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Is "female" offensive? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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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 ^^

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[โ€“] 4 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Maybe it's only true of my aging generation but we never really encountered grammar until we were required to learn French.

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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 :)

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  • [โ€“] 1 point 2 years ago*

    No, I was responding to your perfectly correct comment about the way we learn language, which is as little kids gradually working out the rules from exposure, not by being taught them.

    We pick up on how language is used, not why it is used like that.

    And that is exactly why some people with a condition like autism or epilepsy find attempts to rehumanise the language used to refer to them patronising or unhelpful. In my examples, "an epileptic" would be the dehumanising nounisation. And because of those attempts to rehumanise the language, people sometimes avoid the adjective too (in exactly the same way it's happened with woman/female).

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