Here’s my two cents. It’s hard for people to keep up with the euphemism treadmill. There was a time when the word “female” didn’t have the negative connotation that it does now mostly thanks to co-opting by incels. It should also be stated that the word “male” doesn’t have the same negative connotations and it’s similar to how there’s slurs for black people but none for white people.
So why do people find “female” offensive? Well for starters it’s dehumanizing. Women is a less academic term and female implies some biological essentialism. I think the crux as to why it’s a big deal now is that women do not refer to themselves as females in the manner that men do. Men do not think of themselves as males, they do not call other men males, men call themselves men. male and female are simply outdated terms.
I suspect one day as society moves towards a more genderqueer position men and women will become unacceptable to say too. Idk. Like I think we need to acknowledge that there is such thing as a euphemism treadmill, that languages change, words become offensive or nonoffensive over time, and like all we can do in order to be a fucking decent human bean is to conform to society’s standards as to what is acceptable as according to the treadmill. Unless it’s some shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused. Then in those specific instances we got to run against the treadmill. But in this specific instance, we need to run with the treadmill on this one. Nothing feels better than conforming with society.
Pro-tip:
Never correct a person who refers to women as "females"
Don't ever teach misogynists how to refine their language and to develop a more socially-acceptable way of concealing their attitudes.
Let them throw up those red flags immediately so that people can immediately avoid chuds who use this language.
shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused
I have a strong preference for "rough sleepers" because there are people who are in temporary housing, that are couch surfing etc. which don't strictly fit into the term homeless but who experience precarious (and typically inadequate) housing and because some people consider places home, such as their cars (sometimes by preference), and devaluing what a person calls home because it doesn't meet my personal definition of a home is kinda shitty whereas acknowledging that their home may be precarious or inadequate without erasing the fact that it's home to them, I think, is preferable.
/rant
Correcting a misogynist is more likely to provoke a visible reaction than ignoring problematic speech. If it isn't corrected, it becomes normal.
I mean, that's kind of the point though.
I think it's preferable that using the term "female" as a noun is normalised among people who see women as objects and that they continue using that term because it's like a klaxon identifying people who are misogynists or who have latent misogynistic beliefs.
If we coach misogynists in ways to conceal their misogyny then it becomes much, much harder to identify them especially in social media spaces.
I'd much rather that these people loudly announce themselves to the people who know better than to blend in with people who are progressive and radical.
Teaching people to adjust their language doesn't change their beliefs.
Misogynists have historically held more institutional power than women. We had a time when women knew how to speak inclusively and misogynists didn't, it was called the 1960s. It sucked.
Yeah, I know that those times sucked. But they didn't suck because the people who are oppressing and exploiting us didn't know to couch their language in progressive wording. I think that framing it in that way is a very idealistic take and does a serious disservice to the realities that oppressed groups faced in the 60s because the people who were fighting for better circumstances definitely weren't out on the streets demanding that their oppressors use more polite language while they screw them over.
Take a look at Joe Biden's progressive verbal stance and the virtue-signalling events he holds compared to what he's actually done to protect and defend the rights of trans people as the perfect example of why kind words don't mean shit when you're beneath the jackboot.
Look, you can do whatever you feel is important to you.
Personally I just don't see the value in training misogynists in how to be more effective predators by concealing themselves amongst people of good conscience to be anywhere close to a priority for me. Quite the opposite actually.
I have a strong preference for "rough sleepers"
it's also what most homeless orgs use here (england)
We've moved away from that here to "unhoused" which is likely politically-motivated to narrow the scope of who faces inadequate and unstable housing to exclusively the people who are out on the streets tonight.
So, y'know, if you've got a couch to crash on for this week then it's basically a screw you: you're totally fine and we're not going to consider you kinda deal.
"Women" is fine as a noun, but what should be used as an adjective if not "female"?
I'm going with comrade Feinberg on this, i use woman for the gender identity, feminine for the social role and female for biological characteristics. If you need an adjective relating to woman, it's womanly, if you need a noun relating to feminine, it's fem / femme, if you want to use female as a noun you better be talking about a dog and not a human being.
if you want to use female as a noun you better be talking about a dog and not a human being.
But also don't talk about dogs like that
Ehh, calling a female dog a bitch makes me feel like an old-time British lady
Honestly, it's mostly just a concept from some throwaway paragraph from Feinberg's Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue that i've ran with and then spiced up a little.
Yeah that's how I understand it. Like saying "that's a female horse" is normal and fine.
The issue is saying "look at that female over there" or "she is a female". That's the dehumanizing shit, "look at that woman" or "she is a woman" is far less weird as well.
I think the biggest difference is that brd isn't massive.
But I also vaguely remember there being a different brd too early on? Whatever it was, this one was the main brd for most of SRS's relevancy.
