Asklemmy

43908 readers

948 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

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

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

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

250

Is "female" offensive? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by Trincapinones@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

287 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

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

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

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

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

Idk I'm not the language police

[–] tias@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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