You must log in or register to comment.
I think it’s as weird and antisocial as the next guy to call women “females” but I also think it’s weird that it’s treated like not receiving approval from women is the worst possible thing that can happen to a man when implying that women need male approval is obviously sexist
idk, some incels will certainly act like not getting approval from women was the worst possible thing that could happen to them, and then go and do something much worse to others
yeah but this post isn’t about incels. posts like these shoot strays at all men
While I agree, it specifically says “those men,” so I think the idea is that men who see women as wombs or genes or whatever should also expect to be viewed with the same lens
It’s not about that. It’s their choice of insult. Saying “people who voted for Trump are retarded” doesn’t make it not ableist just because you specified it’s about Trump voters. Catch my drift?
Ah I see what you’re saying, yeah agreed. I think I too quickly read your comment, cheers
That’s how generalizations and language work. It’s ALWAYS implied that it’s not ALL of a group. Unless someone says “literally all men”, and then whatever that person is saying is wrong because there’s no way it’s literally all.
So good news, is you’re not like that, it’s not about you.
my entire point is that generalizations are harmful lmao
Not all generalisations
That’s your interpretation, and my point is that the way language works, you’re interpreting wrong.
They’re pretty much the only group I know of that uses female that way on purpose, but I suppose we could just throw in all misogynists and my comment would still apply
I think you’re not really getting what I’m saying. See my other comment:
It’s not about that. It’s their choice of insult. Saying “people who voted for Trump are retarded” doesn’t make it not ableist just because you specified it’s about Trump voters. Catch my drift?
Equating moral corruption to sexual undesirability is just stupid. It implies the inverse too, that sexually undesirable people are morally corrupt, which is actually a pretty huge problem in society. It also implies that men need validation from women which is just false.
Well, I think we can agree on one thing. I guess I don’t really get what you’re saying ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I mean, I’ve been pretty clear… and nobody else is having trouble understanding what I’m trying to say. is it possible that on some level you kind of like, don’t want to understand?
Agreed… but hear me out. Men usualy are more sex driven and usually (not every man of course but the majority let’s say) will have sex with a random woman. Women on the other hand usually (AS IN NOT EVERY WOMAN) (I’m saying that so crazy people don’t come after me with the “I’m not like that”) need more conection. Women will go home and not have sex if no man was interesting enough to her and she won’t feel bad, man will go home with the woman he thinks it’s the ugliest (again USUALLY) if she is the only one that’s up to it, because for men going home alone is defeat. If you rationalize that looks is not everything for women than a man that is rejected by every woman has a lame personality while woman that are rejected by men are usually based on looks.
So yes, in this (not general but commom) scenario a man that is unfuckable is an asshole and a woman may be an asshole or may just be fat
edit: is late and I don’t have my glasses so sorry for some dumb english
I don’t really think things are actually the way you suppose they are. I think that’s a cultural model that’s been built up by media. It may have been true at one point but from what I can tell based on my experiences in real life, it seems to be more the inverse nowadays. All my male friends seem to be much more choosy with who they sleep with (preferring a real connection) while my female friends seem to be a lot more outgoing and likely to have sex without a connection. I’m talking about a sample size of about 20 people I’ve hung out with in the past year, but I’m also considering people I knew when I was highschool / college age.
really?! that must be cultural. I’m not american but from my experience also from male and female friends since…ever lol… men tend not to care. I’ve seen a friend hit on and take home a homeless toothless smelly woman I would say at least 10 years older than him. And his answer to me was “if you are too picky you starve”
GenZ is overwhelmingly sex negative. I think that the movement for sexual liberation of women works to bring GenZ women back to baseline (or above) while GenZ men remain very sexually repressed. Just a theory, but it seems true in my life. I live in an American city fwiw
If I feel the need to use the word “female” in that way, I am not looking for approval. I am only looking to evade “girl”/“woman”/“lady” traps [1] and trying to be as less social and as robotic as possible.
“trap” as in snare trap/ bear trap etc. not the other trap. Now this was another trap. You see what I am talking about? ↩︎
I always find it weird when guys refer to girls as “females”. I can’t help but read it in a Ferengi voice.
“Females and finances don’t mix. Rule of Acquisition 94.”
Meh, it’s a thing in the military because female military members are segregated and have different uniforms.
A woman in the military isn’t described as that, they’re a “femal soldier/sailor/marine” and all their uniforms, regs, standards, and housing comes with that prefix.
Even tho “female” descriptor comes first it’s to ingrain that above all else they’re a service member.
