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I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard women refer to “males” but if we call them females that’s offensive?
Who the hell are you hanging out with? I’d say the term female is used way more often than male.
The American left has gone just as insane and extremist as the right. Here in Canada we’re wondering what you people are on. Even my wife says you’re an idiot if you’re offended by the word “female”.
The American left has gone just as insane and extremist as the right.
Maybe stop consuming so much biased news?
Yeah we aren’t insane in my country like you guys. We’re watching from the outside, and you guys are utterly blind and lack any sense of personal responsibility
…I’m Canadian
Then stop jerking off to American politicians
The pot calling the kettle black?
Even my wife says you’re an idiot if you can’t understand that language is constantly changing and evolving. Female has become an undesirable work to use to describe women, as it’s so often used by incels and other undesirable groups of people. In combination with the fact that female describes one’s junk, not how they identify, it just isn’t a good word to use when you’re actually talking about women.
Yet many many women disagree with you. So maybe don’t be such an authoritarian and hateful towards those that aren’t as “enlightened” as you. I’m sure your farts smell like cinnamon, that’s why you think you’re better than everyone. That’s one of the big issues with today’s left and why the older ones think you’re nuts, you’re all so hateful and talk down to everyone and demand, with very fascist authority, that everyone to follow your view.
How do I formally refer to a girl I do not respect(because she’s a menace) who is late 40’s early 50’s? So the different terms have implications I don’t care for it want to convey.
Wench? Maybe hag?
I might like a wench.
I would get creative with it, just because she’s horrible doesn’t mean you don’t get to have a good time. “The purveyor of lies”, “fount of unreason”, maybe give her a nickname that relates to one of her mistakes. If you can come up with something new every time it can become like a game, even if you’re only saying them in your head.
Good time of what?
Have a good time coming up with insulting names
Ahh yeah. 🤣
I’ve been going with troll lately.
From the point of view of that girl you’re a red flag anyway. But “a menace” works too.
Red flag? I’m not trying to date my dangerous old hag of a downstairs neighbor. I’m actually filling a restraining order against her.
Yeah I mean, if people were filing restraining orders against me, I’d certainly take that as a red flag to avoid them 😅
bitch, or even better, motherfucking bitch asshole
Karen?
Someone in their late 40s is not a girl.
Right, so I’m not calling her that.
It definitely looks like you are.
That is a sail…
It’s a multifunctional sail.
FIRE!!
I wonder if the joke would work better if it actually was a black background. This might also keep the ‘its a sail’ gang happier.
I been wondering people’s opinion of “Female” in some instances. Like is “First Female president/athlete/mayor/lawyer” appropriate? “First woman____” doesn’t sound right and you wouldn’t say “first man athlete to run 2 hour marathon” you would use male.
Most things can be rephrased maybe, but obviously using Females outside these instances is very right wing cringe.
“Female” is fine to use as an adjective.
It’s also fine to use as a noun when describing livestock, which is why it’s a red flag to describe women that way.
What is a good word to use for people who are female of any age including young children that are not old enough to be called women in addition to women?
‘Women and girls’ is pretty clunky when talking about something that is gender specific, but applies to all ages.
Just ask yourself if you’d use “males” in that context.
I absolutely would use males in that context. “Toxic masculinity has a detrimental affect on males of all ages” sounds perfectly fine to me because I don’t know of a different label for the group and males doesn’t have the same dehumanizing usage as females.
Male is literally the same kind of word just for the opposite sex/gender; the term specifically points out the ability to produce sperm (in many dimorphic species) for the purposes of reproducing with the opposite sex. It’s literally just saying “your distinguishing characteristic is your ability to inseminate another of your species” and is just as dehumanizing.
The reason you would use it in that context is because it’s “[gender specific noun] of all ages.” Where if you were to say “boys of all ages” or “men of all ages” it would imply either all ages under 18 or all ages at or over 18.
This is the same context in which you would use female as a noun, as girl/woman implies a restricted age range, just as boy/man, when you specifically don’t want one.
Doesn’t “men and boys” have exactly the same meaning though?
I don’t feel deshumanized for being called a male.
Disclaimer: I don’t use the noun “female” because I know some find it offensive.
Women is probably fine to use when the ages can be gleaned from context. You can also make the noun non gendered and use female as a adjective like “female students” or “female patients”
I’m mainly asking when ages span from birth to old age and the goup would basically be “female persons” or “male persons” which is clunky.
Sometimes it can be rephrased, but it often requires multiple words to mean the same thing. Plus “women of all ages” will be read as not including children.
I’m mostly pissed that sexists ruined the only single word term we have for half of the population.
