happybirthdaygonzolo [none/use name] @hexbear.net

1y ago

So apparently Reddit is having a struggle session over the word “female”

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 male and female are simply outdated terms.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.

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Pro-tip:
Never correct a person who refers to women as "females"
Don't ever teach misogynists how to refine their language and to develop a more socially-acceptable way of concealing their attitudes.
Let them throw up those red flags immediately so that people can immediately avoid chuds who use this language.
shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused
I have a strong preference for "rough sleepers" because there are people who are in temporary housing, that are couch surfing etc. which don't strictly fit into the term homeless but who experience precarious (and typically inadequate) housing and because some people consider places home, such as their cars (sometimes by preference), and devaluing what a person calls home because it doesn't meet my personal definition of a home is kinda shitty whereas acknowledging that their home may be precarious or inadequate without erasing the fact that it's home to them, I think, is preferable.
/rant
- Correcting a misogynist is more likely to provoke a visible reaction than ignoring problematic speech. If it isn't corrected, it becomes normal.
  
  I mean, that's kind of the point though.
  I think it's preferable that using the term "female" as a noun is normalised among people who see women as objects and that they continue using that term because it's like a klaxon identifying people who are misogynists or who have latent misogynistic beliefs.
  If we coach misogynists in ways to conceal their misogyny then it becomes much, much harder to identify them especially in social media spaces.
  I'd much rather that these people loudly announce themselves to the people who know better than to blend in with people who are progressive and radical.
  Teaching people to adjust their language doesn't change their beliefs.
- I have a strong preference for "rough sleepers"
  it's also what most homeless orgs use here (england)
  
  We've moved away from that here to "unhoused" which is likely politically-motivated to narrow the scope of who faces inadequate and unstable housing to exclusively the people who are out on the streets tonight.
  So, y'know, if you've got a couch to crash on for this week then it's basically a screw you: you're totally fine and we're not going to consider you kinda deal.

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.
I feel obligated to point out that Ferengi in 90s Star Trek called women "female" and it was supposed to make you understand that they were misogynistic. So it's not really something that started with incels over the last few years.

- Its like peering into a Ferangi group chat.

"Women" is fine as a noun, but what should be used as an adjective if not "female"?
- 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
  
  you gots the best takes yet again
- Isn't this about using "female" as a noun?
  
  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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.

- Was going to say, it's pronounced "fee-moid" :quark:

female as an adjective is fine female as a noun is weird
- This is a great take i think, never thought of it that way before
- For me, the exception for using it as a noun is biological discussions e.g. animals, cadavers, biological discussions of sexes
  
  Or if its nonspecific. "Amongst most mammals the female of the species is larger than the male." is fine.

using “female” has been cringe for years outside of biology & certain healthcare settings. unsurprised reddit is still rehashing early 2010’s discourse

I love that the sheer mention of a struggle session is enough to ignite one here
- Never Stop Posting.

That's a lot of words to show how bad the term female is. I like showing people this sonic video and that gets the point across much faster.
- I despise you for exposing me to this, dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow, spreading this kind of nuclear grade cringe should be a punishable crime.
- I made it 30 seconds and I'm dead now. You've killed me.
- Is everyone on the internet just searching for reasons to hate people
  not at all it's also full of porn

- They figured this shit out in the 80s guys

"it does now mostly thanks to co-opting by incels"
I don't really get where this talking point comes from, its just not true. Have you ever browsed an incel forum to see what those hogs are thinking? They never refer to women as females. Ever. I've never seen it once in one of their spaces. Not on r/braincels, not on r/incels, not in incelsco or whatever new forum they've migrated to in the past few years. They exclusively refer to women as foids or holes.
Referring to women as females is very common in the African American community though.
- Reality doesn't seem to matter anymore. When libs are fixated on correcting you, you have no hope of redemption. They need to feel superior and use their "correct" language to emphasize their superiority, regardless of whether what they're emphasizing is entirely fabricated.

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.
- Disagree, calling the homeless the unhoused came from the libs, it’s a right wing concept. We are fighting a culture war with the right and we mustn’t give them an inch.

I appreciate your two cents, but tbh I think it's much simpler. Personally I feel the vibe is the same when people use "male" as well in the same context - that's just quite rare to happen.
It's because it's weirdly clinical language. It feels weird, you wouldn't describe your mother as a "female", you'd call her a "woman".
It's detached, sort of dehumanising really.

