I’m just gonna pile on that snowflakes are stupid and deserve the same kind of treatment - blocks and bans.
“You’re a snowflake for trying to block and ban yourself into an echo chamber, therefore I also want to block and ban you just like a snowflake would.”
Haha now that you put it like that, you make them seem even worse. Indeed, people who are so sensitive that they can’t stand anything, are also aggravating enough that other people don’t want to be around them.
Dudes not a snowflake, he’s the entire artic circle
I’m not even sure I get what’s bad about that. Are they saying it’s anti-trans or something? I doubt many transwomen would be offended by the word ‘female’ in that context. And if it’s for sexism, that’s not really the sexist part. So I’m very confused.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with using female as an adjective.
Calling someone a female customer / politician / patient / etc is perfectly fine and normal.
The problem comes when you use it as a noun.
Think of calling someone “a gay”, “a black” or “a Chinese”.
You just don’t use adjectives-as-nouns to refer to people, apart from a very limited set of exceptions.
Instead you talk about a gay, black or Chinese person.
The same goes for ‘female’.
And since there’s already a word for ‘female person’ - ie. ‘woman’ - then going out of your way to avoid it makes you sound like a raging incel.
And since there’s already a word for ‘female person’ - ie. ‘woman’ - then going out of your way to avoid it makes you sound like a raging incel.
Lol. You people are completely nuts 😂
Does seem oddly decontextualized, doesn’t it?
Are they saying it’s anti-trans or something? yes, comment section is also defending OP
Nothing in that screenshot mentions trans people? And also I wouldn’t use the people who are making racist dog whistles to try and prove your point.
Okay. I’m still confused as to why ‘females’ is anti-trans. I honestly do not get it.
Sorry, bit of a long one here, but bear with me ♥️
Specifically it is more often in the phrase “biological females”.
It’s a very unnatural way to refer to a person, and as such is usually a very specifically chosen wording. In a very literal sense everyone who can be described as female can also be described as biological, however here the term has an implied delineation in it. A “biological” and a “non-biological” or “artificial” female. This is where the anti-transness comes in; the appeal to nature of “artificial” women being inferior to the “biological” women.
Now there’s an extra little bit of subtlety here in that it often is contextual. Usually you would not refer to a person as a female as a noun, but rather as female as an adjective. There is a significant subset of people thus who use “female” as a noun either as a substitute for “biological female” or sometimes just as a chauvinistic way of dehumanising women. Either way it’s rarely a good look.
The anti-trans movement, and the right wing in general has a distinct trend in not quite saying what they mean too. So in the same way that the right wing will demonise “groomers”, “scroungers”, and “the woke left” (i.e. LGBTQ+ people, the homeless, anyone that will call them out), the TERFs will demonise the implied “non-biological” females.
It is a parlour trick, an extremely thin veneer of plausible deniability that means they can go “nooooo you’re overreacting, I never SAID that I hate trans people, I just don’t like it when people deny that biology exists”. It’s a way of shutting down arguments so the right wing can say whatever they want with impunity.
Tldr: some nasty folk use “females” as a shorthand for “biological human females” which is a very terfy phrase in the same way as “blood and soil” is very distinctly fascistic.
In this particular case however I don’t think that the reddit OP was being a terf and the mods were definitely just flat out wrong. It probably warranted a post removal and a warning but not a ban.
If bad people adopt a word or mannerism, does that become immediately cancelled from the acceptable lexicon. Shouldn’t Webster’s update their dictionary or something. Is their a rule book. It is hard to keep up with the times. In the context of classifying the content of an image in a very scientific manner, the poster correctly identified that this person was the female gender based upon their outward appearance. Are we really going to get to a point where we can’t assume someone is male or female and have to refer to everyone as a person and they/them until the person has identified themselves. As someone edging upon 40, that reality seems overly complex and makes it feel like everyone has to walk a fine line or be cancelled.
Not at all, but it does add context. I’m sure you agree the phrase “build a wall” has a significantly different implication to what it had in 2005.
Well a dictionary is descriptive, and so describes how people use words. It’ll change with societal meaning as it always has.
I am very much a scientist here specifically I am a biologist but we weren’t doing science in this meme were we? More specifically we weren’t asking what gender the people in the image had.
Nonetheless maybe it’s easier to think of gender like a name. You are given one at birth and you don’t get to choose it. For the majority of people they’re okay with their name. Others feel that their name doesn’t fit them and so change it. If you don’t know someone’s name then I assume you don’t just call them “Bob”, you probably ask them what their name is. Same goes with pronouns, you can just ask. Or if they seem like if you ask they’ll punch your face in, maybe just assume, that is okay in context.
