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 ^^
My daughter can be pretty offensive. Quite the potty mouth for an 8 year old.
It’s super context dependent. Asking “How do I ask a woman out?” Vs “How do I ask a female out?” say very different things about you.
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
It’s mostly this, I would say. But in general there’s a valid context to use male/female and another valid context to use man/woman or girl/boy or lady/gentleman.
Most people are not going to hold someone speaking English as a second language to task over it. But if you’re speaking natively, there’s no real excuse not to know when it is right to use the correct term.
But that’s just my own opinion.
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.
Nonono, it’s always okay to use it as an adjective, so that’s fine!
“women” feels weird for a lot of English speakers
Why does it feel weird? (not a native speaker here)
woman reads as “wo-man”
women reads as “we-men”English is weird. I blame the British.
While we’re at it, loose and lose. Somehow taking away an o makes the vowel sound longer and makes the consonant voiced?
Contextual irregularities.
There’s a loss connection in there that ties into it.
Very mish-mash sort of stuff, eh?
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 know gal is considered an equivalent, but the only people I’ve ever known to use it were Girl Scout leaders and square dance callers, so it doesn’t feel at all equivalent to me. I don’t know if this is widespread and/or why the word never gained as much traction as “guy,” but I definitely don’t enjoy being called a gal. It feels infantilizing and othering to me, like when people say “and dudettes!”
Interestingly, gal comes from “girl,” whereas guy comes from guy fawkes. I would have made a very unwise bet that “guy” was older.
Terms for the sexes/genders are treated differently. In the US, the only term I can think of that has been used derogatively for men is ‘boy’, and only in the context of racism for disparaging adult men who are black.
On the other side, most of the terms have been used negatively in different contexts. Women were often called girls to infantilize them. Gals was used to avoid formality. ‘Ladies of the night’ spoiled the term ladies because of the association with prostitution.
On the flip side a boys club isn’t disparagingly to infantilize men, as shown in the song ‘The boys are back in town’. A girls night out is generally not seen as a negative, but calling women’s sports in college girl’s sports is while men’s sports tend to just be called sports.
So while there are exceptions, other terms for men terms tend to not be used negatively like other terms for women do and that is why women’s terms tend to fall out of favor over time while men’s stick around.
This is why I love the word “y’all”
Thanks!
This just seems women are more touchy about this stuff then men.
Someone called me out on reddit for using the word girls for women and it was sexist because it is infantising, and it was stupid because they were making out I don’t call men boys. When I absoultely do, in fact I do it more than the alternative. Really the only way I was sexist on that is that I don’t do it as much as I do with men so if anything I should do it more.
But you can’t win, someone’s always going to be offended
As a non-native speaker I find woman more offensive than female. Noun male/female puts all as equal. Girls, boys, birds, ponies. Woman, though, seems to be de-attached. Especially when talking about humankind it’s common to refer to humans as just „man”. „No man been there”, „for all mankind”, „dog is a man’s best friend”. As it applies to man only and woman doesn’t count
Just say ladies. That’s polite.
While generally true, there are some people from older generations that associate ladies with prostitution as in ‘ladies of the night’ and find it offensive.
Yes, I have known quite a few and they are in their 60s to 80s right now.
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 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.
Male & female are sexes, not genders.
Can you explain the difference? Aren’t genders another way of saying their biological sex?
No. Gender is largely a social construct based on psychological, cultural, and behavioral mores, although given that there are differences in the brain between Trans and Cis people of the same biological sex, there does appear to be something of a biological component.
Biological sex is tied entirely to the genome, and may or may not match a person’s gender.
Not OP, but please, any answer you get, including mine, research for yourself. Most will just push their own opinion as fact. Or pass off someone else’s opinion as fact.
In many cultures around the world, these terms are interchangeable. In the US, they were (and for many/most, still are) the same thing until not too long ago. When people were doing gender reveal parties 20 years ago, no one was correcting them that’s it’s a “sex reveal not gender reveal”.
