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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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[–] 38 points 2 years ago (4 children)

It’s kind of like the difference between talking about people who are black and referring to someone as “one of the blacks”. It’s subtle, but the latter is objectifying where as the former is descriptive.

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  • [+] -24 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    It’s even more subtle than that. We’ve defeated most actual injustice in our society, and now people are scraping the bottom of the barrel to find injustice to fight against.

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