In the end we’re not very different in age, I do understand that the world changes and adds an extra load to the stresses you already face. That said it really is just a case of trying not to assume too much and bring chill if someone says “hey actually I’d prefer they rather than she”. You are really unlikely to get cancelled by anyone that matters if you just say “oh of course, I’ll remember that”.
I say that as someone who has definitely put my foot in it many times before when not understanding a social nuance and making a faux pas.
Because some anti-trans people deliberately conflate sex (male/female) with gender (man/woman/nonbinary) for the express purpose of invalidating the identity of trans people.
That being said, the example in the OP looks more like either an innocent translation error or the dehumanising use of the word that the “manosphere” (incels and others celebrating misogyny) deploy. Probably the former tbh.
I mean transfem and transmasc are common terms in trans communities. I assume it has nothing to do with trans people but a human female is called a woman hence calling women female is frowned upon. You call a female animal a female, but not a human usually.
There is some nuance in there I probably don’t fully understand either as a non native speaker.
I guess you have a point, but banning for that seems like a pretty big overreaction. Especially when the person who posted it also could have been a non-native speaker.
Yea, unless used degoratory I don’t think it is a big deal either. It is probably a cultural thing and I respect it.
Thinking more about it it would also be weird to call a woman female in my native tongue and could also only be used in a degoratory manner. We also have some older words which would be even worse.
No, I think I get it after putting some more thought into it.
This is how incels commonly refer to women. It could be a case for English as a second language, but it’s most likely an incel creep.
Still seems a bit excessive to jump to a ban just for that word in a title tho…
It’s kinda like treating a woman as something subhuman. Normal people call human women, women. But you might refer to a dog as a female dog, for example. Calling a dog a woman dog is weird because their not human, just as calling a human a female is weird, it is dehumanizing.
I agree it’s weird, but I’d say the rest of the post is the dehumanizing part. ‘Female’ just sounds like someone who doesn’t understand English very well.
Calling a dog a woman dog is weird because their not human
Wodog
Now let’s fucking do it with all species
That entire site is toxic as all hell.
How many people have been banned from one sub because they posted in another sub? It happened to me, and I’ve heard it happening to a few others. It wasn’t even anything bad or offensive or controversial. It was literally just the fact that I posted in one sub, made the mods in another sub think they could ban me in this other sub. WTF? And of course there is zero recourse with those clowns.
I’m pretty sure blocking for out-of-sub discretions goes against TOS, or at least the community guidelines, but never once did I see any admin address it.
Me, I think I commented a lol or whatever on political compass même, and got banned from others subs because of this, wtf?
My girlfriend still uses reddit and showed me a post the other day and I went through the comments and they alwere all toxic and deluded. At least here all the toxicity seems to be limited to the hexbear-tards brigading posts.
I don’t know what hex-bear is.
Not sure how, you new to lemmy?
The ban is a bit over the top but your (or their) choice of female instead of woman is strange. No one talks like that.
“a bit”? This is totally out of control, and the mod should lose all privleges, to being a mod.
the other part is a person whom speaks english as a second language. Its not always a clear translation, particularly with English since the language is bastardised from many languages, and many “grammar rules” can be broken, by our own design.
As a mod you should be amenable to that.
the other part is a person whom speaks english as a second language. Its not always a clear translation, particularly with English since the language is bastardised from many languages, and many “grammar rules” can be broken, by our own design.
It isn’t even incorrect English. If you look up female as a noun, in the dictionary it says:
female noun:
- An animal that can lay eggs or give birth to babies; a plant that can produce fruit
- (formal) a woman or a girl
As for why English has two words for it, it comes down to its mixed roots: female has a Latin root and came into the English language via French. It’s ultimately derived from femina, which is Latin for woman. The word woman comes from the proto-Germanic wiban, which originally means wive, which itself coincidentally has the same proto-Germanic root.
Yes, and this was my point.
Take a word such as “Immutable” - an item or object that is incapable of change. Coming from the word “Mutable” which is the opposite - something that can be changed.
These words are from the Latin “mutare” which means “to change”.
So if you can see the irony of this, the word immutable should not exist. (and words like transmute and commute probably should not either - but they do suggest “mutare”.)
Oddly enough ESL speakers don’t make this mistake as often as native English speakers in my experience.
I say “a bit” because frankly reddit is not known for having reasonable mods.
I am a mod only because I started the Warhammer community but sadly I haven’t had the time to grow it and have failed to attract active users or volunteer mods.
Is this the incel brigades talking point? That it’s racist to think that using “female” is creepy and dehumanizing?
