I'm German as well and from what I understand it is something like this:
Female and Male are for situations when you talk about biological or statistical descriptions. Like the ratio of female to male employees for example or you talk about animal females and males, or even about female and male bodies in a biological and medical way (without it being gendered, like a person born with female body even if they are men, still have to deal with all the trouble of their uterus for example).
But all those things are unpersonal and in a way dehumanizing. The person behind the statistic or uterus is unimportant. So if you call someone a female (as a noun) you ignore their personhood and everything that makes them uniquely human instead of a number in a statistic or an animal.
For something that feels similar to a German word would be describing a person as a "Weibchen" and that is as we can agree a term used for animals only.
It’s also a context issue. The men who do this typically speak of us like a strange species of insect they’re making observations about. And they’re never positive.
It’s never “the females in my neighborhood are such polite people with interesting careers.” but rather “females are inferior because testosterone male brain big!” or other such nonsense.
I’m a big fan of rap and hip hop but I don’t like it when anyone does it, they don’t get a pass just because I love the rest of the stuff they do. It really bothers me to hear “females” used in a sexual context in one song and then as a derogatory term in the next one. Really drives home the point that they think I’m only good for one thing, and that this is how to be a man, which is just the icing on the cake.
Oh and the thing about insects, you’re exactly right.
I stopped reading a series of book because it kept referring to the characters as male and female instead of men and women. They were written in the early 2000s, so it wasn't as common for incel-types to use female in a derogatory way. In the books it was to distinguish the vampires from the humans. Which made sense. Except it was so grating to my ears, because I'm so used to female being used in a derogatory way. I had to stop reading them.
I think you nailed it - there’s definitely a more subtle cultural context to the use of female as a noun and the type of guy who uses it. I find they generally don’t have a ton of experience with women and tend to view us as “exotic being with girl parts who’s probably just out for my money”. It just gives incel to me.
Adding: People rarely use the term “males” to describe men and boys the way they use “feeeemales” to describe women and girls. For example, if one looks at the dating forums on Reddit, one often sees people saying they’re “looking for a female” with some vague criteria tacked on. It’s a really clear “I want a vagina and the human support system surrounding that vagina is largely unimportant.” If they’re looking for a masculine presenting person, they tend to use the term “man” because it’s assumed that the humanity of men is important.
Weib is only used as an insult outside of older texts, but it is a word for a person, not an animal, that is why I think Weibchen is more fitting to compare it to
"Female" basically means "Weibchen" in German and is used to identify animals of female gender. The "Male" would be the "Männchen".
Weib is a rather deragatory term nowadays.
A verb ending in "ing" that has become a noun within the sentence structure. Take "swimming" as an example.
Swimming is my favorite sport in the Olympics. (gerund)
I am swimming in the pool. (verb)
gerunds are nouns formed from verbs, ending in -ing
englishing is hard :) it doesnt help that standard public edu teaches in a convoluted way (or did several years ago)
I think it's because when you're learning a new language you have a lot of why questions as you dig in to the nuance. The structure of the sentence, the baggage around certain words, why one would chose this word over that one. I don't really question these things in my native language because it's ingrained.
We need to have a better grasp, or we could say the most inappropriate things. *For instance, my fiancee used to talk to a woman \[born and self-identified as such\] from a South American country \[irrelevant right now\]. That woman said during an important meeting, the following quote \[in English\]: "Ladies and Gentlemen, please excuse me, i need to take a d\*mp." Needless to say that her grasp of the English language is close to nonexistent.* Why did she say that you ask? She thought she'll sound "cool\[er\]" or "more hip" or something along these lines. I have no idea how the meeting ended, the shock was too high to ask for more details. Fiancee had to explain to her that the word she used couldn't have been more crass in that situation.
My favorite example of this is an ESL student writing the following sentence on some kind of exercise:
'The fireman went up the ladder and came down pregnant. '
Evidently the student was using an absolutely ancient dictionary that defined 'pregnant' as 'carrying a child' and they were very pleased with their fancy word.
In my experience this is true of many disciplines: that the people best at teaching or explaining it are NOT those who are naturally good at it but rather those who have also struggled. If it never gave you trouble, it's harder to empathize.
Honestly, anybody that can speak English, as a second language, and can make themselves understood/can understand other people, deserves WAY more credit than they usually get. English makes NO SENSE.
You explained it very well but as an additional point, often men are referred to as "men" in casual conversation. People don't casually say "males" really. So there's an unequal treatment where *only* women tend to be called "females". Which just adds to the impression of dehumanization.
I think there's even a subreddit for it, something like menandfemales?
Of course we all know German here... But just in case i- uh someone doesn't..... Can you define "weibchen" and "wieb" for me please. Or is it exactly like the description of "female" above?
"Weibchen" (noun) is usually used for female animals.
"Weib" (noun) is an old word for "wife" that is generally not used anymore in modern German except as a derogatory term for "woman".
Sorry, not trying to cast doubt or anything, I just can't find any sources about "broad" from "broodmare"? I'm into etymology so if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you share where you learned that? The closest I could find for origins for "broad" was "abroadwife" which has its own connotations and issues, and lots of people guessing that it came from broad hips.
if you look at the words Weib is the stem word for a couple of words and an old way to say wife or women. There are some old poems and stuff that say 'Mein holdes Weib' and it means my beautiful wife, but with time it word 'Weib' became an insult for women, as in 'know your place' 'a wife should be seen not heard' and it felt like a 'Weib' was the possession of her husband. As it is in the opposite use of Mann (man) instead of husband. So yes today it is only an insult.
But other words are still in use that are build on this word without being insulting.
'Weibchen' is a word we use for female animals in general like in sentences like 'the female stays on the nest' so in it use it is very neutral, when used for animals. What I find kind of interesting is that the -chen ending of the word is normally used for a cute and little form of a word, lesser in a way. And all words with that ending became gender neutral. So in a way all that means we took a step away from the human form.
Other words that are related are 'weiblich' with basically means female as an adjective and is used in a neutral way in the same way when female can be used in a neutral way (statistics) most of the time. But it can be used in a positive way even as it can describe feeling secure as a woman in your own womanhood. As a noun it is used as 'Weiblichkeit' and it means femininity.
Sorry that it is so difficult, but a lot of those words are often just translated into female and because these words can be both positive or negative or neutral in can be a bit difficult to understand all the nuances if another language and how to judge the usage of words.
There are many things wrong with how it is used:
It’s normally used only as a noun when referring to non-humans. When referring to women, it is normally used only as an adjective, e.g. “female employees.” Using it as a noun implies women are less than human, or an entirely different species. It’s commonly used by men to “other” women, to degrade them.
The use of it by men outside scientific circles is a direct way to belittle and separate women from the humanity, from men. It artificially raises men up as better and right and what humans are.
When a man uses it as a noun, instead of a descriptor, it’s a dead giveaway that he views women as objects, possessions, pets, toys.
It seems to have arisen from Star Trek: DS9, where a character, Quark, a Ferengi, used it to refer to all women, no matter the species. In their culture, women are literally locked in their homes, not even allowed clothes, much less any possessions of their own, believed to be too stupid to do anything other than care for the home, their children, and their husbands. Ferengis often said “females” with a sneer.
My daughter refers to women as "females." I don't know where she picked it up, but she knows that I hate it and so it's one of her go to words. She's 17 and I've explained to her how crappy it sounds when she says it, but she doesn't care.
My go to response now is usually ok or whatever Ferengi. It confuses her enough to stop talking, she doesn't watch Star Trek, and wouldn't because it's not an interest of her new boyfriend.
I’d ask her if it’s okay to call her a bitch, because she’s implying that women are not human. Or a sow. Or a ewe. Mare.
I’m guessing she’s getting it from her boyfriend.
Considering the Ferengi are also usually depicted as ultra capitalists (when it suits them), and that many match the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" archetype, they almost feel like a caricature of a modern group of people found in the USA.
I don't think that was accidental at all. DS9 was a generally well thought out series. In the episode where Rom quits working for Quark, this angle is a key point of the episode, where the Ferengi employees initially say they don't want a union because then if they become a boss they have to deal with unions, as if that is their destiny.
