I always find it weird when guys refer to girls as “females”. I can’t help but read it in a Ferengi voice.
“Females and finances don’t mix. Rule of Acquisition 94.”
My favorite thing about that is that, in DS9, a female ferenghi goes on to be the most successful leader of their people ever.
Meh, it’s a thing in the military because female military members are segregated and have different uniforms.
A woman in the military isn’t described as that, they’re a “femal soldier/sailor/marine” and all their uniforms, regs, standards, and housing comes with that prefix.
Even tho “female” descriptor comes first it’s to ingrain that above all else they’re a service member.
It’s about what the noun is.
It took a couple years till I stopped slipping, and I understand why a service member would use it. That shit gets so beat intto you that you really don’t even notice it. So when you get let out into the civilian world, it’s hard to break the habit. Those people would appreciate being called out that what they’re doing is weird for civvies tho.
But yeah…
99% of the people using it are just fucking weird.
“Female <job title>” isnt at all as bad as just… “female”, the prior is a clarifying adjective, the latter is using it as a descriptive noun.
Like if I say “Female Officers suffer from above average sexual harassment” that statement isnt a big deal.
If I say “You are a beautiful female” to a woman though, it sounds disgusting.
I mean literally just compare these two basic statements.
“Go hand this package to that Female Officer over there” (This just distinguishes the Female Officer from the Male Officers probably standing near her)
vs
“Go hand this package to that Female over there” (this sounds like you are an alien visiting earth and talking to me)
Ever hear:
Hand me that Philips head
And get pissed off?
Because someone used the adjective when the noun was implied?
Like, I mentioned a specific context where it was used normally and now you’re wanting me to defend every imagined use you can think of.
It’s tiresome
I think it’s as weird and antisocial as the next guy to call women “females” but I also think it’s weird that it’s treated like not receiving approval from women is the worst possible thing that can happen to a man when implying that women need male approval is obviously sexist
idk, some incels will certainly act like not getting approval from women was the worst possible thing that could happen to them, and then go and do something much worse to others
yeah but this post isn’t about incels. posts like these shoot strays at all men
While I agree, it specifically says “those men,” so I think the idea is that men who see women as wombs or genes or whatever should also expect to be viewed with the same lens
That’s how generalizations and language work. It’s ALWAYS implied that it’s not ALL of a group. Unless someone says “literally all men”, and then whatever that person is saying is wrong because there’s no way it’s literally all.
So good news, is you’re not like that, it’s not about you.
They’re pretty much the only group I know of that uses female that way on purpose, but I suppose we could just throw in all misogynists and my comment would still apply
Personally I think that using sexual desirability as a point of ridicule is pretty toxic regardless of who is doing it and it’s not going to help to solve the problem, but “not receiving approval from women” kind of is the worst possible thing that can happen for a lot of them, at least in their minds. The whole “men and females” thing has its roots in incel culture and they’re well known to obsess over the tiniest facets of their interactions with women to the point of nausea, looking for any excuse to condemn women for not being attracted to them. They see not receiving approval from women as the ultimate condemnation of not only women, but also themselves. It’s why people use it as an insult - it’s effective against them.
I really don’t think making this about incels makes sense and I’ll demonstrate why:
Woman calls me unfuckable -> I’m an incel
I call a woman unfuckable -> I’m an incel
There’s little logical consistency around the topic and it’s kind of just become a loophole to cancel morality when it comes to attacking men. I’m really careful with my wording to avoid triggering this response because if I do, people stop processing what I’m saying and they start dogpiling.
Agreed… but hear me out. Men usualy are more sex driven and usually (not every man of course but the majority let’s say) will have sex with a random woman. Women on the other hand usually (AS IN NOT EVERY WOMAN) (I’m saying that so crazy people don’t come after me with the “I’m not like that”) need more conection. Women will go home and not have sex if no man was interesting enough to her and she won’t feel bad, man will go home with the woman he thinks it’s the ugliest (again USUALLY) if she is the only one that’s up to it, because for men going home alone is defeat. If you rationalize that looks is not everything for women than a man that is rejected by every woman has a lame personality while woman that are rejected by men are usually based on looks.
