It's fine if it's consistent imo.
Men and women - 👍
Males and females - 👍
Boys and girls - 👍
Guys and gals - 👍
Men and females - 👎
Men and girls - 👎
Men and chicks - 👎
Seadogs and wenches - 🏴☠️
ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪
Comrades - ☭
males and females is still psychotic if you're not specifically talking science like biology, statistics, etc. adjectives as nouns are rarely a good sign in general; it's almost always derogative.
also boys and girls would be fine except most people who use (or claim to use) boys do it in familiar sense only. they'd never call a 40 year old jacked man they don't know a boy, but they'd easily call a grown ass woman they don't know a girl. exceptions are some phrases like "big boy" or "my boy" in endearing sense but that's not how "girl" is generally used, which is a substitute for "woman".
males and females is still psychotic if you’re not specifically talking science
Not really--as just one example, if you want to refer to something that is relevant to all ages, there is no single word that does the job more succinctly. Example: "Females blink about twice as often as males." <-- why should I have to write "Women and girls blink about twice as often as men and boys.", when better-fitting single terms exist that 'do trick'?
It's intellectually lazy people who imbue a bunch of sinister motivation into the words themselves, because it's easier than actually paying attention to what the person is actually saying, and assessing that.
Tamales and females
Men and chicks - 👎
What about "dudes and chicks?"
Picture you gettin down inside a picture tube.
“Dudes and dudettes” seems more on the level.
dudes and dudettes?
Context is king, so I don't think this is universal. Decent list though.
Chaps and dames
Bros and broads - 🤔
The ONLY time it’s fine is if it’s in a medical report or scientific paper. Written by actual doctors or scientists. And it is done to dehumanize the subject to make it easier for, say, a medical examiner to write a report without breaking down.
Using male and female for people is inheritantly dehumanizing, and that’s only ok in very specific circumstances.
Folks 👨🌾
Dicks and chicks. Like the band.
Claims to be fe-male
Isn’t man made out of iron
Disappointment
Remember kids, iron man is Fe male.
Not even ferrous, smh my head.
This is EXACTLY what I hear.
If you need me I'll be over in the corner stroking my lobes
My mind immediately goes to the Ferengi whenever someone says "females" about women.
They sound like Ferengi lmao
"hUmOn FeEeMaLe!"
Don't even get me started on how the average right-wing/incel/pilled male is basically already an honorary ferengi...
Sharpen their teeth and give them some giant lobes and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Some of them even shave their heads already...
Dead
F
I sometimes hear furries mess up and refer to women as "female humans" or something along those lines, but that's mainly because furries usually think in "male/female" instead of "man/woman" (or at least all the ones I've met seem to). For an example, "Cat-woman" can be kinda ambiguous and (at least imo) sounds kinda odd since "woman" is usually exclusive to female humans. In this example, are we talking about a woman who's obsessed with cats, a woman who is a cat (a female feline with human features), an anime cat girl (a woman with cat features), or a DC Comics character (a woman who dresses up like a cat)?
Otherwise though, yeah. Yeah, especially, especially when someone refers to women as "females" as in "check out those females over there". That's creepy. Even furries would rather say something like, "check out those gals over there", regardless of context.
Edit: also, does this hypothetical person say "males" too, or is it "man/female"? "Man/female" is a massive red flag.
As a woman who is bothered by the "females" thing, "female humans" doesn't sound bad to me. It's because "female" is used as an adjective here. It's the same reason "black women" sounds fine, but "blacks" sounds bad. It's reducing someone to their gender only, as if they're not humans, too. It feels otherimg.
Thanks for writing that out. I'd never quite groked why it (and similar wording) sounded wrong: reducing a person to an adjective.
Yeah, it does bother me, but not for the same reason. It’s something I associate moderately with terf lingo. But it’s a yellow flag and not a red one
but that’s mainly because furries usually think in “male/female”
I wonder if that's because that's how they're tagged on e621, or if they're tagged that way because furries already referred to them in those terms.
My girlfriend calls women "females".
Where is your god now, Raychelle?
Does she pass the Bechdel test?
Is muffled sapphic moaning considered dialogue?
How I use and it will still catch issues:
Male/Female - Sex
Man/Woman (He/She) - Gender.
Cultural anthropology has recognized gender as being different from sex in textbooks since the 70s from what I remember (so half a century). My minor was in Cultural Anthropology so I remember always seeing it in college (2008-2013)
Science will continue to change as we learn more about the universe, so things are dynamic and ever growing to fuller understanding.