Honestly I don’t think ‘women and girls’ feels clunky, but that’s just me
It is important that when we are addressing issues of sexism, that we try to make sure that the ideas are easily understood by women, men, girls, and boys so that everyone understands how to support equality. If we only focus our effort on men and boys, without recognizing the influence also has on women and girls, then it will not be as successful. For example, the social expectations of women and girls to dress in certain ways is commonly enforced by men, women, girls, and boys even if the influence is only targeted at women and girls. Not to mention the toxic masculinity that is applied to men and boys by men, women, boys, and girls that are commonly reinforced by telling men and boys to ‘man up’ in stressful situations.
You are right, that is smooth as butter.
boys and men / girls and women sounds right to me
‘Gendered violence against teenage women and girls’ is really clunky. Especially if it needs repeating across paragraphs.
If there isn’t something, that’s fine.
“Gendered violence against females” on the other hand sounds a bit too clinical though… Like you’re removing their personhood
If ‘females’ wasn’t used by online sexists to treat women as objects would it sound that way?
Maybe! I don’t know if “gendered violence against men” also has the same connotations.
Maybe this is indeed is a case of those people poisoning the term.
Woman as an adjective is picking up in my circles and podcasts I listen to. Woman scientist, woman entrepreneur. It may have sounded weird initially, but I’ve gotten over it and I suspect it will develop over time to be completely normal.
I wouldn’t really compare it to the male/man counterpart, because men aren’t demeaned by being called “male” regularly.
I agree it works in most cases it works fine but like “First woman astronaut” feels weird.
I mostly didn’t want to be accidentally participating in something shitty.
Edit: or like “fastest woman athlete”
Yeah, I remember feeling like it was weird, but both of those sound absolutely fine to me now.
I also would never balk at “female” as an adjective in those cases, nor assume the speaker was being misogynist.
I think both kinda sound equally weird because we for a lot of words like astronaut, the astronaut is already assumed to be male unless otherwise indicated. So male astronauts or man astronauts both sound clunky and kinda weird, and the weirdness translates over when you start indicating the astronaut is a woman by saying “woman astronaut” or “female astronaut.”
The English language, and historical baggage just kinda fucked us on this one. We used to add ‘ess’ to the ends of words to indicate gender, but that was dropped outside of the use of waitress or actress for the most part. Not sure why that stopped, but I’m sure it’s interesting and I’m going to go look it up later.
Woman used as an adjective like this sounds so wrong to me (probably because it isn’t an adjective). If you wouldn’t say man voter, man driver, men reporters, etc., then why would you say woman voter, women drivers, woman reporter? Just because some people use ‘female’ in a way that you object to shouldn’t make all uses of it objectionable. Do you want a world in which we can say ‘male patients’, but have to say ‘woman and girl patients’ instead of female patients? Why??
Otoh, some women use this while referring to other women, e.g. “us females need to stick together!” - in a totally positive and inclusive manner (or what looks like that, from me on the outside - i.e. not using language in such manner myself, for either men or women).
So maybe instead of a red flag it’s more like an orange one? VERY noteworthy, but not enough on its own to justify cutting off contact with someone, whereas for an actual red flag you would… right?
Drag wonders why that woman chose to say females instead of women. It’s a very odd way to phrase it, and the only practical consequence of the change is to exclude trans women. Was that the intention?
I’ve seen you around Lemmy for a little while now. Why do you insist on referring to yourself in the 3rd person?
Due to claims that drag is always changing the subject to drag’s pronouns, drag has a rule about talking about drag’s pronouns on threads that aren’t about them. Drag will only talk about drag’s pronouns if somebody says “I want to change the subject to drag’s pronouns”. Drag isn’t going to change the subject to drag’s pronouns, somebody else has to, and clearly state they are doing so.
Well, women can be sexist too, even about one’s own gender, so indeed that’s a possibility. But as someone else mentioned on this thread, its usage seemed to predate trans really becoming known as being a thing (at least in the surgical sense).
So I - who really knows nothing and isn’t really involved, but nonetheless I’ll still tell you my opinion! (bc you asked, ofc:-) - say: when in doubt, check the other factors. Perhaps she merely needs educated. Or perhaps we should not nitpick every tiny thing. Then again, is it really nitpicking to tell a woman that she is a human being?
Anyway it still gets back to: is it a RED flag? And if so, what then - like is it worth having any further conversations at all with a person who uses such language? And for that, I say: use one’s best judgement.
Then again, perhaps my thinking is outdated - bc NOW it is used to exclude trans women. Sort of? In some contexts it is, while in others it might not?
But I can’t recall ever having used it personally, so I cannot really say why this would do such a thing.
It can be both! A lot of women, such as JK Rowling, think the only worth they have as women is having a uterus and being conditioned to think less of themselves by a patriarchal society. If trans women are valid, that means women don’t have to exist for making babies. That means women can be raised to have self esteem. The fact that these things are an option, and these women didn’t get to have that privilege, breaks their hearts. Growing up trans is traumatizing, but these TERFs only focus on the privileges, like not having to deal with periods. They’re jealous. Too jealous to accept it. They have to believe that womanhood is suffering, or they’d instead have to accept that the suffering they endured was unnecessary.