The modern usage of “gender” didn’t exist until the 1950s, popularized by John Money, and if you want to research that deviant pervert, be my guest.
Interesting ty for your input
They’re both.
No. Sex is just about biology. Sex is just about which part you play in the creation of life: do you carry the offspring or not? If yes, you are female. Gender is some dumb shit we made up.
In any society where male roles and female roles differ (e.g. fathers play ball with their kids; mothers teach their kids to sew), male and female are also genders in addition to being sexes. What else would you call these genders?
Gender’s not something I care about (social roles given to sexes). Honestly, I think it’s a worthless convention & conversation.
Sex is just what we call our roles in the creation of life. One sex carries the baby, the other causes the baby. This cannot be changed to the other. A female, regardless of their precious feelings & conscious identity, is the one that becomes pregnant. The male, even if he’s trans, is the one that causes the pregnancy.
When I ask for someone’s sex, I couldn’t care less about how they feel or what pronouns they’d like to be called by. I’m literally not referring to their consciousness, just what type of meat robot that consciousness is in.
Your response demonstrates why you’re not qualified to have an opinion on what is or isn’t a gender.
I’m qualified to know gender ≠ sex. Your opinion demonstrates why you’re delusional.
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I was never disputing that, so I don’t see what what point you think you’re making.
What is the gender of a cis boy?
I guess the gender is “cis boy?” But I don’t care about gender. I’d consider gender a mental state. While sex is a physical state. Sex determines the part your body plays in biological sexual reproduction, under normal/usual/typical/common genetic circumstances. Aka you either get pregnant or you cause someone else to be pregnant.
Again, why the fuck does gender matter beyond an individual’s mental state? It’s literally a different matter from sex. Hence why trans is even a thing at all.
Great explanation! Spot on.
Discussion of offensive racial language
There’s a similar distinction with “black” in regards to race. Referring to someone as a black person or people as black folks is largely acceptable. Referring to someone as a “black” or people as “blacks” on the other hand sounds old fashioned at best and actively dehumanizing at worst.
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Ooh I found it a bit confusing as I collapse comments very often, and it looked similar to it
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.
Yeah, I definitely wouldn’t judge someone who doesn’t know better. I’m not a native speaker myself. I just wanted to clarify as good as I can because it seems like OP wants to make an honest effort to use it correctly.
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.
I know that this is popular especially among Latin American speakers, but the phrase “US-American” is very unidiomatic in English and makes you stand out quite significantly. In English, the term “American” means someone from the United States of America. It’s clear enough because “America” is always a shortened form of that country, while the large western hemisphere landmass is collectively “the Americas”, since the anglosphere almost universally uses a seven-continent model with North and South America being two continents (and with some more “enlightened” people preferring a six-continent model merging Eurasia—but you’ll rarely find a native English speaker who refers to “America” as a single continent).
You got it, I just happen to have quite some friends from south and middle America and since it was important to them and make sense to me I took it over in my vocabulary.
Fun fact (that I have heard and was not able to verify with a quick search so take this with a grain of salt): the English spoken in the US is closer to the way it was spoken in Britain in the 1700s. The gentry made an intentional change to their pronunciation in response to the rise of the middle class, which filtered down to the masses.
Yeah, seems like a more recent thing. Like if there were a bunch of varying ages then I’d just go males or females, but because of how meanings change I just don’t use it anymore to not even risk the chance of offending someone. If they find it offensive than who am I to say it isn’t. So I just removed it from my vocab outside of science, since I don’t want to deal with the drama.
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.
I think it’s German slipping in. Thanks for feedback.
This might be a regional thing. For reference I grew up in Oklahoma and “quite a bunch” seems natural and familiar. In British English quite has the opposite meaning so I could see why it wouldn’t make sense in that context. I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t sound right to other Americans due to regional linguistic differences.
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?
