when you use female as a noun, that's correct. it's creepy, dehumanizing and makes you sound like a dorky alien talking about "the earth human eggbert" or smth to that extend.

using female as an adjective makes sense in some cases, though. it seems a bit less widespread nowadays, but historically it's a huge part of trans jargon. when you read Leslie Feinberg :feinberg-sicko: , zee refers to hyrself as female when it pertains to hyr assigned gender at birth, some biological aspects etc., but wouldn't call hyrself a woman. likewise, feminine and masculine can be used to refer to the social aspect of gender alone. This is also why we say AFAB (assigned female at birth) and not AWAB or AGAB ("assigned woman ..." or "assigned girl ...").

Man and woman are terms that refer to the entire person, as a whole and are therefore inseperable from their respective social roles. they are never exclusively biological. they describe the entirity of our being as gendered individuals, they always include how we perceive ourselves and how we present to others. that distinction is actually the very reason we find it weird to call a woman a female, it strips her of her personhood. but that reductiveness that makes the term offensive as a noun also means that it can have use as a more neutral adjective, when you do not want to make assumptions about gender and only refer to sex.