Pro-tip:

Never correct a person who refers to women as "females"

Don't ever teach misogynists how to refine their language and to develop a more socially-acceptable way of concealing their attitudes.

Let them throw up those red flags immediately so that people can immediately avoid chuds who use this language.

shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused

I have a strong preference for "rough sleepers" because there are people who are in temporary housing, that are couch surfing etc. which don't strictly fit into the term homeless but who experience precarious (and typically inadequate) housing and because some people consider places home, such as their cars (sometimes by preference), and devaluing what a person calls home because it doesn't meet my personal definition of a home is kinda shitty whereas acknowledging that their home may be precarious or inadequate without erasing the fact that it's home to them, I think, is preferable.

/rant

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.

I feel obligated to point out that Ferengi in 90s Star Trek called women "female" and it was supposed to make you understand that they were misogynistic. So it's not really something that started with incels over the last few years.

"Women" is fine as a noun, but what should be used as an adjective if not "female"?

female as an adjective is fine female as a noun is weird

using “female” has been cringe for years outside of biology & certain healthcare settings. unsurprised reddit is still rehashing early 2010’s discourse

I love that the sheer mention of a struggle session is enough to ignite one here

That's a lot of words to show how bad the term female is. I like showing people this sonic video and that gets the point across much faster.

"it does now mostly thanks to co-opting by incels"

I don't really get where this talking point comes from, its just not true. Have you ever browsed an incel forum to see what those hogs are thinking? They never refer to women as females. Ever. I've never seen it once in one of their spaces. Not on r/braincels, not on r/incels, not in incelsco or whatever new forum they've migrated to in the past few years. They exclusively refer to women as foids or holes.

Referring to women as females is very common in the African American community though.

Technical correctness is a dog whistle for all sorts of weird nerd shit, most of it intended to dehumanize or trivialize other people that they find less than themselves.

You know how people that NATO wants to dehumanize or trivialize are "unlawful combatants?" It's shit like that.

Unless it’s some shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused

Yeah without any actual policy behind it it's very silly. However the semantic change pisses off chuds so I'm not entirely against it. Critical support, like "sure let's call them unhoused but what's the plan to stop the problem".

I appreciate your two cents, but tbh I think it's much simpler. Personally I feel the vibe is the same when people use "male" as well in the same context - that's just quite rare to happen.

It's because it's weirdly clinical language. It feels weird, you wouldn't describe your mother as a "female", you'd call her a "woman".
It's detached, sort of dehumanising really.

Was using female as a noun considered normal at some point? I genuinely do not know.

But if it was, it might not be a case of a euphemism treadmill, but a phenomenon related to the struggle for social recognition. When an identity goes from recognition from an outside perspective to recognition from an inside perspective, the name for it often changes. A similar thing happened/is happening with homosexual -> gay and transsexual -> transgender. The takeaway in the context of this conversation is that, unlike the treadmill, it might not be a repeating process.