It is complex, and probably we can’t get too deep into it in this community, but yeah, a lot of people engage in fanciful thinking rather than live in reality - and some of those people are kind while some are the opposite. e.g. I want to be kind in thinking that as people age they find it harder to stretch themselves to consider new ideas - but is that even true, or just something that was made up, like will we become that way at some point? I used to think so… but I no longer do.
And in case you are wondering how you could have missed the point of what I was trying to say… it’s not you, as there simply isn’t one:-).
Most people get weaker as they age. But that’s because most people sit on their asses all day. Serious injuries do accrue, and they do make it harder. But back pain at 30 isn’t the way humans are supposed to work. The people who refuse to accept old age, and who keep working on their fitness, are the 60 year olds who run marathons. Not everyone gets to have that option, but it’s only the people who are both lucky AND stubborn who do. Nobody who lies down and accepts the passage of time gets to age gracefully.
Brains work the same way. People get lazy. They think what’s happening is inevitable. They stop exercising, and their fitness diminishes. Self fulfilling prophecy. The dumbest old people drag has known were the ones with low self esteem. The ones who believed in themselves stayed sharp.
Exactly - it’s like how Boomers claim to be the only ones with knowledge (“just do what we tell you, you stupid kids!”), as they hand nations (USA, UK, Germany upcoming, Brazil, and most every other nation on earth as well) over to totalitarian regimes. We used to fight the Nazis… now their kids have become them, or rather set their children upon the path to fairly soon become thus. So now I don’t know what to believe.
Though if women are females, and females are women, then if both were true, then why couldn’t either word fill in for one another - what am I missing here?
Though if women are females, and females are women,
But neither of those is true. Some “females” identify as men, and some “non-females” identify as women.
Also, think about the difference in the meaning of the words. One is an identity. One is biology; physical machinery. You know when corporations refer to people as “consumers”? It’s gross, right? Reducing complex three dimensional people to an economic function. Reducing people to a biological function is also gross.
Someone should really tell everyone from the south. I had no idea until it was pointed out to me by someone younger. Changed my behavior of course, but was simply ignorant before.
A lot of people use certain words just out of habit, the last thing you need is some SJW jumping down your throat and calling you names cause they don’t like your regional dialect. Lots of words I grew up with that were normal or not that bad, and now are considered super offensive. It’s not a malicious thing, all you can do is calibrate and learn, but some people get so worked up if you don’t use the words they’re used to
Why did you refer to it as shoving something down your throat?
I don’t get why the saying is “shoving it down your throat” or “jumping down your throat” when it’s more like shoving it down your ear canal. You don’t eat what people are saying 🤔
Maybe YOU don’t… (don’t judge me!:-P)
These very same people would have no problem calling women ‘people that birth’.
he’d probably call women maidens
Except Nichelle Nichols
Ferengi off the port bow.
Thank you! This is always the first thing that pops into my head whenever I read somebody using “females” instead of “women”
Remember, pirates did fly red flags as well as black ones. The red ones meant you were extra fucked.
I think black was like, “We just want your shit and we’ll let you live if you surrender” while red was like, “We’re gonna kill and then take your shit or take your shit and then kill you, either way you will not survive,” kinda thing.
If you saw a pirate ship with a rainbow flag though , you’re in for a mean margarita and a good time.
I think they’re still after your booty.
I hope they don’t run me through with their sword
But my booty is a treasure only for me and the crew to enjoy.
All that piracy, all those years, and the memories the captain and crew were building together is the real treasure.
Sometimes the black one meant they just wanted your hats.
Benjamin Hornigold. No I’m not making that up.
What was the point of the red flags? Or… why would anyone choose to fly a red flag? I’m trying to understand why anyone would broadcast “if we come near you, you’re fucked”. It seems a bad hunting strategy.
Also, why didn’t merchant ships fly red flags to be less bothered by pirates?
Red meant that no quarter would be given, they’re going to fucking kill you. Black flag meant they would take your shit without slaughtering you. Granted, fighting back would still get you killed either way. Pirates tended to make examples sometimes, or want revenge, thus slaughter. Of course if they didn’t kill everyone, they might press-gang you into service, and now your a pirate too. So red means you’re dead.
I get what you’re saying, I’m struggling to understand why any pirate would ever want to fly a red flag.
You people have some weird hangups.
I call women “femei”
Is it bad?
It really is just an anti-trans thing.
Nah, it was a thing for weird dudes well before trans rights entered the public consciousness.
Naw, they were using that before all the anti trans nonsense. It’s more about their inability to see women as human. They identify them more for their gender than being the same species as them. If they started calling them women that would humanize women too much…