It’s funny because IRL I hear both girls and guys call women ‘females’ at the same rate. It’s especially weirder when girls refer to themselves as “female” as a noun

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.
- Was using female as a noun considered normal at some point? I genuinely do not know.
  No, it was always weird nerds who said that shit. Most people just say "chick," "woman," or "lady."

My opinion: people need to chill. and also to understand that English is used by different people in various contexts. Not everybody grasps the subtleties of the language. For instance, if discussing something like "a product highly recommended for our discreet female audience" or stating "no problems have been encountered in the department for female prisoners" is considered appropriate, somebody might feel that writing "To look at a female's behind" (as seen in the original r/therewasanattempt post) is also acceptable. And it's no big deal.
Also, it's a typical Anglo-Saxon harry potteresque
magical thinking, and obsession, with language, magic words and formulations. Censoring words just make them stronger. Stop being fucking puritains stupid ameriremoved. Scarlet letters never work. Changing words doesn't change the world, activism about language is just
slacktivism to feel smug and superior, and ultimately keeping the status quo as it is.

Explain to me how this isn't a dunk tank post and why it isn't in the dunk tank
you have ten seconds

The "you sound like a ferengi" insult in response to people saying Feeeeeeeeeeeemale has brought us to this point. It has singlehandedly been a phenomenally effective tool in pushing people into seeing negativity in the word and has done most of the heavy lifting.

its not incels my parents did that, and only when talking about women they dont like. Female is just what you say when you cant say bitch. also women do this too, women can also be misogynistic. my mom only called the women she hated at her job females "those females are always gossiping" "females cant get along, they all love drama" but her friends were girls or ladies.

“the future is female”

Where does "girlboss" fall in the struggle session?
- it’s cringe but mostly just funny

- Most workers are women. Are the issues of women, and how some mysoginists refer to them, not also issues of the working class?
- The groups I know which organize women workers are also the groups arguing for better language. The liberal groups I know who argue against inclusive language are not only seldom the groups which often are not in solidarity with women workers when there are strikes or conflicts between bosses and workers (and take any breach of protocol as the left being unreasonable the demands breaking civility). Of course the latter sentence doesn't have to be true for all, but it is a surprising amount.
  The Comintern was in practice quite inclusive and also policed what kind of words could be used for certain ethnic groups. Unquestionably the Comintern did achieve a lot. Since they achieved a lot I don't give arguments about that you can do either support women workers or instead change language much credit. The last half century did show also that you can do more than two things at the same time.
  
  The groups I know which organize women workers are also the groups arguing for better language. The liberal groups I know who argue against inclusive language are the groups which often are not in solidarity with women workers when there are strikes or conflicts between bosses and workers.
  In light of that info, I retract my previous argument.

My mom says females and males a lot and is a feminist. It can be a little grating but I think allowances have to be made for older generations, especially when a lot of the unpleasant connotations are generated online

There's no slurs for white people?
- Yeah I know, but OP literally said there was none so I'm confused

Those libs beat us to it? I was saving that for a slow day!

idk it seems a bit trivial to me, but I'm just removed from actual struggles. So, feel free to dismiss my opinion! (no I am not being ironic)
- Gotcha. I do biology, so it feels a bit weird to people ascribing so much meaning to what would be dull, descriptive terms to me.

I gotta catch myself saying "chicks" sometimes. So like, I got my own linguistic issues to work over.

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.
  
  "This chair is made from fire r****dant fabric."
  In this case it refers to the ability to delay the spread of fire. It's just a common root with the slur that means delayed.
  
  When I was in band during middle/high school we'd always giggle when we'd see the R word in sheet music or hear the band director say it.
  
  The r word does actually have a meaning.
  Slow en français

Interestingly, my partner and other friends who are women and whose first language is not english usually use 'female'. It usually rubs me a weird way, since the only other people I interact with who use the word aren't the most respectful towards women.
In my mother tongue, the word for women implies subservience, my mom told me not to use that term when referring to women close to me, instead to use another term which is for endearment (cousins, good friends, etc) or yet another to refer to them respectfully.

I found a thread about this whole thing on r*ddit and the first page of replies were variations of "What? Why would they do this??"
Not one actual answer visible

People just do things for no reason because wokeness or whatever I guess.

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