• @Revonult
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    164 hours 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
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      474 hours 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
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        4 hours 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.

        • Justin
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          124 hours ago

          boys and men / girls and women sounds right to me

          • snooggums
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            43 hours 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
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              103 hours ago

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

              • snooggums
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                53 hours ago

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

                • SavvyWolf
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                  63 hours 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
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                    33 hours 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.

        • @Klear
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          63 hours ago

          Just ask yourself if you’d use “males” in that context.

          • snooggums
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            93 hours 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.

        • @[email protected]
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          64 hours 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
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            33 hours 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      23 hours 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 hour 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
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        2 hours 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”

        • @[email protected]
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          22 hours 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.