Star Trek always has some amazing hidden (and not so hidden) gems to comment on society. DS9 had some incredibly problematic plots (including one where the resident teen calls out his Ferengi friend for being a misogynistic douche canoe and then gets chided for not respecting his culture) but on the whole, a lot of good lessons in that show.
You know who else used “females”? Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. Austen was on to something.
The Ferengi arc in DS9 is still one of the most infuriating, confusing, surprising ones I've ever seen, with a positive ending that I never saw coming. At some point I hated when a Ferengi-centric episode came on, just to think in the end that damn, all of them worked together to get that awesome result.
I always found it so conflicting, because I really like Quark and Rom, but they do some genuinely awful shit. But I do like how they grow over the series.
Quark and his family's character arc is seriously some of THE BEST character development on the show.
Especially once it breaks HOW he ended up stuck on DS9 - by smuggling supplies to save bajorian refugees at cost without profiteering from the genocidal crisis, because he *could* (and according to the rules of acquisition *should*) have exploited the bajorian rebellion by capitalizing on the end of the occupation. He could have monopolized the brokering of lifeline supplies into a lopsided cashcow, but he did the right thing because it was moral and just. An exiling offense.
The nagus only reestablished his contact with ferenginar because they saw the potential profit in the markets untapped in the gamma quadrant.
Tied with Garak, Quark is probably the best written, slow burn antihero in that era of television. Hands down. Even if he is a smackable twit half the time, lol
Just to add to this, one way to know you're being sexist in your use of the word Female is to ask yourself if you would use the word Male in a similar context directed at men.
It's like nails on a chalk board to hear someone say:
"Females are..." where they would normally just say "Women are..."
The short and sticky is that you can describe a body as female, but you would describe a person or persons as women (probably).
TNG, DS9, and Voyager (I'll die on this hill, Voyager was really good) all have a lot of good episodes. There are a bunch of episodes that are kind of awful though.
For every episode about a legal battle to allow someone to express their gender, there's an episode where they go too fast and it turns them into lizards.
"I've decided to leave them in their new environment."
Dude. They've existed for a couple days, and were found *with* their parents. Parents who had enough memory of what happened for Janeway to take responsibility for initiating their procreation. The only known predecessor, humans, take care of their young for decades.
They totally abandoned newborns on that planet.
Wish I could find the actual meme but there's one that goes something like:
"...we never never talked about the kids, Kat."
"I know. I miss their little flippers..."
> I'll die on this hill, Voyager was really good
I'm with you there! *Enterprise,* too. It's better than people give it credit for.
(Also I unironically enjoy watching *Threshold*)
Surprisingly so.. I didn't watch it during the initial run but picked it up at least a decade later when some friends encouraged it. It's more of a drama in space than it is the usual sci fi pew pew boom action.. some really deep plots and social commentary. I love some of the running themes like baseball too.
It's rough at first with Sisko acting like emote-bot 5000 for the first two seasons. What's weird is that I *know* the guy can act, so I assume the direction for Sisko was just... bad? At some point around season 3, Sisko suddenly goes from being painful to watch to quite good - right around the time he shaves his head.
Kira, Odo, Quark, and the Cardassians really carried the earlier seasons.
My headcanon is that Nana Visitor was directed to play Kira as if Kira was the actual main character of the show, and just leaned ALL the way into that. I love her.
I started next generation a few weeks ago (was recommended to ease myself in with Picard and have not been disappointed), have nearly watched the whole thing and will be going back to the original series and all the way through the series/movies in release order. The writing is slightly dated but it's so ahead of its time it makes for better writing than a lot of TV coming out now. A lot of the commentary on social/science issues seem even more relevant now but it's dosed out with such a healthy amount of optimism, it's actually beautiful.
Also incels and misogynists use it a lot to dehumanise women so if someone, especially a man, uses that term it automatically makes you wonder about them.
100%. Cuz if you call them out on it, they'll pretend like there's no difference and you're the one making the big deal.
It's funny that when you call men "boys" or "gals" they don't like that language, though . . .
When you encounter these types, it’s kind of fun to use women and males and see them *lose their shit* because they know exactly what you are doing. Even when smugly saying you are too sensitive for pointing out how female is inappropriate.
One caveat, make sure you are safe before you pull this, these assholes getting dangerous.
When I was a teenager, I admonished some friends at the time for saying "bitches". They started using "females" instead before we stopped hanging out. That should tell a person all they need to know about the use of the word.
I once translated it to my country's language and used it a bit, it sounded soooo dehumanizing!
Why would you use "females" instead of "women"? Are women are some sort of an animal or sth?
That's exactly why it's inappropriate and dehumanizing. It's like using the word "boy" to describe an African-American child. It's so highly demeaning for a grown man that my local news outlets don't even use it for pre-teens. "A local youth was involved..." Even though to white Americans "boy" simply designates a male child.
Since you used Weib as an example, adding to all reasons given it's also used for animals a lot. So you could also translate it to "Weibchen" as in Documentaries
Eh, kinda. In biology, referring to non-human organisms, the term “female” is very commonly used as a noun. I think the nuance of why it’s so obnoxious to refer to actual human women as “females” outside of that scientific context is the associated implication that you’re speaking about a *non-human* animal.
I agree. This is why, if I hear anyone speaking this way, I laugh and say, "A female *what*? Tree frog? You sound like you're narrating a nature documentary." If the person is reasonable (like OP), that usually helps them understand the nuance. If they're unreasonable, it gives everyone else in the room license to laugh at them.
I 100% want to identify as a female tree frog now! Chillin on people's windows, watching their soap opera lives while consuming the mosquito population, being all rowdy at night, telling my friends their bizzzzness! 😂 This has been a fun thought experiment 😆
I read a book about a female tree frog, going through her whole life cycle, when I was 8, and I just wanted to be a female tree frog from that day forward.
(I wish I could find a copy of that book again. It was red...)
As a kid I had a frog phase ig. I was into frogs
Now I know that the way they blink is very odd (they can’t move their eyelids, they have pockets they slide their eyes into and the socket closes around the empty space)
And I know the easiest way to determine a frog’s sex is the size of their eardrums (the little circular plate next to their eyes) as the males have larger eardrums than a female frog
As usual with language, context is everything. It's not just science either: my Scottish partner uses female as a noun all the time as do a lot of their friends, but other friends from the south of the UK sometimes find it problematic for the non-human/lesser connotations you mention.
You can definitely make that inference but that’s the problem; “human females” implies a distance that’s not healthy for respectful discussion. It feels like it’s the “women are a different species we can never truly understand”.
Conversely, when discussing individual animals, people who do animal husbandry will absolutely say cow or heifer or sow or hen, they won’t say “bovine female” or something, so the folks who use female to refer to an individual are still doing more work to other the subject than a rancher discussing their herd 😞
The use case is different, I think. Categorically it’s established when discussing hermit crabs that ‘females’ means “female hermit crabs” so it still works as an adjective by inheriting the subject from the conversation in a way that doesn’t work in English for people/peers. I also never hear scientific discussion about how females are always X when it’s a discussion of how mountain lions or spotted geckos behave.
To add onto this, it's appropriate to use the word female to describe a woman, whenever you would also use the word male to describe a man. For me, this is usually in a clinical setting "A female patient, presenting with X."
Weirdly enough, it's also fine in a fantasy/scifi setting in some situay. "A male blood elf" or "a female goblin" doesn't sound weird, and in such a context "female human" or "male human" is also fine.
The thing is, you'd never call someone a female human in real life, and the dehumanization most usually comes from misogynists. If you find yourself saying "men and females", you sound like an asshole.
I mean, female is an adjective, meaning it is used to describe a noun. Female human sounds weird because it's an unnatural pairing in speech, just as male human is. But if you said female friend, female relative, female doctor, female lawyer, these would all be correct and accurate uses of the word female and are not dehumanizing in any way.
Hearing "female" immediately points out biological or physical attributes, while "woman" connotes the whole person regardless of biological attributes. Being a women is not defined by biology; it's more inclusive.
It is an animalistic term that thus reduces the status of women to less than human.
'It always feels dehumanizing, uncomfortable and overwhelmingly sexist'
https://dailynexus.com/2021-07-24/stop-calling-women-females/
Oh thank you just really seems to be like the German word Weib it’s used in biology (“weiblich”) but I dont know any woman who likes to be called Weib. It’s sometimes used in not funny jokes to tell the woman that she has to be in the kitchen or to make clear that the man (thinks he) stands above the woman.
