• Khanzarate@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Totally is BS. You could switch to lady/ladies. It’s a bit old-fashioned, but isn’t automatically being taken that way. Dunno if that helps you but if it doesn’t help directly then at least you could then remember that more letters means more people, so ladies is plural.

    You could also go full gender-neutral and just use person/people. Doesn’t help if you need to specify they’re women, but I bet most times you wouldn’t actually need to do that.

      • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        That seems like it could be maybe a cultural thing, or maybe even how the same word can convey a very different feeling in another accent.

        If someone pronounces Lady as “lāh dih” instead of “lay dee”, the former feels odd compared to the latter, at least to me anyway.

        And then there’s also probably a stigma associated with the time period and circumstances in which a woman was referred to as a lady, which may also make it sound off when used today.

        I think referring to women as females is far ruder though personally, “Female” feels like “an individual that is not a male”, but Lady feels more like “A woman” with more pizzazz, if we ignore its past connotations