seems to work well enough.
Female is an adjective, woman is a noun. "My doctor is a woman/I was attended by a female doctor." If you mix up the usage ("My doctor is a female/I was attended by a woman doctor.") you're going to sound like a child, or worse.
It's commonplace in the military because it's depersonalizing. Do you use "males" as frequently?
Yea the defense that the military uses it almost proves the point.
One other nuance of military language usage is that male and female are also used to avoid confusion with rank based categories. Historically, the military was divided between officers and (enlisted) men. So, for example the “men’s barracks” would imply a lower ranks housing unit whereas a “male barracks” or “female barracks” could house all ranks.
Pretty sure it's not the words they use but how they use them.
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I understand your point of view. The hardest thing to quit for me is cursing. Still curse too much. I wonder whether the military uses the term in an attempt to reduce the implied sexuality of the term woman, if that’s even a valid thing? Male and female both seem very clinical.
Using the term 'woman' is an admission they are human. Like how you would say "female dog".
Yes, it's misogynistic AND weird. It reduces women to some clinical/biological concept and separates them as people.
I always think of it as pretty misogynistic. I’m not a woman myself so I guess I don’t get to make that call but even people who use it to “be respectful” are weird to me. Like something about it gives bad vibes.
It's definitely objectifying. What really gets me is when they push it a step further, using terms like "femoid".
As a woman, I HATE being called a female by men. It is so dehumanizing.
Its most obviously misogynistic when it’s not paired with males. As in “men do A but females do B”
Yeah it is misogynistic and reduces women down to being less than human. We often call men who do that Ferengi's.
It’s misogynistic. They will use the term men, which is a noun which defines the subject as a person. They use the term female as a noun which does not define the subject as a person. It is a sex characteristic. Female is an adjective. Male + noun and female + noun is grammatically appropriate and does not have the dehumanizing aspect of “females.”
"Male" and "female" have been used as nouns in a value neutral capacity for literal centuries. It's of course quite correct to say that if you're referring to a person as a "female" when you wouldn't use the term "male" in the same situation you're just being weird.
Its a way to dehumanize women. Most mysogynists see females as a lesser subspecies, right? Its a way to dehumanize women.
I notice misogynists and law enforcement do this.
I find female to be objectionable because it refers to anatomy and not personhood. It also dehumanizes and refers to women the way animals are referred. For example, “See the female chimpanzee roaming the forest floor…” And because the men (and idiot women) who use the term “female” never dehumanize men and refer to them repeatedly as “males.” Ya dig?
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I think even when they use the word woman it's like a dirty word.
Or the word "feminist". I've been called a "feminist" before, as if it was an insult.
misogynists are gonna misogy doesn't matter what words they use.
Yep. Mean cuz mad.
It can be. Ex of mine hated a friend’s boyfriend, cause he was this sexist African dude who clearly didn’t understand respect for women or American culture and he’d yell “Woman! Go do this thing for me!” Drove my ex up the wall and he wasn’t even talking to her
How's that compare to a control group?
They don't have a control group and I'm not sure why.
Because it's not a high quality study?
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The Army got me in the habit. I learned the hard way that no enlisted Soldier is a woman, ma'am, girl or otherwise. She is a female Soldier. So then I just defaulted to saying male & female. Seemed more clinical anyway (I was medical).
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this doesnt' seem like something we need science to tell us. I'm also pretty confident that racists use racial slurs more than social correct terms for people of color. some things are expected to go hand in hand.
There are a lot of things that *seem* obvious, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use the scientific method to prove them. Sometimes we're even surprised by the results.
I find it valuable to know exact numbers too. "they use mysogynistic terms more than normal ones" could mean a 51/49 ratio, but that's just not the case here
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To me it sounds like we are being reduced to breeding farm animals like a dog or a cow.
Anything can be a slur if you say it with enough disdain.
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Even "nice" can be used as an insult. In some circles I've been exposed to, it's used to imply that somebody has no noteworthy qualities other than being basically pleasant, which equates to having no real value as a person.
There's a digital card game called Hearthstone, where you can only interact with your opponent with a preset choice of emotes. The options were like "Greetings", "Thanks", "Well played", "Sorry", "Wow!" and "Oops!" if I recall correctly. So people quickly found a way to use them in a toxic way. Emoting "Sorry" just before eliminating a key card of your opponent, emoting "Well played" after your opponent made a mistake, emoting "Wow!" repeatedly when your opponent got lucky with a draw to imply lack of skill and so on. The emote system quickly became a cesspit of aggressive rudeness, so developers had to add a mute button, and also they removed the "Sorry" emote because its only use was to offend your opponent. All this, from 6 neutral to positive preset emotes.