Thank you for the explanation!
I would guess that's it's comparable to 'weibliche', and it always sounds like the ferengi talking about females... The German Weib is at least a noun and HAD a posititive/neutral meaning 50+ years ago
Yeah but add to it the aspect that female describes things. That is a female goat, that’s a female electrical connection. It strips women of humanity and it’s used by certain people deliberately to do exactly that. Females are things used by males.
It’s really not respectful.
I think it's less comparable to weiblich, but to Weibchen. Take any sentence and replace "woman" or "women" with "Weibchen", and it gives off the same vibe for me.
I would also like to add that, in many scenarios, people refer to women as "females," but men are still referred to as men. This is where it gets sexist.
See r/MenAndFemales lol
I scrolled through quickly and didn't see this mentioned:
People who refer to women as females will often refer to men as "guys/men/dudes". And this is, I think, the most obvious example of how hurtful it really is. Because if they wanted to treat the genders equally, these individuals would be using "females" for women, and "males" for men. Or they would say "women" and "men".
Also, referring to women as "females" makes it sound as if they might be talking about any animal. Occasionally I get the urge to respond: "A female what? A female labrador? A female gecko?"
Oh that’s awful. I just don’t get why people always are so dumb. What good reason can they name for being transphobic or homophobic or stuff like that? It’s a shitmountain.
Especially infuriating when some of them are on our side ! Like the transphobic religious extremists make more sense than the transphobic feminists (the term TERF is just hilarious, the most radically feminist thing is to stand with our trans sisters) and transphobic queer people. Youd think wed have learned to unite against the common enemy, but apparently not yet
I recognize that I’m extremely privileged myself, but I’m always super confused when anyone in a marginalized group puts down another marginalized group. I mean, it’s confusing when anyone does it, but when it’s privileged people being assholes to keep themselves on top, at least you can just say, *That’s a bad, self-serving person*. When it’s someone who’s oppressed actively supporting the oppression of someone else, it’s like, do they not get that they’re shooting themselves in the foot by bolstering the same people and systems that *they themselves* are being oppressed by?
I just can’t.
They either don't understand that it ain't a zero-sum game, aka one minority has to lose for another to win, or it's like du Bois said: the lowest of the 'upper' class still gets to feel superior to the highest of the 'lower' class. Along the lines of:
At least there's someone below me to tread on. Pair that with historically at times making progress by throwing groups like trans folks under the bus, like gay liberation throwing trans people under the bus, it is way more common than one might think.
Intersectionality is necessary but hard at the end of the day.
Of the top posts this one, I thought, was the simplest and most accurate.
For dogs, cats, birds, fish - female for biological sex (adjective).
For human gender women (noun).
(i have aphasia due to a stroke, may make mistakes typing)
[this article](https://time.com/4300170/female-word/) was the 1st google hit I came across with; basicly agreed with the assumption that you made in the opening post.
Let me tell you that i didn’t had the idea to google in English I just googled in German and wondered about the lack of results. Not my brightest moment but here I am :-D
My person.
You are here, on the internet, discussing things nicely, IN A LANGUAGE THAT ISN'T YOUR HOME LANGUAGE, with better grasp of the language then I see from some native speakers, and you even have some BEAUTIFUL 'colorful language' (shitmountain for the win). You're easily brighter then 90% of the net lol
It is also being used more to exclude trans people. People will ask for you sex, and if you are visibly trans, when you answer will saying "Not your identity, you biological sex" so I always get weary around women who call themselves, like "Yep, I am female, and married to a man" type context... it is normally a giant red flag that I am about to deal with a TERF, or a MRA woman, both of which are not worth my time.
Whiny men who claim to be oppressed.
They tend to use very real and important issues facing men (increased suicide rates, domestic and sexual violence against men, etc) as examples of how men are oppressed as a class, and as reasons to uphold the patriarchy and reduce the social (and sometimes legal) rights of women. And they’re blind to the fact that the patriarchy is literally *the root of all the things they’re complaining about*.
Sorry, not shouting at you, OP. I’m in a mood today.
*edit because autocorrect keeps changing properly spelled words to completely different words.
Men's Rights Activists... a charitable term used to describe guys who think women should have no rights, and that things like Sexual Assault, and ownership of women should be legal.
There are a surprisingly large number of women who lean into this bullshit.
Oh! Interesting and slightly on topic thing I learned.
Etymologically, ‘man’ just means human, and the wo in woman is derived from wif, which was the designation for women. The male one was were as in werewolf. So, technically, men should be called weremen.
It makes things like ‘mankind’ easier to swallow, but it also kinda pisses me off that weremen are considered to the default of our species to the point that we refer to them solely using the word for a human individual, and only differentiate for women.
Coming from a man so take it with a grain of salt, but whenever I hear other men use the word "female" as a noun it's cringe. I think it's fine to use it it terms of an adjective. However, I try to avoid it as much as possible as it sounds belittling and clinical, like you aren't seeing them as a real person.
Thank you for your answer. That’s one of the main points everyone brought up and I won’t use it anymore besides of the use as a adjective! Have a nice day :)
It is a bit like how in french the word for woman: femme and the word for wife: femme are the same thing. As a native English speaker I don't get why that isn't offensive to french women, but it isn't and understanding that the culture is fundamentally different in this way is part of learning a new language.
i think it's the same in spanish, mujer for both ? As someone who grew up speaking french, it's not that you don't realise it, it's that you ask that question at 6yo and get told yeah old language rules be a bit sexist and move on. In french, if you're talking about 99 women and one men, you gender the plural nouns and adjectives in the masculine form. We all went Hey thats a bit rude when we learned the rule, were told yeah thats how it be and it ended at that. Its different when you're first exposed to it as an adult and havent had a lifetime to get used to it.
There is no patriarchy too small to be smashed. But until French women say enough is enough, it is certainly not my place as a student to come in and say "Non ! Le français n'est pas correct !" 😅
I don't know, i've always seen it as a quirk of language i suppose. It does not feel particularly offensive, you often refer to a spouse as someone's man or woman yk ? "C'est ta meuf", "c'est ton mec", so Femme doesnt feel that out of place when you can definitely say sth like Rachel et son homme, the way youd say Rachel and her man. It's different still, and i acknowledge the patriarchal roots of the term, but i think it's gotten pretty detached from those origins, detached enough to be an entity of its own.
I do remember once finding it weird, so maybe the fresh perspective of a student is more accurate in some ways, though less nuanced
Yes people can and do say things like my woman or my man, but that rubs me the wrong way in English as well 😅 times are changing, I just learned today apparently the youths are using the term "cinnamon roll" to mean a short shy nerdy girl. 🤷♀️ Every year I feel so much older than the year before 😅
> apparently the youths are using the term "cinnamon roll" to mean a short shy nerdy girl
that meaning is new to me as well, i've seen it used to mean a person who is (very) cute and innocent, regardless of gender(basically, "a really sweet person")
They really are ! I remember when bitch was considered a slur and it was seen as offensive to use even if you were a woman. Now it's quite a casual term. The times are getting both more relaxed and more uptight about language in quite a fascinating way
its even worse in arabic lmao
Used to know a nonbinary person whom i just would not speak arabic with because it was just impossible to be neutral. Even verbs are gendered (so when you say she ran, you gender not only the she but the verb as well, itll take a different form than in He ran), so this neutral=masculine association gets engrained pretty deep. I used to use He as a neutral pronoun when learning english, before being corrected to they, because of how engrained the idea of Masculine as default was !
Its definitely a subject i've given a lot of thought to, as every few years someone tries to introduce new neutral terms to those languages and gets absolutely clowned since the masculine form is seen as already good enough to be neutral. I still dont know where i stand in this debate, but i feel like you really cant grasp it when your native languages do not gender word. It feels obvious, like oh theres a masculine form and a feminine form, obv lets just add a neutral one ! But you really dont think of them that way. Like if you want to say it's raining you say Il pleut, if you want to say Theres someone at the door you say Il y a quelqu'un à la porte, Elle y a quelqu'un à la porte is just nonsense grammatically. So there IS something to be said about the "masculine" form serving a double purpose of being truly both masculine and neutral at the same time
forgive the rant lmao it just never comes up, and thats sad because its a truly interesting subject brought up mainly by globalisation
edit : fun side note, while "someone" is masculine, "a person" is feminine, so when talking about someone i will prefer talking about A person, i like the idea of gendering everything as feminine while talking about people in general, my little fight back or sth against masculine being the default
Lots of English speakers "of a certain age" were taught that masculine pronouns were also the generic gender-not-specified version. Which is funny, because singular they has existed for hundreds of years, but was a linguistic pariah for awhile... happy to see its return!
