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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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[–] 1 point 2 years ago (3 children)

Can you explain the difference? Aren't genders another way of saying their biological sex?

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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