It’s about what the noun is.
It took a couple years till I stopped slipping, and I understand why a service member would use it. That shit gets so beat intto you that you really don’t even notice it. So when you get let out into the civilian world, it’s hard to break the habit. Those people would appreciate being called out that what they’re doing is weird for civvies tho.
But yeah…
99% of the people using it are just fucking weird.
“Female <job title>” isnt at all as bad as just… “female”, the prior is a clarifying adjective, the latter is using it as a descriptive noun.
Like if I say “Female Officers suffer from above average sexual harassment” that statement isnt a big deal.
If I say “You are a beautiful female” to a woman though, it sounds disgusting.
I mean literally just compare these two basic statements.
“Go hand this package to that Female Officer over there” (This just distinguishes the Female Officer from the Male Officers probably standing near her)
vs
“Go hand this package to that Female over there” (this sounds like you are an alien visiting earth and talking to me)
Ever hear:
Hand me that Philips head
And get pissed off?
Because someone used the adjective when the noun was implied?
Like, I mentioned a specific context where it was used normally and now you’re wanting me to defend every imagined use you can think of.
It’s tiresome
Fundamentally adjectives vs noun do indeed carry substantially different weight.
Which of these statements would you say will piss someone off more:
“You’re a bitch” “You’re being bitchy”
Anyone with common sense knows the former sentence carries way more weight in terms of a statement.
“Female Officer” is just not rude, because its merely a clarifier, to avoid confusion.
“Female” can be used that way to, but usually its not necessary when referring to people, it only makese sense when used to clarify animals as a whole.
“Female mammals have ovaries” for example makes sense, because it clarifies which mammals we are talking about.
But if you say “Female Humans” now you sound like an alien describing people, because you and I are humans, so we don’t need to specify, it sounds “outer”, like something someone other than a human would write.
The only time itd make sense to use that is when literally distinguishing Female Humans from Females of another type.
IE “Unlike Female Bugs, Female Humans don’t lay eggs”
Then it goes back to making sense.
deleted by creator
Sounds ok to me (male).
“The male wakes up at 7am, so he can prepare for his office work; he’s tired and being worn down, yet somehow remains resolute. In this way, he channels the spirit of the emperor penguin and endures.”
Remember folks, the gender wars distract from the class wars we should all be engaged in!
Remember folks, the gender wars distract from the class wars we should all be engaged in!
Excuse me but the class war IS a war against the patriarchy
I can multitask.
Really, at full efficiency? If so, my hat is off to you!
Yes, I can care about and work at many different things in the course of my week, month and year. I think a lot of people can.
I’d say a lot of people think they can, and this I have witnessed all to well (and too often), yet rarely (never in certainly) have I seen those who can.
Sure, my 73 year old mother can’t walk at a brisk pace and have a deep conversation at the same time. But it doesn’t mean that she can’t spend a week educating herself about race inequality and then read up on class conflict the next week after that.
Why should we ignore one issue in favor of another? Of course, if someone doesn’t have the mental energy for more than one thing, they should focus on the one thing that matters most to them.
But I do think that it’s a bit blithe to tell everyone that they shouldn’t spend time on challenging sexism, because we should all instead just focus on class warfare.Okay but that’s literally not what multitasking means. She would have to be reading one course in a book and an entirely different subject on her phone at the same time, with zero loss of retention or speed. There are ways the military trains people to do actual multitasking specifically, but for the vast majority of us we only have single-threaded thought processes that switch between lanes ALMOST but not quite instantly, so you’re just introducing stops and starts. It’s like how talking to someone while you’re driving WILL distract you, and the line on what kind of distracted driving is banned or not is based more on what kinds of things are enforceable (physical presence of a phone at x minute and location or some such).
The male looks in the mirror and realizes he’ll die alone. He tries to distract himself with glass rectangles.
Some of these men call other men “males” as well. I used to call both genders by such “technical” terminology because I did not think it was offensive until a woman complained in a forum I frequented like 15 years ago.
TBH I feel annoyed that I can’t use those terms because I know some guys use the term to intentionally dehumanize specifically women and I am not that sort of guy. But also I really tend to embrace neutral/technical/clinical language a lot because of a general disdain for romantic thinking and language.
Things are not more than what they are.
It’s worth noting that the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ are adjectives, not nouns, so if you want to be technical then it’s erroneous to use them thusly. That is, it is correct to say “I am male”, but to say “I am a male” is grammatically erroneous.