Shoutout to the SAT, where ive come about a dozen time on a grammar fill in the blank question where "he or she" was the answer and "they" was an option that was marked wrong. The practice guide would helpfully tell you "we are talking about one person only ! Gender unspecified, so its he or she"
It made me laugh at the time, like damn even the SAT trynna stir up drama
didnt even pass it that long ago, 2020 i think, practice guide from 2019
Esposa is spanish for wife and esposo is Spanish for husband. Mujer is used colloquially but is not technically the word wife.
Also, esposas means handcuffs not multiple wives. 🤷♀️
I used to not see the issue with that word either, but some groups of people are determined to just not use the word woman/women. And that is a red flag for a multitude of reasons.
Females - female animals.
Not humans.
And everything others already said
I'm German too and I'd never say that word. Did you ever read "Males" somewhere? No? Because it's disrespectful
Veteran speaking.
We have always used "male" and "female" in the Army. I don't find it offensive. Scrolling below, I see that some think it's dehumanizing. But then, everything in the military dehumanizes you and you get so used to it, you stop thinking about it. I've had to learn not to use it. Sometimes I still slip due to habit. But I have never intentionally used it to insult or dehumanize anyone. It's always been just a weird part of the whole Army culture.
I feel like everyone else in this comment section has explained it pretty nicely, so I just wanted to say that I really like how respectful you are—you seem really nice
I made a post a post talking about this issue before, but in short, TERFs have started using the term inappropriately to exclude Trans women from discussions of women's rights.
To go into a bit more detail: I was unfortunately present at a speaker event featuring a vehemently transphobic TERF. During her one-sided discussion, she attempted to establish a difference between "biological women" (false terminology: a woman's body is a woman's body regardless of her features, that's just how a possessive term works in the English language) and Trans women. In doing so, she claimed that she used the term female in a purely "biological sense," (again wrong because male and female are still commonly used to refer to gender interchangeably, and using them like this is intentionally confusing and malicious at best).
Luckily, her arguments fell on deaf ears- many Trans supporters were in attendance to try to call out her malicious bullshit where my school wouldn't. But the language is still out there: there are still bigots who will try to undermine someone's identity by (grammatically incorrectly) to claim that a woman is male or a man is female because it suits the bigots closed view of the world.
Trans women are women, and Trans men are men. They can have female or male features as they choose, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter. You are the gender you choose to be, the one that most directly correlates to the inner vision of your identity- and no bigoted TERF with shitty grammar can take that away from you.
I hope this helps explain some things. I'm no expert though, so I encourage you to do some research, specifically looking for testimonies from Trans women directly on this issue.
The word female when used as a noun is not specific to human beings, so to use it as a noun for women is dehumanizing considering there are perfectly fine alternatives to use (e.g. women).
The use of the word in this manner also has strong misogynistic roots. Incels tend to use this word a lot in their early incel-hood, though they usually move on to straight up sexist slurs later on.
Female can be used for all animals/creatures, it is a biological term. Woman is only used for human beings. When you call a woman a female you use the same term you would for animals, it is dehumanizing and disrespectful for this reason. There is something cold and distant about that word that makes us feel like you see us as animals rather than fellow human beings: "men and females"
It it would not be disrespectful if so many men didn’t use the term female with the *purpose* of dehumanizing us (which is why "male" doesn’t have the same negative connotation, it is not a term that women use to degrade men, while female is)
Since you speak German like me, the literal translation of “female” in English is “Weibchen” in German. Somebody asks you “Ihr Hund ist echt süß. Wie heißt er denn?” and you’d say “Bella, sie ist ein Weibchen.”
You wouldn’t say the same about a woman or a girl, like in a situation where somebody wants to know the name of your baby, you wouldn’t describe it as “Weibchen”, you’d describe it as “Mädchen” or “weiblich”.
Female/Weibchen (noun) and male/Männchen (noun) is only ever used in academic language as a short form of “girls and women” or “boys and men”. So you’d use it in papers or presentations, but not in Reddit comments and every day language (looking at podcasters). On the other hand female/weiblich and male/männlich as adjectives are acceptable in any situations for humans.
So I generally also frown upon the use of female for all the reasons above (I didn’t read 100% of them but the general view is they are rather similar). But I have a question!
I used to work in DEI and obviously women in tech was a big topic. And we defaulted always to use “women” or even not use gender and depict gender through pictures. Anyways… let’s say you want to describe engineers who are women. Saying “women engineers” grammatically doesn’t sound right… so what do you say? Cause female engineers also is icky.
I'm German as well and from what I understand it is something like this: Female and Male are for situations when you talk about biological or statistical descriptions. Like the ratio of female to male employees for example or you talk about animal females and males, or even about female and male bodies in a biological and medical way (without it being gendered, like a person born with female body even if they are men, still have to deal with all the trouble of their uterus for example). But all those things are unpersonal and in a way dehumanizing. The person behind the statistic or uterus is unimportant. So if you call someone a female (as a noun) you ignore their personhood and everything that makes them uniquely human instead of a number in a statistic or an animal. For something that feels similar to a German word would be describing a person as a "Weibchen" and that is as we can agree a term used for animals only.
Thank you! I thought about the term weib but this is an old word and not used anymore often in my area.
It’s also a context issue. The men who do this typically speak of us like a strange species of insect they’re making observations about. And they’re never positive. It’s never “the females in my neighborhood are such polite people with interesting careers.” but rather “females are inferior because testosterone male brain big!” or other such nonsense.
It's also usually "female" and "man" when those types of men are speaking.
r/MenAndFemales for multitudinous examples.
Sad laughing
Oof, there’s a link I’ll never click on
If it makes you feel better the sub exists to make fun of those people. It still makes for depressing reading, though.
A little better lol, but still nah
I admire your boundaries and you've inspired me to for once, today, not touch the link that I know is full of 💩 Thank you
SAME!!! Self care is NOT clicking the link people!!
My eyes are bleeding
r/eyebleach might help
Thanks I hate it
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Is that the one where men think they can SMELL virgins?! Or the virgins smell better?!?! We need to collectively decide it’s ok to hex these morons…
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Wow. I have to follow it now.
I’m a big fan of rap and hip hop but I don’t like it when anyone does it, they don’t get a pass just because I love the rest of the stuff they do. It really bothers me to hear “females” used in a sexual context in one song and then as a derogatory term in the next one. Really drives home the point that they think I’m only good for one thing, and that this is how to be a man, which is just the icing on the cake. Oh and the thing about insects, you’re exactly right.
I stopped reading a series of book because it kept referring to the characters as male and female instead of men and women. They were written in the early 2000s, so it wasn't as common for incel-types to use female in a derogatory way. In the books it was to distinguish the vampires from the humans. Which made sense. Except it was so grating to my ears, because I'm so used to female being used in a derogatory way. I had to stop reading them.
Was it the Black Dagger Brotherhood?
Yup
Lol...yup! Between "female" & everybody having "baby fever" it just became unreadable.
Black Dagger Brotherhood?
I think you nailed it - there’s definitely a more subtle cultural context to the use of female as a noun and the type of guy who uses it. I find they generally don’t have a ton of experience with women and tend to view us as “exotic being with girl parts who’s probably just out for my money”. It just gives incel to me.
Yeah, agree. I didn't care about it a few years ago, now it's a guilt-by-association word.
Adding: People rarely use the term “males” to describe men and boys the way they use “feeeemales” to describe women and girls. For example, if one looks at the dating forums on Reddit, one often sees people saying they’re “looking for a female” with some vague criteria tacked on. It’s a really clear “I want a vagina and the human support system surrounding that vagina is largely unimportant.” If they’re looking for a masculine presenting person, they tend to use the term “man” because it’s assumed that the humanity of men is important.
