Do women wanna be called “women” tho? I don’t mean this rhetorically, but as a genuine question.
I for example, would hate to be called a “man”. It just makes me sound old. I would prefer being referred to as “male”, or anything that isn’t the word “man”. This is applicable to a lot of my friends too. Don’t women feel the same way?
I don’t see what’s wrong with calling men ‘men’. I don’t mind it at all, seeing as it’s a descriptor of what I am using the English language. What’s your problem with the word?
Not a native English speaker, so I guess I’m understanding the word wrong (judging from the other comments).
It’s just that calling someone a “man/woman” makes it seem like I’m calling them old? Like… I don’t think we associate the word “man” with youth, right? Like… Whenever someone refers to me as a man (which is quite uncommon thankfully), I cringe a little inside.
Not sure where you grew up culturally, but that seems like a very foreign concept to me personally. We use “boys”/“guys” and “girls” to demote young men and women. No one here would get the idea to use “male” and “female”, which to our ears are purely biological words.
Here in Australia we use male/female all the time.
I physically cringe when I see Americans say stuff like “woman politician” instead of “female politician”. It sounds so grammatically wrong, that you legit sound like a caveman impression (ex. “Grug go car”).
Having said that, we would also never refer to women as females. There’s some grammar rules that dictate when we use either, but female is certainly the more common term.
Yeah, to my ESL ears man/woman are nouns, not adjectives, and using them as adjectives comes off as childish.
That said, “female X” can also sound clumsy, if it’s implied that a bare X is male, e.g. “politician” and “female politician”, vs male and female politician. There was a twitter account calling itself a “male programmer” which took the piss out of that trope.
Well, English is not the native language where I’m from. So perhaps it must be the cultural context for the word “man”? I mean, we don’t use the words “male-female” much outside biological contexts as well… I’ve just rarely seen anyone use the words “man/woman” for anyone our age (we’re young adults for context).
I’ve never encountered a man or woman that hated being called whichever was appropriate
Apparently not. The world would be a much better place if we all stopped making such a big deal about specific trigger words and focused on the ideas being communicated. If someone’s intent was to be an asshole then sure, get the pitchforks out, but make it clear it’s the idea that’s bad. Don’t just scapegoat the word. If they weren’t obviously trying to be a dick then calibrate your response accordingly.
To put it another way, if you’re upset about the use of a word that a scientist might use to describe something then you’re probably being overly sensitive.
science is often biased by cultural ideas. biology, medicine, and psychology, have been used to pathologise or naturalise things along social lines. this is also reflected in the language they created.
i think it is important for this language to be reevaluated, as culture and the scientific view on the world changes.
with the distinction between gender and sex becomming more popular, having compleletly destinct words might for example be positive…
No, they are not for you to reevaluate because you hold no knowledge or expertise in these fields. Demanding for outsiders to interfere with the scientific process because of their silly little biases and mental disabilities is a deranged opinion.
Listen, I’m not against using any words. I’m just for using words, that if used cause no harm, and lead to people feeling better. We are emotional beings and it is unnecessary to try to pretend that we aren’t.
If someone wants me to call them “X”, I would try to do that if it is not too out of my way, right? That’s all.
You are correct but social media lives and thrives on the idea of making people overreact to things.
Genders, races, politics… It’s all literally designed for people to argue with eachother while the owners profit on their “discussions” (actual discussions are banned because sensitive snowflakes needs protection).
How have you applied age to the word “man”? Unless you’re not an adult and “man” to you means being an adult?
It’s all about context. There are options that are context and age appropriate that aren’t condescending or clinically reductive.
Men’s bathroom and Women’s bathroom > male bathroom and female bathroom
“Hey, guys/gents”, “hey, girls/ladies” > “hey, men”, “hey, women”
First woman President > first female President > first girl President
… honey, there could be another reason you don’t like being called a man. 👀 Just a thought.
Nah, I identify as male. It’s just that the visual of a “man” for me is an older bearded dude with a deep voice… which I’m not…
I’m just speaking from experience here. Never had a problem with other masc identifiers, but something about “man” squicked me out. It always felt like becoming a man was something far off, but I kept getting older and it never happened…
Now I’m on hormones and am a woman and things are fine. Not saying this is your situation, but it was mine.
It happened to me. Being a boy never bothered me, but as I got older becoming a “man” made me dysphoric.
So I became a woman instead.