Because you don’t have to have any formal education in your native language to speak it; you could blow off or fail English in school. But if you know a second language, there is a much higher chance that you had some formal education in the way of classes or books. You could still fail it or blow it off, but it seems like a reasonable assumption that you’d have a higher chance of having a grasp of grammar concepts.
sorry but I think you are misjudging just how much you learn both grammar and vocabulary from speaking a language natively and possibly misjudging how well education can teach someone a language
languages are these surprisingly complex and irregular things, which are way easier to learn by doing than by trying. often entering school you can already use tenses or grammatical structures that students learning English as a second language will struggle with a few years later in their educational journey, while you can spend that time unknowingly building up an even better subconscious understanding of the language.
Besides, from my experience, having basic Polish and extended English mind you, the tasks you are expected to do in the lessons of ones native language require a way higher degree of mastery than those in the second language of a pupil.
Also, it should be noted that non native speakers, or fluent speakers of multiple languages, can often borrow things from another language into English, either translating fraises literary (ex. once in a Russian year instead of once per blue moon) or using a unrelated word which happens to have a connection in the other language for other reasons (ex. castle and zipper both translate to “zamek” in Polish)
also mind that for a not insignificant number of people, though due to how more connected our world is today this has slightly decreased in the recent years, the level of English they ended up with from school is quite poor.
sorry but I think you are misjudging just how much you learn both grammar and vocabulary from speaking a language natively and possibly misjudging how well education can teach someone a language
languages are these surprisingly complex and irregular things, which are way easier to learn by doing than by trying. often entering school you can already use tenses or grammatical structures that students learning English as a second language will struggle with a few years later in their educational journey, while you can spend that time unknowingly building up an even better subconscious understanding of the language.
It sounds like you are confusing having an ability to speak and understand a language with having a formal education in a language, or just misunderstanding what I was saying. As you point out, people can already speak their native language (more or less) starting from the first day of grammar school. In fact, school isn’t necessary at all for a person to be a native speaker.
The children starting out in school don’t have a clue what a noun or verb is in the language. When someone reaches the point in school where they learn these grammatical concepts, they can do poorly at grasping them or forget about them after they’ve learned them and they are no longer part of the curriculum. They don’t actually need to know these things well (or at all) in order to speak, read, and write. High school students can write an essay in English that shows total mastery of the past progressive verb form without being able to tell you what it is.
On the other hand, when learning a second language (unless one does immersion), a person can’t rely on their native-speaker instinct and therefore will struggle to speak, read, and write if they don’t get the hang of formal grammatical terms to process their language input and compute the output.
reading through your comments I feel like the issue is of interpretation : what I , and possibly others , assumed you were trying to say is that non native English speakers have an advantage when trying to interpret the meaning of words , so sorry about that .
Thinking about it however , I believe I have been taught more about linguistics in my Polish lessons than in my English lessons . Unfortunately , as you have suspected many students will , I forgot a large portion of it , which I am especially unhappy about now that I am getting interested in recreational linguistics , I still remember some of it , with parts of speech (not to be confused with constituents (that joke would be quite a bit better in Polish as constituents literally means parts of (a) sentence in Polish)) being one of the most basic building blocks of language
Maybe it’s only true of my aging generation but we never really encountered grammar until we were required to learn French.
Interesting, english is my third language - but I’m just bad at grammar and spelling in general. Definitely learned grammar in school - just forgot all about it.
something I’d like to add is that while you were not told the rules, you likely learned quite a few of them subconsciously.
personally to this day I struggle with what present perfect and others are, but I can use them easily. similarly I can’t say which grammatical case is which in my native language but I have no issue using them.
Of course. But understanding why calling women “females” is a big red flag is not about your intuitive grasp of the language. We dehumanise people by nounising their adjectives all the time. Are you epileptic, or an epileptic, or just a person with epilepsy?
It’s harder to explain to someone with a poor grasp of English grammar, that’s all. People who are fluent or near fluent because they grew up hearing and speaking a language will often struggle to explain something like this. People who had to learn the grammar consciously probably would not.