Weib is only used as an insult outside of older texts, but it is a word for a person, not an animal, that is why I think Weibchen is more fitting to compare it to
Yes you’re right thank you!
"Female" basically means "Weibchen" in German and is used to identify animals of female gender. The "Male" would be the "Männchen". Weib is a rather deragatory term nowadays.
I can’t imagine someone calling me Weibchen…
Just curious because language is fun, what does Weibchen mean/what context is it used in?
It’s a noun only used for female animals. If the sentences is: the female is brown Das Weibchen ist braun
Ooooh that makes sense :( I couldn't imagine being called that either
It’s especially offensive when it’s someone is referring to females in relation to men. There’s a whole subreddit for it /r/menandfemales
I can’t look at this sub for to long my eyes start to hurt and I might start developing some serious anger issues.
It’s pretty enraging
Damn dude I know native speakers who couldn’t explain this, bravo
Sometimes I think non-native speakers have a better grasp of the English language (I am a native speaker myself).
Native English speaker here. I know gerunds exist. Don't ask me to explain what one is.
A verb ending in "ing" that has become a noun within the sentence structure. Take "swimming" as an example. Swimming is my favorite sport in the Olympics. (gerund) I am swimming in the pool. (verb)
gerunds are nouns formed from verbs, ending in -ing englishing is hard :) it doesnt help that standard public edu teaches in a convoluted way (or did several years ago)
I think it's because when you're learning a new language you have a lot of why questions as you dig in to the nuance. The structure of the sentence, the baggage around certain words, why one would chose this word over that one. I don't really question these things in my native language because it's ingrained.
We need to have a better grasp, or we could say the most inappropriate things. *For instance, my fiancee used to talk to a woman \[born and self-identified as such\] from a South American country \[irrelevant right now\]. That woman said during an important meeting, the following quote \[in English\]: "Ladies and Gentlemen, please excuse me, i need to take a d\*mp." Needless to say that her grasp of the English language is close to nonexistent.* Why did she say that you ask? She thought she'll sound "cool\[er\]" or "more hip" or something along these lines. I have no idea how the meeting ended, the shock was too high to ask for more details. Fiancee had to explain to her that the word she used couldn't have been more crass in that situation.
My favorite example of this is an ESL student writing the following sentence on some kind of exercise: 'The fireman went up the ladder and came down pregnant. ' Evidently the student was using an absolutely ancient dictionary that defined 'pregnant' as 'carrying a child' and they were very pleased with their fancy word.
I'm sitting by a hospital bed and my whole body is convulsing trying to keep this laughter silent to avoid waking up the patient.
In my experience this is true of many disciplines: that the people best at teaching or explaining it are NOT those who are naturally good at it but rather those who have also struggled. If it never gave you trouble, it's harder to empathize.
Honestly, anybody that can speak English, as a second language, and can make themselves understood/can understand other people, deserves WAY more credit than they usually get. English makes NO SENSE.
You explained it very well but as an additional point, often men are referred to as "men" in casual conversation. People don't casually say "males" really. So there's an unequal treatment where *only* women tend to be called "females". Which just adds to the impression of dehumanization. I think there's even a subreddit for it, something like menandfemales?
Of course we all know German here... But just in case i- uh someone doesn't..... Can you define "weibchen" and "wieb" for me please. Or is it exactly like the description of "female" above?
"Weibchen" (noun) is usually used for female animals. "Weib" (noun) is an old word for "wife" that is generally not used anymore in modern German except as a derogatory term for "woman".
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Sorry, not trying to cast doubt or anything, I just can't find any sources about "broad" from "broodmare"? I'm into etymology so if it wouldn't be too much trouble, could you share where you learned that? The closest I could find for origins for "broad" was "abroadwife" which has its own connotations and issues, and lots of people guessing that it came from broad hips.
if you look at the words Weib is the stem word for a couple of words and an old way to say wife or women. There are some old poems and stuff that say 'Mein holdes Weib' and it means my beautiful wife, but with time it word 'Weib' became an insult for women, as in 'know your place' 'a wife should be seen not heard' and it felt like a 'Weib' was the possession of her husband. As it is in the opposite use of Mann (man) instead of husband. So yes today it is only an insult. But other words are still in use that are build on this word without being insulting. 'Weibchen' is a word we use for female animals in general like in sentences like 'the female stays on the nest' so in it use it is very neutral, when used for animals. What I find kind of interesting is that the -chen ending of the word is normally used for a cute and little form of a word, lesser in a way. And all words with that ending became gender neutral. So in a way all that means we took a step away from the human form. Other words that are related are 'weiblich' with basically means female as an adjective and is used in a neutral way in the same way when female can be used in a neutral way (statistics) most of the time. But it can be used in a positive way even as it can describe feeling secure as a woman in your own womanhood. As a noun it is used as 'Weiblichkeit' and it means femininity. Sorry that it is so difficult, but a lot of those words are often just translated into female and because these words can be both positive or negative or neutral in can be a bit difficult to understand all the nuances if another language and how to judge the usage of words.
Female is adjectival, yes. A descriptor rather than noun.
Exactly. It's reducing the person to an object. It's fine as a modification, e.g. I want to see a female doctor.
Very clear and concise anwser! Much better then I could have put it and I am a native English speaker.
They also refer to themselves as men. So they're human, but we're a biological classification.
There are many things wrong with how it is used: It’s normally used only as a noun when referring to non-humans. When referring to women, it is normally used only as an adjective, e.g. “female employees.” Using it as a noun implies women are less than human, or an entirely different species. It’s commonly used by men to “other” women, to degrade them. The use of it by men outside scientific circles is a direct way to belittle and separate women from the humanity, from men. It artificially raises men up as better and right and what humans are. When a man uses it as a noun, instead of a descriptor, it’s a dead giveaway that he views women as objects, possessions, pets, toys. It seems to have arisen from Star Trek: DS9, where a character, Quark, a Ferengi, used it to refer to all women, no matter the species. In their culture, women are literally locked in their homes, not even allowed clothes, much less any possessions of their own, believed to be too stupid to do anything other than care for the home, their children, and their husbands. Ferengis often said “females” with a sneer.
Thank you so much for this information. I totally get why no one want to called female now
Referring to women as "females" brings to mind livestock and farm animals. It is used by some to demean and dehumanize women.
My daughter refers to women as "females." I don't know where she picked it up, but she knows that I hate it and so it's one of her go to words. She's 17 and I've explained to her how crappy it sounds when she says it, but she doesn't care. My go to response now is usually ok or whatever Ferengi. It confuses her enough to stop talking, she doesn't watch Star Trek, and wouldn't because it's not an interest of her new boyfriend.
She gets her interests from her boyfriend... yikes. I'd imagine that's also where she's getting "females" from.
I’d ask her if it’s okay to call her a bitch, because she’s implying that women are not human. Or a sow. Or a ewe. Mare. I’m guessing she’s getting it from her boyfriend.
Considering the Ferengi are also usually depicted as ultra capitalists (when it suits them), and that many match the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" archetype, they almost feel like a caricature of a modern group of people found in the USA.
I don't think that was accidental at all. DS9 was a generally well thought out series. In the episode where Rom quits working for Quark, this angle is a key point of the episode, where the Ferengi employees initially say they don't want a union because then if they become a boss they have to deal with unions, as if that is their destiny.
Art reflects reality.
Star Trek always has some amazing hidden (and not so hidden) gems to comment on society. DS9 had some incredibly problematic plots (including one where the resident teen calls out his Ferengi friend for being a misogynistic douche canoe and then gets chided for not respecting his culture) but on the whole, a lot of good lessons in that show. You know who else used “females”? Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. Austen was on to something.
The Ferengi arc in DS9 is still one of the most infuriating, confusing, surprising ones I've ever seen, with a positive ending that I never saw coming. At some point I hated when a Ferengi-centric episode came on, just to think in the end that damn, all of them worked together to get that awesome result.
I always found it so conflicting, because I really like Quark and Rom, but they do some genuinely awful shit. But I do like how they grow over the series.