Because of the demeaning usage as a noun, some people are starting to get uncomfortable with even using female as an adjective, and you will hear people use "woman" as an adjective like "she became the first woman triathlete" which isn't really right but it's not that bad... I dunno, I'm a guy so take my two cents for what they're worth, but I don't think we should surrender the entire word "female" to weird online fascist nerds
I think as a whole we should try to make language gender neutral. But I can think of better hills to die on. Like most people are conscious of referring to women as female, even women. As we become more aware of it then I think things will start to change.
I'm not big on hard grammar rules so in the contexts that I see it used in "woman" does add extra meanings like, adulthood and agency while "female" might not.
There was a post a week or two ago about "men having sex with females" which kinda made my ears prick up. Because female can include the concepts of babies and corpses when woman seems to rarely be used to include those things.
So it feels easier for me understand using the term woman when referring to a group of that should naturally exclude members who would be included when using the term female.
This is something that trips me up, especially when I'm speaking.
I tend to use some version of "oriented towards women" or "stereotypically 'women's [such and such]" but using "feminine" (and "masculine") can often work too.
I try to avoid saying "female" as an adjective because it is biologically-essentist and exclusive of all women. But it does make for clunkier wording often.
sometimes it's rephrasing entirely like "first woman in space" rather than "first female cosmonaut".
if it's relevant to bring up biological norms then female and male are fine as long as you're not trampling over trans people, but we should certainly avoid constructions like "men and females" which the
and incels use without thinking.I've seen the use of 'fem' or similar used for the adjective to be more inclusive and less awkward. A 'fem space' is inclusive of trans women, where as a 'female space' very well might not be in many cases, and it's harder to know without specifically asking. Just what I've been seeing in use lately.
For me, the exception for using it as a noun is biological discussions e.g. animals, cadavers, biological discussions of sexes
Or if its nonspecific. "Amongst most mammals the female of the species is larger than the male." is fine.
using “female” has been cringe for years outside of biology & certain healthcare settings. unsurprised reddit is still rehashing early 2010’s discourse
I love that the sheer mention of a struggle session is enough to ignite one here
I despise you for exposing me to this, dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow, spreading this kind of nuclear grade cringe should be a punishable crime.
Is everyone on the internet just searching for reasons to hate people
not at all it's also full of porn
"it does now mostly thanks to co-opting by incels"
I don't really get where this talking point comes from, its just not true. Have you ever browsed an incel forum to see what those hogs are thinking? They never refer to women as females. Ever. I've never seen it once in one of their spaces. Not on r/braincels, not on r/incels, not in incelsco or whatever new forum they've migrated to in the past few years. They exclusively refer to women as foids or holes.
Referring to women as females is very common in the African American community though.
Reality doesn't seem to matter anymore. When libs are fixated on correcting you, you have no hope of redemption. They need to feel superior and use their "correct" language to emphasize their superiority, regardless of whether what they're emphasizing is entirely fabricated.
Unless it’s some shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused
Yeah without any actual policy behind it it's very silly. However the semantic change pisses off chuds so I'm not entirely against it. Critical support, like "sure let's call them unhoused but what's the plan to stop the problem".
I personally find it unusually satisfying when nominal changes like this are enforced because of how badly it makes chuds seethe. Chuds will call out virtue signalling without realising that they are too depraved to even signal anything remotely resembling virtue. It happened when GitHub changed their default branch name from master (slave-master connotation) to main.
Disagree, calling the homeless the unhoused came from the libs, it’s a right wing concept. We are fighting a culture war with the right and we mustn’t give them an inch.
Technical correctness is a dog whistle for all sorts of weird nerd shit, most of it intended to dehumanize or trivialize other people that they find less than themselves.
You know how people that NATO wants to dehumanize or trivialize are "unlawful combatants?" It's shit like that.
I appreciate your two cents, but tbh I think it's much simpler. Personally I feel the vibe is the same when people use "male" as well in the same context - that's just quite rare to happen.
It's because it's weirdly clinical language. It feels weird, you wouldn't describe your mother as a "female", you'd call her a "woman".
It's detached, sort of dehumanising really.Was using female as a noun considered normal at some point? I genuinely do not know.
But if it was, it might not be a case of a euphemism treadmill, but a phenomenon related to the struggle for social recognition. When an identity goes from recognition from an outside perspective to recognition from an inside perspective, the name for it often changes. A similar thing happened/is happening with homosexual -> gay and transsexual -> transgender. The takeaway in the context of this conversation is that, unlike the treadmill, it might not be a repeating process.
Was using female as a noun considered normal at some point? I genuinely do not know.
I think they used to do that in Coronet educational videos in like the 30's-50's. I'm not sure that it's ever been common outside that though.
Edit: That's these dudes btw.
Was using female as a noun considered normal at some point? I genuinely do not know.
No, it was always weird nerds who said that shit. Most people just say "chick," "woman," or "lady."