Only biologists and coppers need to use “female” as a noun. Everyone else can speak proper, like.
ah I must have misunderstood your comment , I think you may have replied to a different comment than you have intended to ?
also just as a side note , one counter example is many autistic people , myself included prefer the term autistic person rather than person with autism , though to be fair that is moreso an adjective but the way you worded that sentence suggests its also incorrect in some cases yeah um
also I have never met a single copper , really must open myself to new experiences /j :)
I think you got this mostly dead on but I don’t know about it being because anyone thinks women are animals. I do believe the part you wrote about it being about difference/distance is correct though. In fact I think cops refer to suspects as male or female for the same reason. Man and woman sound nothing alike and are easier to say, so there must be some reason not to use those words. I think they say male or female to create distance between them, and not a person, but a gendered wrongdoer. That way they can apply any and all force without feeling as bad about it
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If you’re building a military, de-individualization makes sense and builds cohesion. If you’re building a society or a relationship, de-individualization is gross and abusive when used with intent.
Well, the assholes that use ‘female’ like op described think we’re shoes, locks, purses, sandwiches, androids…
Animal would be a step up, really. At least that’s something that’s alive.
Tangentially to the discussion at hand, I think what we’re running into with females being used in social-level discourse is the hunt for an inoffensive way to describe a potential mate, and to differentiate that word from the more general word.
When I was a kid, chick and all the other overtly misogynistic terms were going out of fashion. Later girls had some time in the spotlight, now it’s females.
One group is looking for a way to politely describe a concept that the other considers inherently inappropriate or offensive.
I don’t think females has ever been used by males to describe a potential partner of the opposite sex, except for groups of males that are notorious for their misogyny. While yeah there’s been a bunch of different terms tried over the decades women was always on the table. It’s kinda telling that it’s been uncomfortable for some males for so long, especially since it’s the easiest choice.
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And yet, they will dance around looking for anything else to say. It’s so bizarre!
Anything can be offensive in the corresponding context.
I mean, I didn’t know “orange” could be offensive, but then Trump showed up.
People that say ‘females’ out loud in public are quickly assumed to never get laid. It’s okay to use when talking or writing about science topics and such.
It’s an adjective not a noun when talking about people. The sort of people who use it as a noun tend to be misogynists and so when people do it they’re often unknowingly writing with a misogynist accent if that makes sense.
male/female usually used for animals, for humans usage of man/woman would be the right way
Humans are animals though. Why do they get offended when they get reminded of that fact? Smh, this is why us members of the galactic community don’t like your species too much. /S
Kinda like how ignorant people only thing humans have consciousness while more and more studies show capability in many animals
Maybe that’s how you animals in your “galactic community” operate, but be careful… a lot of people in these parts eat animals for breakfast. For your own self preservation you might want to come up with some reasons why you’re more than just an animal before we get to barbecue season.
Alright. Time to change living conditions to ‘livestock’. I think some of you do it in your space simulator games. /S
I disagree. Male/female is used plenty with humans, but it tends to be used in a more clinical or ‘objective’ manner, such as in legal documents, autopsy reports, police suspect descriptions, things of that sort.
I think the use of, e.g., “Look at those four males over there”, it has a bit of a connotation of separation of the personhood of the people involved. A man is a living, thinking being; he is worthy of dignity, and he has a soul. A ‘male’ can almost be called an ‘it’: it has a characterization of cold, scientific classification.
Don’t bring science to feminism!
A ‘male’ can almost be called an ‘it’: it has a characterization of cold, scientific classification.
But that’s the issue: its dehumanizing and that’s done intentionally. The use case you mention seems to just be an extension of its usage for livestock rather than an exception. But its an exception to it being used in a misogynistic way while still being a noun.
This is what I said to someone who asked a very similar question about the same thing a while back:
‘Females’ is, effectively, a ‘technical term’ you might say, that isn’t used in normal conversation. It’s used specifically in situations where distance from the subject being discussed is intentional. It is the sort of language used in police reports, medical reports and the like…when it’s even being applied to humans at all. Its use is perhaps more common referring to animals; it’s the sort of terminology you’d expect to hear in a nature documentary.