In common speech, people don’t tend to describe other human beings with these two adjectives, i.e. most people would say “she is a woman” rather than “she is female” (note, not “she is a female” because ‘female’ is not a noun). However, we do commonly describe animals using these adjectives, and colloquially the noun is commonly dropped. E.g., “it’s a female” is seen as a perfectly normal way to describe a horse when it’s understood that the other party knows that you mean “it’s a female horse”. This is why it is considered offensive to refer to a woman as “a female”: it implies that she is an object, less than human and more suitably treated as livestock.
I only have two dictionaries, but both have male and female as both adjectives and nouns. In what dictionary are you seeing them only as adjectives?
Even dictionary.com has “noun: a male person” and “noun: a female person”, which goes directly against both your grammar point and your livestock point.
Hopefully you’re just a linguistic prescriptivist with a preferred dictionary that doesn’t match mine. Edit: removed a rude remark
That said, as a descriptivist, I accept that those words (as nouns or otherwise) are changing to sometimes be derogatory, so I try not to use them to describe people, just to avoid my intentions being misunderstood.
Just a thoughtless prescriptivist, repeating what I’d understood from previous such discussions, without having done my own due diligence. 🤷 I stand corrected.
Glad my suspicion was wrong, sorry for the rude comment!
But humans are an animal.
The main difference is that humans see other animals as purchasable or otherwise controllable and generally only refer to their sex when forcing them to breed. Women don’t like the comparison.
I specifically remember the woman that complained that “female” was dehumanizing so that mostly tracks, but the issue with that perception is that people purchase male animals for breeding and people (men or women) who heard me using the same terminology never complained about the dehumanization of calling them males. I get that the social dynamics here are complicated of course. I suppose men typically are socialized to not care about being dehumanized or even perceive dehumanization as much. The asymmetry irks me.
I’ll repeat that I don’t use the terminology anymore for the sake of politeness but my thoughts remain nuanced on the matter. Where some see dehumanization, I see on the opposite end a coping mechanism in the form of a base level of romanticization. Implying we humans are free of our animal instincts or that we ought to be ashamed of the best aspects (IMO) of our animal nature.
Men who use the term “female” as a means to purposefully dehumanize are of course not only assholes but also annoying to me in the same way just inverted: I dislike debasing things that are neutral/positive for the sense of elitism or superiority. Or making something innocent and ordinary out to be crude and gross. I’ve never really related that well to men telling sex jokes for instance (and I’ve had some male friends who did that constantly and it annoyed me but I mostly just rolled my eyes at it).
I don’t like crudeness at the same level as romanticization because that crude attitude also implies a sacredness that they’re purposefully defiling. I don’t like the implication of existing sacredness OR the desire to get under people’s skin about it since that just contributes to the sense of taboo around sexuality and gender.
I’m not at my keyboard so my reply will be more brief than I’d like. Unfortunately, connotations will always have a significant amount of contextual nuance, and human communication is absolutely full of it. I appreciate that you make an effort to not upset people, and understand how certain terms have been ruined by those mis-using phrases. It is absolutely frustrating when something should be neutral. But language itself conveys semantics and tone, it will be impossible to have everyone take even the most innocuous sentences as neutral, because unless you’re lecturing facts, people will try to attach a purpose to your words.
Just replying to show a genuine interest in a more fleshed out response from you when you are at a keyboard again, if you aren’t up for writing more on it though, no worries.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been referred to as a “male” or “man” or “cis gender male” and it doesn’t bother me one single bit. I generally just avoid people who get offended over every little “wrong” word
Amen to this man. People get too tied up in little words and stupid shit. So many bigger fish to fry but you’ll get upset when someone uses the word female in any context.
Seems like this is one of those things that women think will make men uncomfortable, but really winds up making their day because men are so starved of positive connection that even a neutral commentary on their life is refreshing because that means someone is paying attention to them.
I wouldn’t describe being called “unfuckable” neutral. But yeah they probably would like some level of attention, even the negative kind.
The word “female” should not be a negative. What a weird anti-intellectual direction this world is taking.
Might as well ban the word “cloud” next.
It’s not the use of the word “female” itself, but the use of the word as a noun to describe a woman, because it is taken to imply that the woman is a mere object. As the other person who replied to you said: context matters.
I use the word “female” (and “male”) every single day when documenting on my patients, e.g. my notes commonly begin with “Patient is xx years old, female, […].” This is normal and no one would take issue with it, because it is using “female” as an adjective and in a context where the information is important.
You wouldn’t want a narrator trying that on me. You’d be bored to tears.
