• Revonult@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    I been wondering people’s opinion of “Female” in some instances. Like is “First Female president/athlete/mayor/lawyer” appropriate? “First woman____” doesn’t sound right and you wouldn’t say “first man athlete to run 2 hour marathon” you would use male.

    Most things can be rephrased maybe, but obviously using Females outside these instances is very right wing cringe.

    • Zombiepirate@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      “Female” is fine to use as an adjective.

      It’s also fine to use as a noun when describing livestock, which is why it’s a red flag to describe women that way.

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        What is a good word to use for people who are female of any age including young children that are not old enough to be called women in addition to women?

        ‘Women and girls’ is pretty clunky when talking about something that is gender specific, but applies to all ages.

        • JustinA
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          15 days ago

          boys and men / girls and women sounds right to me

          • snooggums@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            ‘Gendered violence against teenage women and girls’ is really clunky. Especially if it needs repeating across paragraphs.

            If there isn’t something, that’s fine.

            • SavvyWolf@pawb.social
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              15 days ago

              “Gendered violence against females” on the other hand sounds a bit too clinical though… Like you’re removing their personhood

              • snooggums@lemmy.world
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                15 days ago

                If ‘females’ wasn’t used by online sexists to treat women as objects would it sound that way?

                • SavvyWolf@pawb.social
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                  15 days ago

                  Maybe! I don’t know if “gendered violence against men” also has the same connotations.

                  Maybe this is indeed is a case of those people poisoning the term.

                  • snooggums@lemmy.world
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                    15 days ago

                    “Don’t forget about gendered violence against boys!” would be a likely response to a statement about men.

                    It is absolutely a case of a term being poisoned, which does mean it needs to be treated more carefully but sucks when there isn’t an alternative.

        • xtr0n@sh.itjust.works
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          15 days ago

          Women is probably fine to use when the ages can be gleaned from context. You can also make the noun non gendered and use female as a adjective like “female students” or “female patients”

          • snooggums@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            I’m mainly asking when ages span from birth to old age and the goup would basically be “female persons” or “male persons” which is clunky.

            Sometimes it can be rephrased, but it often requires multiple words to mean the same thing. Plus “women of all ages” will be read as not including children.

            I’m mostly pissed that sexists ruined the only single word term we have for half of the population.

              • snooggums@lemmy.world
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                15 days ago

                It is important that when we are addressing issues of sexism, that we try to make sure that the ideas are easily understood by women, men, girls, and boys so that everyone understands how to support equality. If we only focus our effort on men and boys, without recognizing the influence also has on women and girls, then it will not be as successful. For example, the social expectations of women and girls to dress in certain ways is commonly enforced by men, women, girls, and boys even if the influence is only targeted at women and girls. Not to mention the toxic masculinity that is applied to men and boys by men, women, boys, and girls that are commonly reinforced by telling men and boys to ‘man up’ in stressful situations.

                You are right, that is smooth as butter.

          • snooggums@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            I absolutely would use males in that context. “Toxic masculinity has a detrimental affect on males of all ages” sounds perfectly fine to me because I don’t know of a different label for the group and males doesn’t have the same dehumanizing usage as females.

            • NiHaDuncan@lemmy.world
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              14 days ago

              Male is literally the same kind of word just for the opposite sex/gender; the term specifically points out the ability to produce sperm (in many dimorphic species) for the purposes of reproducing with the opposite sex. It’s literally just saying “your distinguishing characteristic is your ability to inseminate another of your species” and is just as dehumanizing.

              The reason you would use it in that context is because it’s “[gender specific noun] of all ages.” Where if you were to say “boys of all ages” or “men of all ages” it would imply either all ages under 18 or all ages at or over 18.

              This is the same context in which you would use female as a noun, as girl/woman implies a restricted age range, just as boy/man, when you specifically don’t want one.

              • Danquebec@sh.itjust.works
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                13 days ago

                Doesn’t “men and boys” have exactly the same meaning though?

                I don’t feel deshumanized for being called a male.

                Disclaimer: I don’t use the noun “female” because I know some find it offensive.

    • ted@sh.itjust.works
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      15 days ago

      Woman as an adjective is picking up in my circles and podcasts I listen to. Woman scientist, woman entrepreneur. It may have sounded weird initially, but I’ve gotten over it and I suspect it will develop over time to be completely normal.

      I wouldn’t really compare it to the male/man counterpart, because men aren’t demeaned by being called “male” regularly.

      • toast@retrolemmy.com
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        15 days ago

        Woman used as an adjective like this sounds so wrong to me (probably because it isn’t an adjective). If you wouldn’t say man voter, man driver, men reporters, etc., then why would you say woman voter, women drivers, woman reporter? Just because some people use ‘female’ in a way that you object to shouldn’t make all uses of it objectionable. Do you want a world in which we can say ‘male patients’, but have to say ‘woman and girl patients’ instead of female patients? Why??

      • Revonult@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        I agree it works in most cases it works fine but like “First woman astronaut” feels weird.

        I mostly didn’t want to be accidentally participating in something shitty.

        Edit: or like “fastest woman athlete”

        • ted@sh.itjust.works
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          15 days ago

          Yeah, I remember feeling like it was weird, but both of those sound absolutely fine to me now.

          I also would never balk at “female” as an adjective in those cases, nor assume the speaker was being misogynist.

        • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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          15 days ago

          I think both kinda sound equally weird because we for a lot of words like astronaut, the astronaut is already assumed to be male unless otherwise indicated. So male astronauts or man astronauts both sound clunky and kinda weird, and the weirdness translates over when you start indicating the astronaut is a woman by saying “woman astronaut” or “female astronaut.”

          The English language, and historical baggage just kinda fucked us on this one. We used to add ‘ess’ to the ends of words to indicate gender, but that was dropped outside of the use of waitress or actress for the most part. Not sure why that stopped, but I’m sure it’s interesting and I’m going to go look it up later.