The people trying to push its use are intending to make the subjects - women - sound ‘other’ and separate and alien by referring to them as ‘females’. Not everyone who is picking up this terminology intends it that way, but the connotations are unavoidable because of how language works in common use, and therefore if you don’t intend it that way, you badly need to be made aware of it so you can stop.
I guess it would be kind of like referring to another person as “human”.
"Hey who helped you with this?”
“This human over here, my co-worker.”
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Male and female are biological terms. Mostly “man/woman” are more appropriate unless you’re specifically talking about biological sex. Particularly since a certain bunch of people is now using “females” with a bit of underlying vitriol, it’d be a good idea to stay away from it.
What is a good term when you don’t want to exclude minors who are not yet women, like six year olds?
‘Women and girls’ seems awkward when talking about sports leagues for people of all ages who are female. “_______ sports are treated as second class by being given the additional description of girl’s or women’s when the sports played by men and boys is just the name of the sport.” is pretty clunky, especially if there are multiple examples that need clarity on which gender’s sport is being described.
I’d sneak a peek at some other league and do whatever they did.
When I say “avoid using ‘female’” (specifically as a noun to mean “woman”) it’s not an absolute. The gist is just to not come off like a fedora-tipping twat. Sometimes it’s used intentionally to objectify or demean “females” in general, or using the “woman/female” distinction as some sort of pointed transphobic shtick.
It’s still a perfectly cromulent word as long as it doesn’t get neckbeardy.
You’d think so, but I have seen the opposite when discussing topics that were true for all ages.
Maybe I just tripped over the most vocal people who don’t understand nuance, since one person actually said to use ‘woman’ to describe a six year old.
The biggest rule of thumb is to be consistent between the genders.
So if you say “men’s and boys’ leagues”, then say “women’s and girls’ leagues”, not “females’ leagues”.
The problem is the “Men and females” phenomenon (even when implied), not the word itself.
Yes, it would be weird to use that combination. I can’t think of why anyone would other than overt sexism. That doesn’t answer the question of what term would work for across ages for either gender though.
It is also weird to see bathrooms labeled as men and ladies instead of men and women. Another example of inconsistency in how society sees women compared to men.
I think the important part is to be consistent. “Female sports leagues don’t get the same attention as male sports leagues”. Of course, that particular sentence sounds weird, but I’m sure it could be made to work. Personally, I’d use “women’s and men’s” and hope that it’s implied that the same is true to girls’ and boys’ leagues.
As for bathrooms, now that I think about it, most are only marked with the signs/images. No words. But “men/women” and “ladies/gents” seems common for places that bother putting words.
Of course, the most common bathroom I see is “CUSTOMERS ONLY” (or sometimes COSTUMERS, lol).
The problem is using it when “woman” is the correct word. If you say stuff like “the female at the customer service desk doesn’t know how to do her job” then you run the risk of being called an incel or ferengi, though if you don’t seem like a sexist, churchy, or maga-hatter, then you can probably get away with it by not sounding like a native speaker. Or just avoid all that like me and don’t talk to people because social interactions of any kind are mentally draining.
Not really offensive on its own, but it carries a reductive and dehumanizing vibe, depending on how it’s used. And the ones who use “female” instead of “woman” are often incels and/or misogynists, giving the term a bad conotation.
Also, Ferengis…
Episode is so stupid, I can’t not laugh.
Jeez, mark that NSFW please
I always think of the ferengis when people use men to describe men, and females to describe women.
Likewise I have seen radical feminists use “male” all the time. Is it okay to classify them as femcels and misandrists?
this! an example of someone always using it in a such a way is Andrew Tate. watch any of his videos where he mentions girls and you’ll immediately understand
The basic rule of thumb is that anyone who gets upset with you using the word female isn’t worth your time. If they’re really going to get upset about you using the word female then they’re probably going to get upset about a lot of other trivial things as well and that’s not the sort of negativity and bitterness you want in your life.
I’ve switched to Lady for a lot of descriptors that I used to use Female. And a lot more They. Or just a physical description, like the person with the dark hair.
Edit: I’m probably trying harder than I need to. I just want to accommodate people.
