Here’s my two cents. It’s hard for people to keep up with the euphemism treadmill. There was a time when the word “female” didn’t have the negative connotation that it does now mostly thanks to co-opting by incels. It should also be stated that the word “male” doesn’t have the same negative connotations and it’s similar to how there’s slurs for black people but none for white people.
So why do people find “female” offensive? Well for starters it’s dehumanizing. Women is a less academic term and female implies some biological essentialism. I think the crux as to why it’s a big deal now is that women do not refer to themselves as females in the manner that men do. Men do not think of themselves as males, they do not call other men males, men call themselves men. male and female are simply outdated terms.
I suspect one day as society moves towards a more genderqueer position men and women will become unacceptable to say too. Idk. Like I think we need to acknowledge that there is such thing as a euphemism treadmill, that languages change, words become offensive or nonoffensive over time, and like all we can do in order to be a fucking decent human bean is to conform to society’s standards as to what is acceptable as according to the treadmill. Unless it’s some shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused. Then in those specific instances we got to run against the treadmill. But in this specific instance, we need to run with the treadmill on this one. Nothing feels better than conforming with society.
“Women” is fine as a noun, but what should be used as an adjective if not “female”?
Yeah that’s how I understand it. Like saying “that’s a female horse” is normal and fine.
The issue is saying “look at that female over there” or “she is a female”. That’s the dehumanizing shit, “look at that woman” or “she is a woman” is far less weird as well.
It’d been something Redditeurs have been doing since way back in the SRS days - weird nerd shit.
Because of the demeaning usage as a noun, some people are starting to get uncomfortable with even using female as an adjective, and you will hear people use “woman” as an adjective like “she became the first woman triathlete” which isn’t really right but it’s not that bad… I dunno, I’m a guy so take my two cents for what they’re worth, but I don’t think we should surrender the entire word “female” to weird online fascist nerds
This is something that trips me up, especially when I’m speaking.
I tend to use some version of “oriented towards women” or “stereotypically 'women’s [such and such]” but using “feminine” (and “masculine”) can often work too.
I try to avoid saying “female” as an adjective because it is biologically-essentist and exclusive of all women. But it does make for clunkier wording often.
I’ve seen the use of ‘fem’ or similar used for the adjective to be more inclusive and less awkward. A ‘fem space’ is inclusive of trans women, where as a ‘female space’ very well might not be in many cases, and it’s harder to know without specifically asking. Just what I’ve been seeing in use lately.
I’m going with comrade Feinberg on this, i use woman for the gender identity, feminine for the social role and female for biological characteristics. If you need an adjective relating to woman, it’s womanly, if you need a noun relating to feminine, it’s fem / femme, if you want to use female as a noun you better be talking about a dog and not a human being.
if you want to use female as a noun you better be talking about a dog and not a human being.
But also don’t talk about dogs like that
Honestly, it’s mostly just a concept from some throwaway paragraph from Feinberg’s Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink or Blue that i’ve ran with and then spiced up a little.
sometimes it’s rephrasing entirely like “first woman in space” rather than “first female cosmonaut”.
if it’s relevant to bring up biological norms then female and male are fine as long as you’re not trampling over trans people, but we should certainly avoid constructions like “men and females” which the and incels use without thinking.
You could be correct about times changing. A few years ago I was reading research papers on various topics, and words like r#####d and n####o were used with full seriousness. Even if it’s silly that it came to this, it’s what it is, and there’s no point fighting it.
The r word does actually have a meaning, often in scientific literature, the definition I found was: to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede.
I’ve seen used rarely in evolutionary biology, a professor I knew used to love saying “we (humans) are retarded corals” which refers to all bilaterians (animals with bilateral symmetry) evolving from a regression where corals would stay in their juvenile state, which is basically like a plankton. However, now that I think about it, I have sneaking suspicions he actually just liked shouting that in a lecture hall. Even the idea of saying the world I find unpleasant. You also have the case where it used in a similar way to “repellent”, eg. “This chair is made from fire r****dant fabric.” I do definitely think it is a bit archaic and there are much nicer terms without all of the baggage that can be used instead.
The n word on the other hand, I had no idea was still being used.
Was using female as a noun considered normal at some point? I genuinely do not know.
But if it was, it might not be a case of a euphemism treadmill, but a phenomenon related to the struggle for social recognition. When an identity goes from recognition from an outside perspective to recognition from an inside perspective, the name for it often changes. A similar thing happened/is happening with homosexual -> gay and transsexual -> transgender. The takeaway in the context of this conversation is that, unlike the treadmill, it might not be a repeating process.
Was using female as a noun considered normal at some point? I genuinely do not know.
I think they used to do that in Coronet educational videos in like the 30’s-50’s. I’m not sure that it’s ever been common outside that though.
Edit: That’s these dudes btw.
Unless it’s some shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused
Yeah without any actual policy behind it it’s very silly. However the semantic change pisses off chuds so I’m not entirely against it. Critical support, like “sure let’s call them unhoused but what’s the plan to stop the problem”.
I personally find it unusually satisfying when nominal changes like this are enforced because of how badly it makes chuds seethe. Chuds will call out virtue signalling without realising that they are too depraved to even signal anything remotely resembling virtue. It happened when GitHub changed their default branch name from master (slave-master connotation) to main.