Also language is fluid, and changes over time/ location / culture , really.
One could argue It is inherently sexist to call people using the term female as sexist because you are using the assumption that they believe female is somehow different or lesser... And then agreeing by saying they shouldn't call you that. Instead of empowing the term female to mean something equal to male, we would be changing the term over time to mean less than male, which it should not.
That would be something I would enjoy hearing experts in linguistics and cultural anthropology discuss.
That said I try not to use woman/man or any other identifier outside of they if I can. Terry went to the park. If I have to I will revert back to saying Terry again being redundant rather than saying she/he went to watch the ducks play in the pond, as we have to assume gender to assign that Terry is a she or he unless we know them personally, and the name could be used for either. (In reality all names are void of sex or gender, they are simply a name). If I call a tree an Walnut tree it has done nothing to tell me that it is male/female, man/woman, it has told me it is an entity that we call Walnut.
A bitonist will tell you a Walnut tree is monoecious, meaning that it can produce everything on its own to complete the reproductive process. Hermaphroditic plants do not, they contain part of what is need for reproduction, like humans... Which we also classify as hermopheodites. So if we see a rose, a cherry tree, a chicken, or a human, we split them into a category we label as sex. Male and female are the term we usually see. (Most vegetables fall into this category, but that's unrelated)
In a world where we fight for feminism (equality among sexes) we would say all pieces are equal and should have equal rights. Those pieces are male/female in humans.
Our role in society varies and the way others treat, react, interact, whatever you wish to view it as, is what we label as Gender, and gender roles. Humans for the most part have tried to practice monogamy for various reasons. That isn't something that vegatables have to worry about as much.
So feminism within gender would refer to equality of rights within the construct of those interactions having to do with gender. So we label one part of that group women, and one part men in humans, and there is overlap (in both sex and gender).
Overlap is fine and naturally will exist in both sex and gender. Neither sex nor gender should inherently make one person less than another. That is the full scope of how I view feminism. I feel you cannot choose sex, not even medically at this stage but the future may be different, you CAN choose gender as it is your role in this world and a person should be able to choose how they wish their life to be interacted with. If a male/man wants to be be a mechanic by day and florist by night that is his choice, and nothing should look at them as being any more or less for any of their choices so long as they are not blocking the choice of another person's ability to choose their path. My view on life is about the freedom of choice.
So to say that men, women... Any other identifier someone chooses and aspires towards should have any lesser rights in society I would say is wrong. It is against their freedom to live their life with their choices.
All that said... I feel someone using a name/identifier incorrectly is just ignorant or willfully trying to be against others life choices. Many are ignorant and that is what education is for. I will learn more every day and learn how wrong I have been all my life. Those who are willfully trying to be against others though.. they are the issues we run into. So if Fred says his coworker is a female to his monogamous partner, it doesn't mean Fred is a problem as much as that Fred may not have understood the terminology he was using was different than the expectations of the listeners. Ignorance. You can overcome ignorance through understanding, and education. Calling them an issue, often creates more of a rift.
Even if you want to separate sex and gender and define sex using sexual characteristics (not actually a good idea, see works by Judith Butler and Julia Serano among others, although I wont fight that point here), almost no sexual characteristics are immutable. The only ones that I can think of are chromosomes and gametes, but chromosomes aren't even binary (or observable without a microscope) and gametes arent a good basis either -- should being infertile affect your sex?
That's not really how sex and gender work, as the other person already pointed out, but in reality the distinction is much simpler. When talking about humans:
Male/Female: adjectives
Man/Woman: nouns
She is a woman. She's a female professor. She is talking to her male colleague. He's a man.
It's really as simple as that.
The only time you'd use female/male as nouns is when talking about animals.
The lion is on guard, as another male approaches. The females keep their distance.
Whatever you do, don't google male chicks. God the food industry is awful
During the whole Olympic controversy on the Algerian boxer, Imane Khelif, questioning her actual gender, someone was making mental gymnastics that she still has testerone level higher than "vanilla females".
Lol, vanilla females. That alone says a lot.
Not that we need to open this can of worms here, but it's a pet peeve of mine that "vanilla" has become a term used to mean plain, boring, sheltered, standard, mediocre, underwhelming, basic, and uninteresting.
Vanilla is an amazing flavor that comes from orchids that must be hand pollinated to cultivate at scale, and has a long and interesting history. It's the second most valuable spice after saffron.
