the feminine species
Does this mean two females are able to produce sexually viable offspring?
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?
How have you applied age to the word “man”? Unless you’re not an adult and “man” to you means being an adult?
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.
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).
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.
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.
… honey, there could be another reason you don’t like being called a man. 👀 Just a thought.
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.
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.
I’ve never encountered a man or woman that hated being called whichever was appropriate
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.
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).
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.
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
No, they want to be called LA class nuclear powered attack submarine.
We’re in shit posting after all.
Happy Xmas, ya filthy animal!
Is that a US specific term? Do British women get called Astute class nuclear attack subs?
Girl?
Princess is a nasty thing to call a woman. https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/princesses-are-nsfw-f9e6c3d4532d
Female humans
Kinda long way to say women
There is nothing wrong with “males/females” though. OOP is making a big deal of nothing.
Objectifying women is considered bad form. It’d be like saying they’re just a sub-class of Person.
Outside of a clinical/scientific setting? It’s comes off a bit creepy. If a guy in a social setting refers to women as “females,” it seems derogatory- as if they were talking about lesser animals.
In online forums like Lemmy or Reddit, if someone calls women “females,” I always picture that person as a Ferengi from Star Trek.
Outside of a clinical/scientific setting? It’s comes off a bit creepy
Male/female toilets sound creepy to you?
Men/women - gender (social). Male, female - sex (biology). It’s very simple, just use the right one depending on the context.
Men/women - nouns
Male/female - adjectives
I think the reason male and female get equated with biology is because biologists need to describe individuals in terms of characteristics within the species.
Like, “I live with a small, white, female felis catus and a tall, Caucasian, male homo sapiens” is a weird way to tell people that I live with my cat and my husband outside of a scientific context.
This isn’t as simple as you are implying as if you want to be a bro to trans people more nuance is generally required. Male and Female are not used strictly scientifically in context. Male and Female are often used as adjective forms of man and woman. Take the example of a male or female firefighter - if a trans man is a firefighter refering to him as a female firefighter using this reasoning comes across as fairly transphobic because it feels like you are either trying to utilize some sort of technical linguistic dodge to find an occasion to misgender them or your purpose is to out them to people unawares of their trans status.
Even when people use male and female as nouns instead of adjectives this transphobic reading applies because a lot of fairly obnoxious people will try and use these words as shorthand to imply that trans identities don’t matter and to avoid calling you by terms that align to your identity or to isolate trans identify out of discussions. This is why you hear the phrase “Assigned male/female at birth” used by the trans community (though it actually originates from the intersex community) or “birth sex” to refer to groups that include non-binary people instead of just male or female. That linguistic abstraction is important because it implies removal by way of time. In trans terms one can be treated as female at birth given the assumption of cisness for infants implying that that term could be inaccurate in the present day.
By contrast “Trans Identitied males/females” is a transphobic dog whistle. “Biologic males/females” has the same vibe because from a scientific prospect the term is so bloody vague it is practically meaningless. The speaker is just trying to imply the social category is irrelevant or putting emphasis on an assumed physicality. Like if someone says for example “biological males in women’s sports” you know the entire point they are going to be making is total exclusion before they even bother to elaborate further.
The reality is words Male and Female still represent social categories unless you append onto them more specific adjectives in term like Phenotypic, chromasomal or so on. These words are not immune from the cultural moment of negotiation of trans inclusion.
