I am not a native English speaker and I have sometimes referred to people as male and female (as that is what I have been taught) but I have received some backlash in some cases, especially for the word “female”, is there some negative thought in the word which I am unaware of?
I don’t know if this is the best place to ask, if it’s not appropriate I have no problem to delete it ^^
Female as an adjective is perfectly fine.
A female patient, a female politician, a female customer, etc. That’s the best way to refer to those.
What’s bad is using ‘female’ as a noun: "A female. "
In general, you just don’t use adjectives-as-nouns to refer to people. You don’t call someone “a gay”, “a black”, or “a Chinese”. That is offensive, and “a female” has the same kind of feel.
(there are exceptions to the above: you can call someone ‘an American’ or 'A German", but not “A French”. I don’t understand why - if you can’t feel your way, best just avoid it)
Now, you could get around it by calling someone “a female person” - except that we already have a word for “female person”, and that’s “woman”. And to go out of your way to avoid saying “woman” makes you sound like some kind of incel weirdo, and you don’t want that.
My wife tells me that using as an adjective is just as bad and that I should always say “woman”, e.g. a woman politician and never a female politician.
I generally disagree and it seems fine and not disrespectful at all. But it’s somehat less up to me - I’m not a female.
Interesting point with adjectives vs nouns.
‘a Frenchman’ would be more correct than ‘a French’. Because French is only an adjective, while American and German are both nouns and adjectives. But Frenchman is not gender neutral like German or American.
Could go with Francophone, but that’s any french speaking person so that includes canadians, africans, etc.
And, it would seem to make sense to go with Frank, but the Franks were originally germans, then expanded their territory to include France, and the name stuck there but not in their original territory, so is it really correct to refer to the French as Franks? Since no one does it, I would guess not.
And to go out of your way to avoid saying “woman” makes you sound like some kind of incel weirdo, and you don’t want that.
I’d just like to emphasise this. It’s not that using a different term is intrinsically bad, it’s just that the people who tend to do it are not cool and you don’t want to look like you’re associated with them.
It’s ridiculous that a perfectly fine word is seen as insult used by a certain type of people.
It’s ridiculous that a perfectly fine word is seen as insult used by a certain type of people.
That’s how association works
I can have the best and most lasting solution to a problem ever, but my company still won’t allow me to put “THE FINAL SOLUTION” in marketing copy.
And they shouldn’t.
I feel like a lot of answers here are dancing around why people find it offensive without really addressing it.
As an adjective “female” is completely fine to distinguish between genders when applied to humans. As in “a female athlete” or when a form asks you to select “male” or “female” (ideally with additional options “diverse” and “prefer not to answer”).
Where it’s problematic is when it’s used as a noun. In English “a male” and “a female” is almost exclusively reserved for animals. For humans we have “a man” and “a woman”. Calling a person “a female” is often considered offensive because it carries the implication of women being either animals, property or at least so extremely different from the speaker that they don’t consider them equal. This impression is reinforced by the fact that the trend of calling women “females” is popular with self-proclaimed “nice guys” who blame women for not wanting to date them when in reality it’s their own behavior (for example calling women “females”) that drives potential partners away.
So in itself, the word “female” is just as valid as “male” and in some contexts definitely the right word to use but the way it has been used gives it a certain negative connotation.
In English “a male” and “a female” is almost exclusively reserved for animals.
But also important to remember that quite a bunch of people are note native speakers without the feeling for finer distinctions in meaning. Like for me, since I learned english mostly in a scientific setting, those words habe little negative connotation on their own. They became negative co-notated through the use of misogynistic communities.
quite a bunch
Speaking of non-native speakers. This is a phrase that’s clear enough and makes complete sense, but does come across as quite clunky and unnatural to a native English speaker. I couldn’t articulate why exactly, but “a bunch” doesn’t really take “quite” quite as well as some other similar words. “Quite a few”, or “a bunch” (without the quite) would have worked better here. Or just “many”, which is probably what I would have gone with.
Honestly, anyone who can speak a second language has a better grasp of what a noun and an adjective are than yer average English speaker. They’re just at risk of picking up colloquialisms from the manosphere, if they hang around in the wrong kinds of places.
Honestly, anyone who can speak a second language has a better grasp of what a noun and an adjective are than yer average English speaker.
Why?
I mean you could argue americans aren’t native speakers either. But on the other hand, they did what the british wanted to but couldn’t, purge much of the french from their language.
I would argue that US-americans are native speakers of US-American english, which is a bit different from english spoken in england.
It’s potentially offensive when people say men and females, which is often why it comes up online. Using either male or female as a noun is dehumanizing, in that it’s not commonly used to refer to people, but mostly animals (law enforcement and military use them as nouns, but they’re also intentionally distancing themselves from the people in reports).
Basically, “women” feels weird for a lot of English speakers, but “girls” sounds creepy, so they try for something else. Just go with women, 99% of the time, it’s perfectly fine
What about when specifying the gender of your friend? “My woman friend” sounds really weird to me. I usually say, “my female friend” because it sounds more natural, but I don’t want to sound like an incel/misogynist.
For what it’s worth, I say “my male friend” as well.
“women” feels weird for a lot of English speakers
Why does it feel weird? (not a native speaker here)
Because there’s no good equivalent to “guys” for women, and women often feels too old/formal. If I’m talking about a group of 19 year olds, then they are women and men (and there’s no good word for NB adults, other than “adults,” that I can think of, either), but 19 year olds still feel younger than women and men. “Guy” is any age and denotes a peer or relaxed relationship, but “woman” and “man” don’t have those connotations. I would talk about the man who works at the bank and the guy who works at the coffee shop, as an indicator of familiarity, if that helps. If you speak a language with a formal you and an informal you, it feels like a similar distinction to me, though those are also all different.
“Guys” can refer to groups of women, and I definitely call my sisters guys, but if you talk about “a guy,” it isn’t gender neutral where I’m from.
“Lady” singular denotes age, but not formality, though the formality difference between “lady” and “ladies” is hard (I could absolutely see someone saying “some lady was an absolute asshole at the gas station today,” but “two ladies were absolute assholes at the gas station,” is weird).
Gals is the term that matches guys, but it seems like it fell out of favor when women was promoted as a response to the use of girls in a negative way to describe women (adults) in an infantilizing way. Like it was common to say men’s sports and girls sports in the same way that incels use men and females.
FYI: Ladies goes with lords, as in lords and ladies.
I’m torn here. It’s a good way for me to talk about my peers (early thirties) in the third person, but it doesn’t quite fit for second person for me. (Edit: ”guy” is also not great for second person, now that I think about it, so maybe it’s more equivalent than I realized. Though for plural third person, it still isn’t 1:1, imo. “Two guys in my class” has a different connotation from “two ladies in my class,” but I can’t put my finger on why.)
“Ladies” feels formal/salesy (if someone addresses a group of women I’m in as “ladies,” it feels like they’re either a server for our group dinner or trying to quickly build rapport) to me, whereas “lady” can often feel straight up rude ( “hey, lady!” sounds like Bart Simpson said it vs. “hey, ladies!” which could mean so many different things depending on the context, but seems less annoyed at least).
I think it’s because it’s mostly used by “sigma male” seing womens as objects(not sure thought, but that’s what i’ve seen).