Just feels wrong to use that as a synonym for bland and blah.
IIRC the reason for this is because synthetic vanilla flavour was one of the first to be produced, so while actual vanilla is still quite valuable, it became the go-to 'default' flavour.
Well depends on context i guess. Like saying "my women teacher" just doesn't sound as good as "my female teacher"
The most offensive part is using the noun as plural when it's meant to be singular, as in your example
There's vanishingly few places where the use of the word female is correct. The test is generally if the word male would also be correct and not weird there. If the speaker is talking about men and females then we have a problem.
There's also a couple exceptions where the misogynist language got assimilated but it's so normal that you can't tell just by their use of the word. Like the military talking about female soldiers. For example there is a need to distinguish between male and female body armor. But also they talk about the needs of soldiers and female soldiers without a hint of disparagement. It's just how they make it clear there needs to be a second latrine ditch and the camp shower needs to have at least canvas walls. The only fix most of us can see for this is persistently referring to men as male soldiers too because women soldiers sounds weird and doesn't solve the problem of default soldier vs qualifier soldier.
Exactly. The use of "female" is clinical in that context. It's meant to be sterile, emotionless, professional, and adequately descriptive.
I would say as a general rule its fine when you aren't talking about people, ex: female body armor, female frog, etc
vanishingly few
As it should be. Equality is crucial, and women's rights generally pave the way for minorities. Uff. I hate that this is usually how it is, but look how far women have come since the turn of the 20th century - hell, even the 21st century
Imagine getting fitted with body armor suited for a different body type and having to just deal with it when rounds are coming at you. Yeah, we need a new language to make sense of non-cis people in the military, but we shouldn't sacrifice their lives because of it.
I bet you're in the same boat. In the interim, we use the language necessary to keep us alive and respect everyone in our crew in the process. But yeah, guys calling girls "females" outside of that is weird and definitely a red card for dating. That should be the brunt of our attention.
I agree with the post. It's coded derogatory speech while being technically correct. Personally, I would go as far to say it's a dog-whistle and is absolutely a flag, especially if it renders any speech clunky and labored, or side-steps a person's gender transition status.
Also, here's something I've observed that may be relevant.
IMO, most of the time people use gender when telling a story, it's not relevant information in the first place. In light of recent events, public awareness, and politics, non-gendered speech (in English at least) is automatically the most inclusive way to go and it's a good habit to develop. The exceptions here are where it's information that supports the story, disambiguates complicated situations (e.g. talking about a drag persona), or where it's gender affirming in some way (e.g. respecting pronoun preferences).
I see this happen a lot, especially where woman/female is used as extra information when expressing anger, frustration, and disgust. For example, I hear "this woman cut me off in traffic" far more than "this man cut me off in traffic", with "this person" or "a BMW driver" as a maybe-neutral-but-also-likely-male coded qualifier. To me, it suggests a kind of negative bias for gender, which may or may not be unconscious (depends on the person). It may seem like a small thing, but it's freaking everywhere and it's gotta stop.
For the rare occasion where sex or gender supports the story, "my teacher, who is a woman, ..." or "my teacher, (s)he..." does the job. Yeah, it's is a bit tougher on the tongue, but you should only need to say it once for the whole telling.
Same goes for race. The number of times a story starts with "this black guy..." and the story has nothing to do with race is way too high. Especially from white people who just say "this guy" if the person was white. It just shows your implicit (or explicit) bias and that you think of someone differently because of the colour of their skin and you're attempting to encode that feeling within your language.
My incel cousin refers to women as "chicks and babes". Then if he sees an unattractive woman, refuses to call them anything.
It's really frustrating dealing with him because he constantly whines about his loneliness and isn't aware how his small mindedness is causing people to bail on him.
I agree with most of what you said, but I think using male and female as adjectives is far better than the clunk. Additionally it can help break the whole people thinking of a trans woman as a “male woman” bs. (I have a whole rant about how the “sex and gender are different” thing is often used to ignore the biological realities of the effects of medical transition).
But for the most part it’s smoother to say and can make the fact that you need to mention that you’re speaking about a woman less of a big deal. For example “My cousin, who is a woman, has been having a particularly difficult time finding a girlfriend in her rural town.” Compared to “My employee, a female engineer, is particularly diligent about making sure our products are comfortable for people of a variety of body sizes”
It's not even technically correct, you'd have to talk about female humans to be technically correct.