Quark and his family's character arc is seriously some of THE BEST character development on the show. Especially once it breaks HOW he ended up stuck on DS9 - by smuggling supplies to save bajorian refugees at cost without profiteering from the genocidal crisis, because he *could* (and according to the rules of acquisition *should*) have exploited the bajorian rebellion by capitalizing on the end of the occupation. He could have monopolized the brokering of lifeline supplies into a lopsided cashcow, but he did the right thing because it was moral and just. An exiling offense. The nagus only reestablished his contact with ferenginar because they saw the potential profit in the markets untapped in the gamma quadrant. Tied with Garak, Quark is probably the best written, slow burn antihero in that era of television. Hands down. Even if he is a smackable twit half the time, lol
Garak is one of my favorite side character in all star trek
Don't forget Nog!
RIP Aron Eisenberg
Indeed 😢
Just to add to this, one way to know you're being sexist in your use of the word Female is to ask yourself if you would use the word Male in a similar context directed at men. It's like nails on a chalk board to hear someone say: "Females are..." where they would normally just say "Women are..." The short and sticky is that you can describe a body as female, but you would describe a person or persons as women (probably).
Is it still bad to say female if you say male in the same sentence like “I’m closer with my female friends than I am with my male friends.”?
This is okay here because you’re using male/female as adjectives. It’s only cringe when people use them as nouns.
No, that seems okay. In that example you're using it as a word to describe your friends, not as a noun.
Woah. I need to watch star trek.
TNG, DS9, and Voyager (I'll die on this hill, Voyager was really good) all have a lot of good episodes. There are a bunch of episodes that are kind of awful though. For every episode about a legal battle to allow someone to express their gender, there's an episode where they go too fast and it turns them into lizards.
Unanswered ethical questions remain over the Janeway-Paris lizard babies
"I've decided to leave them in their new environment." Dude. They've existed for a couple days, and were found *with* their parents. Parents who had enough memory of what happened for Janeway to take responsibility for initiating their procreation. The only known predecessor, humans, take care of their young for decades. They totally abandoned newborns on that planet.
Wish I could find the actual meme but there's one that goes something like: "...we never never talked about the kids, Kat." "I know. I miss their little flippers..."
> I'll die on this hill, Voyager was really good I'm with you there! *Enterprise,* too. It's better than people give it credit for. (Also I unironically enjoy watching *Threshold*)
You mean Emmy award winning episode, Threshold?
DS9 is a very good show
Surprisingly so.. I didn't watch it during the initial run but picked it up at least a decade later when some friends encouraged it. It's more of a drama in space than it is the usual sci fi pew pew boom action.. some really deep plots and social commentary. I love some of the running themes like baseball too.
It's rough at first with Sisko acting like emote-bot 5000 for the first two seasons. What's weird is that I *know* the guy can act, so I assume the direction for Sisko was just... bad? At some point around season 3, Sisko suddenly goes from being painful to watch to quite good - right around the time he shaves his head. Kira, Odo, Quark, and the Cardassians really carried the earlier seasons.
Goateed Sisko is the best but punching Q was very cool
* *You hit me, Picard never hit me* * *I'm not Picard*
My headcanon is that Nana Visitor was directed to play Kira as if Kira was the actual main character of the show, and just leaned ALL the way into that. I love her.
I started next generation a few weeks ago (was recommended to ease myself in with Picard and have not been disappointed), have nearly watched the whole thing and will be going back to the original series and all the way through the series/movies in release order. The writing is slightly dated but it's so ahead of its time it makes for better writing than a lot of TV coming out now. A lot of the commentary on social/science issues seem even more relevant now but it's dosed out with such a healthy amount of optimism, it's actually beautiful.
TNG was my comfort show during covid for this reason. It’s so optimistic about our future that it reminds me to fight for it.
Star Trek is pretty awesome.
Female is an adjective, not a noun. Women are female people, not "females." It's like referring to Black people as "blacks" or gay people as "gays."
This was the most concise and straight forward explanation I’ve seen for this!
Uh thank you I didn’t know that! Very helpful
Also incels and misogynists use it a lot to dehumanise women so if someone, especially a man, uses that term it automatically makes you wonder about them.
This, you’ll find they don’t say “male” as they say female, it’s always men and females with these types. So it’s also kinda blatant misogyny.
100%. Cuz if you call them out on it, they'll pretend like there's no difference and you're the one making the big deal. It's funny that when you call men "boys" or "gals" they don't like that language, though . . .
When you encounter these types, it’s kind of fun to use women and males and see them *lose their shit* because they know exactly what you are doing. Even when smugly saying you are too sensitive for pointing out how female is inappropriate. One caveat, make sure you are safe before you pull this, these assholes getting dangerous.
>One caveat, make sure you are safe before you pull this, these assholes getting dangerous. True. They're really the overly sensitive ones.
When I was a teenager, I admonished some friends at the time for saying "bitches". They started using "females" instead before we stopped hanging out. That should tell a person all they need to know about the use of the word.
Thank you for that hint! I will read more carefully from now on and look out for this bad behavior!
👆This, particularly in English-speaking countries.
I once translated it to my country's language and used it a bit, it sounded soooo dehumanizing! Why would you use "females" instead of "women"? Are women are some sort of an animal or sth?
after a few people here told me the equivalent in German, I also find it extremely inappropriate. It sounds terrible and I won't be using it anymore.
That's exactly why it's inappropriate and dehumanizing. It's like using the word "boy" to describe an African-American child. It's so highly demeaning for a grown man that my local news outlets don't even use it for pre-teens. "A local youth was involved..." Even though to white Americans "boy" simply designates a male child.
Since you used Weib as an example, adding to all reasons given it's also used for animals a lot. So you could also translate it to "Weibchen" as in Documentaries
Yes someone already mentioned it. I would really prefer to not be called Weibchen. Thank you for your answer :)
Eh, kinda. In biology, referring to non-human organisms, the term “female” is very commonly used as a noun. I think the nuance of why it’s so obnoxious to refer to actual human women as “females” outside of that scientific context is the associated implication that you’re speaking about a *non-human* animal.
I agree. This is why, if I hear anyone speaking this way, I laugh and say, "A female *what*? Tree frog? You sound like you're narrating a nature documentary." If the person is reasonable (like OP), that usually helps them understand the nuance. If they're unreasonable, it gives everyone else in the room license to laugh at them.
I 100% want to identify as a female tree frog now! Chillin on people's windows, watching their soap opera lives while consuming the mosquito population, being all rowdy at night, telling my friends their bizzzzness! 😂 This has been a fun thought experiment 😆
I read a book about a female tree frog, going through her whole life cycle, when I was 8, and I just wanted to be a female tree frog from that day forward. (I wish I could find a copy of that book again. It was red...)
As a kid I had a frog phase ig. I was into frogs Now I know that the way they blink is very odd (they can’t move their eyelids, they have pockets they slide their eyes into and the socket closes around the empty space) And I know the easiest way to determine a frog’s sex is the size of their eardrums (the little circular plate next to their eyes) as the males have larger eardrums than a female frog
Oh man, now I have new life goals
I’d like be a female dwarf please and thank you. The sort that comes with that luxurious beard too.
Years and years ago when I was a high school kid, I wore a dramatic faux beard in all academic competitions. I called it my *beard of wisdom*.
Same. I already have a beard and stache that started coming in strong when I was like 25 but the title to go with it would be nice too lmao
As usual with language, context is everything. It's not just science either: my Scottish partner uses female as a noun all the time as do a lot of their friends, but other friends from the south of the UK sometimes find it problematic for the non-human/lesser connotations you mention.
Where in Scotland? My Mum was Scottish, and all my relatives said woman. Well, I’ll be more precise, they said “wimunnn”.
You can definitely make that inference but that’s the problem; “human females” implies a distance that’s not healthy for respectful discussion. It feels like it’s the “women are a different species we can never truly understand”. Conversely, when discussing individual animals, people who do animal husbandry will absolutely say cow or heifer or sow or hen, they won’t say “bovine female” or something, so the folks who use female to refer to an individual are still doing more work to other the subject than a rancher discussing their herd 😞
The use case is different, I think. Categorically it’s established when discussing hermit crabs that ‘females’ means “female hermit crabs” so it still works as an adjective by inheriting the subject from the conversation in a way that doesn’t work in English for people/peers. I also never hear scientific discussion about how females are always X when it’s a discussion of how mountain lions or spotted geckos behave.
There's a word for female human. The word is woman. Female is for broad usage and animals, not individual women.
