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 ^^

    • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
      123·
      10 months ago

      Using human nonspecific terminology to describe women is dehumanizing. They are women, not “females”. The only people who use “female” as a noun mean it the same way they might call a woman a “hoe”. It’s a word you use when you deliberately want to minimize the existence of another person. Literally referring to a woman like she is an object, or livestock…

      • n3m37h@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        115·
        10 months ago

        Using human nonspecific terminology to describe women is dehumanizing.

        What an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one.

        • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
          101·
          10 months ago

          Of course you think “women aren’t human” is a funny joke…

          Touch grass, incel.

            • myfavouritename@lemmy.world
              7·
              10 months ago

              I get that you’re being practical here. You’re not technically wrong, and the people who are disagreeing with you really are arguing points of nuance.

              But they aren’t wrong either. That nuance matters in certain contexts.

              You can pick this hill to defend. Or you can learn something that you didn’t know about the people in your online community, and probably your IRL community too.

              Embrace learning something new. It will almost never be a waste of your time.

            • BreakDecks@lemmy.mlEnglish
              71·
              10 months ago

              Ah, I understand now. You think that “human nonspecific terminology” and “dehumanizing terminology” are oxymoronic. Let me help clarify this for you with a lesson in reading comprehension:

              “Human nonspecific terminology” refers to terminology that isn’t used specifically to refer to humans. For example, nouns like “male”, “female”, “subject”, or “specimen” can refer to humans, but they can also apply to things like plants and animals. Casually using these terms socially is generally thought of as dehumanizing and disrespectful.

              This is opposed to respectful human terminology like “man”, “woman”, “participant”, or “person” that almost exclusively refer to humans.

              If a man thinks of himself as a man, but refers to women as “females”, people tend to assume he has less than an acceptable amount of respect for women, since he uses less human terminology to describe them than he would to describe himself.