Yeah this always struck me as bizarre, and is proven to be a huge red flag. Honestly you refer to a human woman as a female outside of a clinical or scientific context, you're just being creepy and weird.
I had a woman boss who would always refer to women as female (like “you know the manager of that department is a female?!”). I’m still not sure how I feel about it.
Sounds like she's talking about an animal
It would be worrying if the department's boss was a plant, or fungi...
I think the best response is always "you don't know that". Sex and Gender are not the same thing, and adults should know by now that they can't tell what's in someone else's pants by looking at their face.
Well I did once explain the difference between sex and gender as she seemed confused and was unable to wrap her head around a colleague using they/them, but that led to a slightly vacant yet patronising expression on her face. Also, call me a coward but I’m not going to clap back at my own goddamn boss, I prefer my working days to not be more of a living hell than they already are. Regardless, she’s retired now.
First it doesn't really matter what's between their legs unless you intend to date them. It's easy enough to determine what most people identify as and thus what you ought to treat them as.
That said you can tell what virtually everyone has in there pants. 99.5% of people are cisgender. Of the people who are transgender it is usually not terribly hard to see most of the time both what their birth gender is and what gender they identify as which is why its pretty trivial to be polite. Although it is impossible to tell if someone has had surgery at least in the US you could bet on no and be right most of the time because of cost and inequality around here.
If you want to only specify gender then that is the correct word to use. If someone wants to be derogative towards a certain group, the said person can twist the context of almost every known word so that it sounds rude and disrespectful. Does not mean everyone else should stop using that word in the correct context. I don't know what else to say.
It's equally, or more, correct to say "female/male people". It's just like "poor people" is ok, but "the poors" makes you sound like an asshat. Including "people" makes the difference.
Sure, like almost every time I've ever used the word "female" it is in the context of "my male friends X, while my female friends Y." And yet, while that is ok according to your comment, every fucking time I catch flak enough that now I say "my male friends X while my woman friends Y" instead, which sounds so dumb but nobody can get mad at me so fuck em.
Including "people" makes all the difference to you, but others will be needlessly offended at such an innocuous statement due to not fully understanding whatever they copy their angry opinions from.
I know/knew several women that say "females". The aphorism holds up in that case as well.
Which is worse, "Females" or "Ladies" (said with an inflection)
Depends if you're addressing your male friends
I've heard women refer to "males" a million times, should I be offended?
Yes, if it's in the same context as above
Thats the problem. Nobody can or will define the context, and even if they do, only the person who said the original statement understands their own intent. This is just feel-good prejudice geared toward clicks and engagement.
Urg, i get second hand embarrassment everytime i hear/read it, i's disgusting lol
In my experience, lots of black Americans of both sexes do this, completely 'dryly' with no ill intent. So this sentiment always strikes me as racist or at least racially insensitive, lol.
It's really not that hard to identify misogyny--it's not the word(s), it's how they're used.
counterpoint:
man and men, just like woman and women sound the same when speaking
male and males, female and females is clearer
Just say menses and womenses when in the plural
Gollum speak nice
I love this. I might actually start doing this unironically.
Lol, menses.
I'm sorry, but I did the thing where I write a comment and then delete it because I assume no one cares about my opinion
since you replied though, I should make it clear what I said to give context
I said that man and men, as well as woman and women, sound the same when speaking. male and males, female and females, make a clearer distinction
counterpoint:
I don't want you to call me female or male. Creeps call me female and bigots call me male.
how do you pronounce man/men/woman/women? man and men might be confusable but woman and women are very different pronunciations
It probably depends on slight differences in regional dialect. Where I am from I would say woman and women are often pronounced pretty similarly, while man and men are easier to tell apart.
In my region, woman is often pronounced with an 'uh' sound, like womuhn. It's pretty easy to confuse with women. I have noticed that people in my area will sometimes vary up the 'wo' part of women and woman depending on which one they are using. So women becomes 'wimen', and woman becomes 'wumuhn'.
counterpoints:
This would only hold up if the person is using male/female and not man/female
And assuming this still holds up, why not go with male/woman? The type of people to use this shouldn't be bothered, i mean thry throw the term "alpha male" all the time
Oh wait, i think the solution is to just use man/woman unless you're in a very biological discussion
Enunciate.
So does sheep and sheep
It doesn't really matter
Isn't it /mæn/ and /mɛn/, /ˈwʊm ən/ and /ˈwɪm ɪn/? Can be a bit hard to differenciate in the first case, but the second pair is very different.