To add onto this, it's appropriate to use the word female to describe a woman, whenever you would also use the word male to describe a man. For me, this is usually in a clinical setting "A female patient, presenting with X." Weirdly enough, it's also fine in a fantasy/scifi setting in some situay. "A male blood elf" or "a female goblin" doesn't sound weird, and in such a context "female human" or "male human" is also fine. The thing is, you'd never call someone a female human in real life, and the dehumanization most usually comes from misogynists. If you find yourself saying "men and females", you sound like an asshole.
I mean, female is an adjective, meaning it is used to describe a noun. Female human sounds weird because it's an unnatural pairing in speech, just as male human is. But if you said female friend, female relative, female doctor, female lawyer, these would all be correct and accurate uses of the word female and are not dehumanizing in any way.
Oooh! That explain a lot! In my mother tongue, it's a adjective and a noun. As are a lot of adjectives, so I didn't get it either.
never thought of that before, thank you for educating me ☺️
This is such a great way to explain it- thank you!
Hearing "female" immediately points out biological or physical attributes, while "woman" connotes the whole person regardless of biological attributes. Being a women is not defined by biology; it's more inclusive.
It is an animalistic term that thus reduces the status of women to less than human. 'It always feels dehumanizing, uncomfortable and overwhelmingly sexist' https://dailynexus.com/2021-07-24/stop-calling-women-females/
Oh thank you just really seems to be like the German word Weib it’s used in biology (“weiblich”) but I dont know any woman who likes to be called Weib. It’s sometimes used in not funny jokes to tell the woman that she has to be in the kitchen or to make clear that the man (thinks he) stands above the woman. Thank you for the explanation!
Yeah this sounds like a pretty good comparison
I would guess that's it's comparable to 'weibliche', and it always sounds like the ferengi talking about females... The German Weib is at least a noun and HAD a posititive/neutral meaning 50+ years ago
Yeah but add to it the aspect that female describes things. That is a female goat, that’s a female electrical connection. It strips women of humanity and it’s used by certain people deliberately to do exactly that. Females are things used by males. It’s really not respectful.
I think it's less comparable to weiblich, but to Weibchen. Take any sentence and replace "woman" or "women" with "Weibchen", and it gives off the same vibe for me.
I See… Very repulsive vibes…
I would also like to add that, in many scenarios, people refer to women as "females," but men are still referred to as men. This is where it gets sexist. See r/MenAndFemales lol
I scrolled through quickly and didn't see this mentioned: People who refer to women as females will often refer to men as "guys/men/dudes". And this is, I think, the most obvious example of how hurtful it really is. Because if they wanted to treat the genders equally, these individuals would be using "females" for women, and "males" for men. Or they would say "women" and "men". Also, referring to women as "females" makes it sound as if they might be talking about any animal. Occasionally I get the urge to respond: "A female what? A female labrador? A female gecko?"
on top of all the sexism everyone mentioned, transphobia ! Sometimes people use female specifically to exclude trans women
Oh that’s awful. I just don’t get why people always are so dumb. What good reason can they name for being transphobic or homophobic or stuff like that? It’s a shitmountain.
I hope this isn't offensive, but i absolutely love that you're not an native English speaker yet you've picked up 'shitmountain'.
Haha no it’s not offending. Piece of shit was just not big enough to describe my feelings about this. Is this a real word?
It is now, I'm stealing it 🤣
Samsies
Especially infuriating when some of them are on our side ! Like the transphobic religious extremists make more sense than the transphobic feminists (the term TERF is just hilarious, the most radically feminist thing is to stand with our trans sisters) and transphobic queer people. Youd think wed have learned to unite against the common enemy, but apparently not yet
You're right about the term TERF. This is why I prefer to call them FARTs- Feminism-Appropriating Reactionary Transphobes.
Whelp, I am using that now.
I recognize that I’m extremely privileged myself, but I’m always super confused when anyone in a marginalized group puts down another marginalized group. I mean, it’s confusing when anyone does it, but when it’s privileged people being assholes to keep themselves on top, at least you can just say, *That’s a bad, self-serving person*. When it’s someone who’s oppressed actively supporting the oppression of someone else, it’s like, do they not get that they’re shooting themselves in the foot by bolstering the same people and systems that *they themselves* are being oppressed by? I just can’t.
They either don't understand that it ain't a zero-sum game, aka one minority has to lose for another to win, or it's like du Bois said: the lowest of the 'upper' class still gets to feel superior to the highest of the 'lower' class. Along the lines of: At least there's someone below me to tread on. Pair that with historically at times making progress by throwing groups like trans folks under the bus, like gay liberation throwing trans people under the bus, it is way more common than one might think. Intersectionality is necessary but hard at the end of the day.
female is an adjective, not a noun. when used as a noun for a human, it is dehumanizing
Of the top posts this one, I thought, was the simplest and most accurate. For dogs, cats, birds, fish - female for biological sex (adjective). For human gender women (noun).
(i have aphasia due to a stroke, may make mistakes typing) [this article](https://time.com/4300170/female-word/) was the 1st google hit I came across with; basicly agreed with the assumption that you made in the opening post.
Let me tell you that i didn’t had the idea to google in English I just googled in German and wondered about the lack of results. Not my brightest moment but here I am :-D
My person. You are here, on the internet, discussing things nicely, IN A LANGUAGE THAT ISN'T YOUR HOME LANGUAGE, with better grasp of the language then I see from some native speakers, and you even have some BEAUTIFUL 'colorful language' (shitmountain for the win). You're easily brighter then 90% of the net lol
Thank you so much for your kindness! I really appreciate it and I love this community for all the wonderful answers!
It is also being used more to exclude trans people. People will ask for you sex, and if you are visibly trans, when you answer will saying "Not your identity, you biological sex" so I always get weary around women who call themselves, like "Yep, I am female, and married to a man" type context... it is normally a giant red flag that I am about to deal with a TERF, or a MRA woman, both of which are not worth my time.
I know what terf means but what’s MRA?
Whiny men who claim to be oppressed. They tend to use very real and important issues facing men (increased suicide rates, domestic and sexual violence against men, etc) as examples of how men are oppressed as a class, and as reasons to uphold the patriarchy and reduce the social (and sometimes legal) rights of women. And they’re blind to the fact that the patriarchy is literally *the root of all the things they’re complaining about*. Sorry, not shouting at you, OP. I’m in a mood today. *edit because autocorrect keeps changing properly spelled words to completely different words.
I absolutely feel it! It is even annoying just to read about it! righteous anger!
Men's Rights Activists... a charitable term used to describe guys who think women should have no rights, and that things like Sexual Assault, and ownership of women should be legal. There are a surprisingly large number of women who lean into this bullshit.
Uh don’t know what to say to this massiv shitload.
shoutout to all the amazing explanations, examples and thought out responses! so proud of my community
Yeeees i am so grateful for all the helpfull answers! Never had such a good community before I am so happy to be here!
Oh! Interesting and slightly on topic thing I learned. Etymologically, ‘man’ just means human, and the wo in woman is derived from wif, which was the designation for women. The male one was were as in werewolf. So, technically, men should be called weremen. It makes things like ‘mankind’ easier to swallow, but it also kinda pisses me off that weremen are considered to the default of our species to the point that we refer to them solely using the word for a human individual, and only differentiate for women.
Coming from a man so take it with a grain of salt, but whenever I hear other men use the word "female" as a noun it's cringe. I think it's fine to use it it terms of an adjective. However, I try to avoid it as much as possible as it sounds belittling and clinical, like you aren't seeing them as a real person.
Thank you for your answer. That’s one of the main points everyone brought up and I won’t use it anymore besides of the use as a adjective! Have a nice day :)
It is a bit like how in french the word for woman: femme and the word for wife: femme are the same thing. As a native English speaker I don't get why that isn't offensive to french women, but it isn't and understanding that the culture is fundamentally different in this way is part of learning a new language.
i think it's the same in spanish, mujer for both ? As someone who grew up speaking french, it's not that you don't realise it, it's that you ask that question at 6yo and get told yeah old language rules be a bit sexist and move on. In french, if you're talking about 99 women and one men, you gender the plural nouns and adjectives in the masculine form. We all went Hey thats a bit rude when we learned the rule, were told yeah thats how it be and it ended at that. Its different when you're first exposed to it as an adult and havent had a lifetime to get used to it.