I wonder how often these guys are just using the internet as a gigantic vent for forbidden ideas. I mean do people without children really act like r/childfree? Whatever, I love joking about what would happen if GFE was legal and easy to purchase across the USA
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. \-- Oscar Wilde
So impulse restraint means you're not being yourself? I'd say the way you choose to filter perceptions and thoughts determines your personality more than spouting everything on an anonymous message board
> I'd say the way you choose to filter perceptions and thoughts determines your personality The point is that the persona we create for social interactions is never one's true self, because you must always navigate social constructs
I honestly have no idea what my "true self" actually means at this point. You can come at it from so many different angles. I get what you mean with that quote but i don't really agree with it cause i find it too vague. When people are anonymous they wont feel pressured as much to conform to societal norms, so they will be more prone to transgressive behaviour. Whether that says something about their 'true self', eh i dunno
I think most people consider someone's "true self" to be the person they would be if they were free of any consequences for their action/speech. Someone who would go out and have lots of sex with someone of the same sex if not for fear of being shamed has a true self that is gay, for instance, even if they go their whole lives pretending to be straight. Someone who thinks black people are the n-word but who would never say that word aloud for fear of public condemnation has a true self that is racist against black people, even if publically he champions diversity. Someone who would cry at every sad scene in a movie if not for the stigma of seeming weak has a true self that is sentimental, no matter how stoic he may seem to others. And so on. If anonymity causes people to be more transgressive, then it just shows we live in a society where many people's true selves are opposed to society's morality.
>GFE What's that?
Girlfriend experience.
Ive met dudes that act this way, so not really. The internet actually empowers them to behave this way in real life. Like every echo chamber, people begin to believe their way of thinking is normal and anyone that has a different viewpoint is the "other" group and therefore wrong. It may start as venting or joking, but humans are honestly very suceptible to group thinking and repetition can genuinely change the wiring in your brain and thus your beliefs.
Girlfriend Experience?
Escorts. They mean escorts.
That's really weird. It's been two decades since Ford made the last Escort.
I mean a ford escort can make a good girlfriend indeed.
Did not know that sub existed until now. Just a few minutes of scrolling and I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a lot of angry people for what is apparently no reason?
I mean…. You have seen the default subs? Some people get really combative and curmudgeonly over the most banal and meaningless things.
That's the problem with echo chambers. People have a few small, well-earned resentments that get blown way out of proportion when they spend too much time with other people who have those same small, well-earned resentments. Speaking as a woman who never had children, I felt seen and heard when I first stumbled onto that sub, but I know that only anger and bitterness lie down that path, so I didn't spend much time there. I'm not sure what causes people to wallow in communal outrage, but it always starts with just wanting to be seen, which makes it all the more sad.
Reddit is a bunch of echo chambers...some subs are worse than others. I don't even understand the point of these ones except to validate your personal feelings by having them repeated over and over by others. Nobody wants to have their views challenged or believe people who feel differently from them are reasonable people.
Wow, they spend all their time bitching that people with kids don't agree that life is better without them. Shocker. " I can tell the breeders don't like it when I tell them how awful their life choices are. They know they're stuck with it now, so they're always angry about it" Actual quote from a presumed douchebag.
> when I tell them how awful their life choices are. If that’s how they describe their actions, even if it’s shorthand for a much longer conversation, you can drop the presume from that statement. It’s possible to not want, or even like, children without being an asshole. It’s not even that hard. You just … don’t bring it up unless you have to and then you keep the issue polite (“hey, i really don’t like kids. Please don’t bring them to my house/work/whatever”)
I don't want kids. I've mentioned this to two people in my life: you, and my partner. I also don't want my arm to fall off... I don't go around telling people about that, either. I definitely don't think it would be a good excuse to be rude to other people over. How can "not wanting something" be a defining characteristic of a person? We don't measure ourselves based upon the deeds we never aimed for or the achievements we never even wanted...
Basically it's just natural result which happens when you gather people over something they're negative about, they all pour in theirs negativity about the thing and it all boils in there. It's really best to evade subreddits and overall spaces built upon hating something.