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Is "female" offensive? (lemmy.world)

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

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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 ^^

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[–] locuester@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sensitivities during Covid ran high. A lot of things changed then. For instance in the software world removing the name “master” from git usage, and on the TV Show Survivor, the host not saying his famous line “come on in guys”. At the same time pronouns became a huge thing, and these seemingly gender specific or sensitive word terms were targeted.

You are correct, there was a round of this in the 90s or so, where job titles like “waitress”, “stewardess”, “policeman” were all adjusted. I see that as a very different round of language change.

[+] Vanth@reddthat.com 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] locuester@lemmy.zip 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, 2020 is the time period I’m referring to. I had never heard of it being a thing until George Floyd and BLM movement in 2020, then GitHub changed in response to that.

I’ve been in IT for 35 years. And I never heard a single negative thing about branch names and master/slave terminology until 2020.

Perhaps you think that was set aside because IDE hard drives are dead.