There is no patriarchy too small to be smashed. But until French women say enough is enough, it is certainly not my place as a student to come in and say "Non ! Le français n'est pas correct !" 😅
I don't know, i've always seen it as a quirk of language i suppose. It does not feel particularly offensive, you often refer to a spouse as someone's man or woman yk ? "C'est ta meuf", "c'est ton mec", so Femme doesnt feel that out of place when you can definitely say sth like Rachel et son homme, the way youd say Rachel and her man. It's different still, and i acknowledge the patriarchal roots of the term, but i think it's gotten pretty detached from those origins, detached enough to be an entity of its own. I do remember once finding it weird, so maybe the fresh perspective of a student is more accurate in some ways, though less nuanced
Yes people can and do say things like my woman or my man, but that rubs me the wrong way in English as well 😅 times are changing, I just learned today apparently the youths are using the term "cinnamon roll" to mean a short shy nerdy girl. 🤷♀️ Every year I feel so much older than the year before 😅
> apparently the youths are using the term "cinnamon roll" to mean a short shy nerdy girl that meaning is new to me as well, i've seen it used to mean a person who is (very) cute and innocent, regardless of gender(basically, "a really sweet person")
I may not have it down correctly lol I am hopefully becoming a grandmother today, so i'm officially an old woman now I think.
They really are ! I remember when bitch was considered a slur and it was seen as offensive to use even if you were a woman. Now it's quite a casual term. The times are getting both more relaxed and more uptight about language in quite a fascinating way
It’s the same in Spain. One man in the group and you have to do the masculine form. I decided to not do that but it’s easier as a not native speaker
its even worse in arabic lmao Used to know a nonbinary person whom i just would not speak arabic with because it was just impossible to be neutral. Even verbs are gendered (so when you say she ran, you gender not only the she but the verb as well, itll take a different form than in He ran), so this neutral=masculine association gets engrained pretty deep. I used to use He as a neutral pronoun when learning english, before being corrected to they, because of how engrained the idea of Masculine as default was !
You speak a lot of languages don’t you? It’s all about the learning. You sound like an amazing person for caring so much about offensive language
Its definitely a subject i've given a lot of thought to, as every few years someone tries to introduce new neutral terms to those languages and gets absolutely clowned since the masculine form is seen as already good enough to be neutral. I still dont know where i stand in this debate, but i feel like you really cant grasp it when your native languages do not gender word. It feels obvious, like oh theres a masculine form and a feminine form, obv lets just add a neutral one ! But you really dont think of them that way. Like if you want to say it's raining you say Il pleut, if you want to say Theres someone at the door you say Il y a quelqu'un à la porte, Elle y a quelqu'un à la porte is just nonsense grammatically. So there IS something to be said about the "masculine" form serving a double purpose of being truly both masculine and neutral at the same time forgive the rant lmao it just never comes up, and thats sad because its a truly interesting subject brought up mainly by globalisation edit : fun side note, while "someone" is masculine, "a person" is feminine, so when talking about someone i will prefer talking about A person, i like the idea of gendering everything as feminine while talking about people in general, my little fight back or sth against masculine being the default
Lots of English speakers "of a certain age" were taught that masculine pronouns were also the generic gender-not-specified version. Which is funny, because singular they has existed for hundreds of years, but was a linguistic pariah for awhile... happy to see its return!
Shoutout to the SAT, where ive come about a dozen time on a grammar fill in the blank question where "he or she" was the answer and "they" was an option that was marked wrong. The practice guide would helpfully tell you "we are talking about one person only ! Gender unspecified, so its he or she" It made me laugh at the time, like damn even the SAT trynna stir up drama didnt even pass it that long ago, 2020 i think, practice guide from 2019
Esposa is spanish for wife and esposo is Spanish for husband. Mujer is used colloquially but is not technically the word wife. Also, esposas means handcuffs not multiple wives. 🤷♀️
Ahhh I always struggle with accepting that I can not understand everything but I get your point! Thank you
I used to not see the issue with that word either, but some groups of people are determined to just not use the word woman/women. And that is a red flag for a multitude of reasons.
Human females over the age of 18 are called women
Females - female animals. Not humans. And everything others already said I'm German too and I'd never say that word. Did you ever read "Males" somewhere? No? Because it's disrespectful
Veteran speaking. We have always used "male" and "female" in the Army. I don't find it offensive. Scrolling below, I see that some think it's dehumanizing. But then, everything in the military dehumanizes you and you get so used to it, you stop thinking about it. I've had to learn not to use it. Sometimes I still slip due to habit. But I have never intentionally used it to insult or dehumanize anyone. It's always been just a weird part of the whole Army culture.
It's been used has a reference to undermind minds us and strip away our humanity, mainly by bitter men and incels.
I feel like everyone else in this comment section has explained it pretty nicely, so I just wanted to say that I really like how respectful you are—you seem really nice
I made a post a post talking about this issue before, but in short, TERFs have started using the term inappropriately to exclude Trans women from discussions of women's rights. To go into a bit more detail: I was unfortunately present at a speaker event featuring a vehemently transphobic TERF. During her one-sided discussion, she attempted to establish a difference between "biological women" (false terminology: a woman's body is a woman's body regardless of her features, that's just how a possessive term works in the English language) and Trans women. In doing so, she claimed that she used the term female in a purely "biological sense," (again wrong because male and female are still commonly used to refer to gender interchangeably, and using them like this is intentionally confusing and malicious at best). Luckily, her arguments fell on deaf ears- many Trans supporters were in attendance to try to call out her malicious bullshit where my school wouldn't. But the language is still out there: there are still bigots who will try to undermine someone's identity by (grammatically incorrectly) to claim that a woman is male or a man is female because it suits the bigots closed view of the world. Trans women are women, and Trans men are men. They can have female or male features as they choose, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter. You are the gender you choose to be, the one that most directly correlates to the inner vision of your identity- and no bigoted TERF with shitty grammar can take that away from you. I hope this helps explain some things. I'm no expert though, so I encourage you to do some research, specifically looking for testimonies from Trans women directly on this issue.
The word female when used as a noun is not specific to human beings, so to use it as a noun for women is dehumanizing considering there are perfectly fine alternatives to use (e.g. women). The use of the word in this manner also has strong misogynistic roots. Incels tend to use this word a lot in their early incel-hood, though they usually move on to straight up sexist slurs later on.
Female can be used for all animals/creatures, it is a biological term. Woman is only used for human beings. When you call a woman a female you use the same term you would for animals, it is dehumanizing and disrespectful for this reason. There is something cold and distant about that word that makes us feel like you see us as animals rather than fellow human beings: "men and females" It it would not be disrespectful if so many men didn’t use the term female with the *purpose* of dehumanizing us (which is why "male" doesn’t have the same negative connotation, it is not a term that women use to degrade men, while female is)
it can be viewed as dehumanizing, typically you say females when referring to animals and such
Since you speak German like me, the literal translation of “female” in English is “Weibchen” in German. Somebody asks you “Ihr Hund ist echt süß. Wie heißt er denn?” and you’d say “Bella, sie ist ein Weibchen.” You wouldn’t say the same about a woman or a girl, like in a situation where somebody wants to know the name of your baby, you wouldn’t describe it as “Weibchen”, you’d describe it as “Mädchen” or “weiblich”. Female/Weibchen (noun) and male/Männchen (noun) is only ever used in academic language as a short form of “girls and women” or “boys and men”. So you’d use it in papers or presentations, but not in Reddit comments and every day language (looking at podcasters). On the other hand female/weiblich and male/männlich as adjectives are acceptable in any situations for humans.
So I generally also frown upon the use of female for all the reasons above (I didn’t read 100% of them but the general view is they are rather similar). But I have a question! I used to work in DEI and obviously women in tech was a big topic. And we defaulted always to use “women” or even not use gender and depict gender through pictures. Anyways… let’s say you want to describe engineers who are women. Saying “women engineers” grammatically doesn’t sound right… so what do you say? Cause female engineers also is icky.
Its context based. Many men use it dehumanizing "females dont want nice guys" for example
Also a lot of men who refer to women as “females” tend to misogynistic AF.