So yes, in this (not general but commom) scenario a man that is unfuckable is an asshole and a woman may be an asshole or may just be fat
edit: is late and I don’t have my glasses so sorry for some dumb english
I don’t really think things are actually the way you suppose they are. I think that’s a cultural model that’s been built up by media. It may have been true at one point but from what I can tell based on my experiences in real life, it seems to be more the inverse nowadays. All my male friends seem to be much more choosy with who they sleep with (preferring a real connection) while my female friends seem to be a lot more outgoing and likely to have sex without a connection. I’m talking about a sample size of about 20 people I’ve hung out with in the past year, but I’m also considering people I knew when I was highschool / college age.
really?! that must be cultural. I’m not american but from my experience also from male and female friends since…ever lol… men tend not to care. I’ve seen a friend hit on and take home a homeless toothless smelly woman I would say at least 10 years older than him. And his answer to me was “if you are too picky you starve”
If I feel the need to use the word “female” in that way, I am not looking for approval. I am only looking to evade “girl”/“woman”/“lady” traps [1] and trying to be as less social and as robotic as possible.
“trap” as in snare trap/ bear trap etc. not the other trap. Now this was another trap. You see what I am talking about? ↩︎
Sounds ok to me (male).
“The male wakes up at 7am, so he can prepare for his office work; he’s tired and being worn down, yet somehow remains resolute. In this way, he channels the spirit of the emperor penguin and endures.”
Remember folks, the gender wars distract from the class wars we should all be engaged in!
Yeah I initially thought it was a response to my post so my original reply made no sense lol, my bad
Yes, I can care about and work at many different things in the course of my week, month and year. I think a lot of people can.
The male looks in the mirror and realizes he’ll die alone. He tries to distract himself with glass rectangles.
Oh, fuck off.
I’m not using my glass rectangle just to be reminded of that.
Some of these men call other men “males” as well. I used to call both genders by such “technical” terminology because I did not think it was offensive until a woman complained in a forum I frequented like 15 years ago.
TBH I feel annoyed that I can’t use those terms because I know some guys use the term to intentionally dehumanize specifically women and I am not that sort of guy. But also I really tend to embrace neutral/technical/clinical language a lot because of a general disdain for romantic thinking and language.
Things are not more than what they are.
anything you call people will offend some people….
i’m sure some chucklefyck doesn’t want to be called a “people”… actually “you people” is often offensive.
it’s all about context, and being as respectful as is reasonable… for example, “retard” literally means “slow”… you could retard the growth of a plant. mentally retarded was just a term for having severe cognitive disabilities that made you unable to interact normally and made you need care to live… but through a history of people abusing those people, and of course using that as an insult made it offensive and dehumanizing.
with calling people “females”, i think it’s because it’s extremely uncommon except for when people are dehumanizing women… so when someone innocently use the term they can be seen as likely oppressive… due to context.
also, given the transphobia thing, and scientific/anthropology defining female as the biological sex and woman as the associated gender, one might think you’re slipping transphobia into regular conversation…
and of course people like simple heuristics so “guys who call women ‘females’ are likely bad people”, works well enough….
It’s worth noting that the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ are adjectives, not nouns, so if you want to be technical then it’s erroneous to use them thusly. That is, it is correct to say “I am male”, but to say “I am a male” is grammatically erroneous.
In common speech, people don’t tend to describe other human beings with these two adjectives, i.e. most people would say “she is a woman” rather than “she is female” (note, not “she is a female” because ‘female’ is not a noun). However, we do commonly describe animals using these adjectives, and colloquially the noun is commonly dropped. E.g., “it’s a female” is seen as a perfectly normal way to describe a horse when it’s understood that the other party knows that you mean “it’s a female horse”. This is why it is considered offensive to refer to a woman as “a female”: it implies that she is an object, less than human and more suitably treated as livestock.
I only have two dictionaries, but both have male and female as both adjectives and nouns. In what dictionary are you seeing them only as adjectives?
Even dictionary.com has “noun: a male person” and “noun: a female person”, which goes directly against both your grammar point and your livestock point.
Hopefully you’re just a linguistic prescriptivist with a preferred dictionary that doesn’t match mine. Edit: removed a rude remark
That said, as a descriptivist, I accept that those words (as nouns or otherwise) are changing to sometimes be derogatory, so I try not to use them to describe people, just to avoid my intentions being misunderstood.
Just a thoughtless prescriptivist, repeating what I’d understood from previous such discussions, without having done my own due diligence. 🤷 I stand corrected.
The main difference is that humans see other animals as purchasable or otherwise controllable and generally only refer to their sex when forcing them to breed. Women don’t like the comparison.