Asklemmy

43859 readers

1602 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

[–] amio@kbin.social 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'd sneak a peek at some other league and do whatever they did.

When I say "avoid using 'female'" (specifically as a noun to mean "woman") it's not an absolute. The gist is just to not come off like a fedora-tipping twat. Sometimes it's used intentionally to objectify or demean "females" in general, or using the "woman/female" distinction as some sort of pointed transphobic shtick.

It's still a perfectly cromulent word as long as it doesn't get neckbeardy.

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You'd think so, but I have seen the opposite when discussing topics that were true for all ages.

Maybe I just tripped over the most vocal people who don't understand nuance, since one person actually said to use 'woman' to describe a six year old.