I have never once heard a non-native speaker make this mistake. Having learned two other languages myself, I find it extremely hard to believe it’s a mistake someone would have learned to make, even if they learned to speak English online. Teaching the words “man” and “woman” is literally one of the first lessons in ANY language class. That’s true for English classes as well.
I never learned the equivalent of male and female in either of the language classes I have taken. So unless there’s a language that has words ONLY for “male” and “female” and no equivalents for “man” and “woman” this talking point is stupid.
Why are you"asking questions" to make the use of “female” seem more acceptable?
Maybe not everyone is a native English speaker who can sense the difference in nuance in contemporary usage between words which are essentially synonyms.
Never heard a non-native speaker say „female“ When you learn the language that’s a term you’ll learn after man and woman because it’s usually only used in scientific or academic context
it’s usually only used in scientific or academic context
Also law enforcement typically uses it for the same reason. It’s more encompassing (the term female includes women and girls) but it also sounds formal and depersonalizing, and the depersonalizing bit is why it can sound creepy.
But again, it’s a nuance that not everybody may pick up on. I don’t like to assume malice when something can be adequately explained by ignorance.
I’m a non-native speaker myself by the way, and I didn’t pick up on this nuance until the incel thing came about a few years ago and people started to get upset about them deliberately using the term “females” as a dehumanizing way to describe women.
never heard a non-native say
Lol you’ve kept transcripts? You’re awfully confident about something of which you cannot possibly BE confident.
Oh, some people talk like that, but don’t ask what kind of people or OP will be upset.
Brown people?
what
Incels that probably belong in cells…
Oh wow, we have reached this point in time. Some people tried to explain but nobody seems to care. I too use female/woman interchangeably, English is not my main language and personally I don’t see any of the 2 words as demeaning or one better than the other. You do realize the rest of the world doesn’t speak English at a native level so they might use words without attaching some hidden meaning behind them.
Don’t worry, I’ll explain it to you:
-Girl, woman: nouns
-Female: adjective
How to use:
-She’s a girl/woman
-She’s female
There you go. The problem is using female as a noun (“a female”).
PS: English isn’t my first language either.
Male and female are definitely nouns also.
Yes, and they’re most commonly used as nouns when referring to animals, aka “this flock of sheep has 10 males and 10 females.” To use either as a noun when referring to a specific person implies dehumanization
Only in medical language afaik, what case are you thinking of?
(And even the case I’m thinking of is probably a male/female (human) ommiting the human part)
As a person who has learned 2 languages besides English, let me say the idea that you would go into a place where native speakers are discussing their own language and then tell them why they are wrong because non-native speakers wouldn’t see a problem with the usage of the word in their own language…?
Certainly gutsy, I’ll give you that. I can’t imagine the balls to tell people speaking their native language that I, a student of their language, am learned enough to educate them on the subtle nuance of the use of a word in various contexts, but you do you I guess.
So lemmy/reddit is the place where only native speakers are discussing in their own language? I must be an outside here, I am not talking about hypothetical situations…I’m happy for you that you speak multiple languages, so do I…
You deserved it op, just by judging how you’re acting.
my bad bro english is not my first language.
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My understanding is that female refers to the gender while woman refers specifically to an adult of the aforementioned gender. As in you wouldn’t call a 3 year girl a woman and you wouldn’t call a 90 year old woman a girl, as girl carries a diminutive connotation compared to the more apt term woman.
Sex.
Female and male refer to sex.
Sex is what is between your legs.
Woman and man refer to gender.
Gender is what’s between your ears.
OR male and female are adjectives and man and woman are nouns
The dictionary and the entirety of biological science disagree with you.
In any case, the main point in that there is a difference between gender and sex, and male and female refer to sex.
And I’m talking about linguistics, not biology
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Are you serious?
You’ve never heard say, say “female athlete”? Because saying “woman athlete” is absolutely fucking Neanderthal.
You can’t just swap every instance of female for woman. Same applies for male/man. It’s basic grammar at this point.
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I’m fine with that!
I’ve certainly had eejits before argue all instances of female are wrong for humans.
You’re misunderstanding a little here. The issue is not with using ‘female’, the issue is with using it as a noun. ‘Female athlete’ is fine. ‘The female’ is not.
Can someone please look up these words in a dictionary?
Part of speech is not the issue. The issue is referring to a human as their sex in a sexual context.
If you think a doctor saying, “the patient is a female” is in any sense incorrect or rude, you’re wrong, and I don’t believe that you don’t already know that.
Show me in the screenshot where the doctor referring to a woman as a female in a medical context is.
OH wait, you can’t, it’s not there. We literally are not talking about that.
Female in female athlete is an adjective, not a noun
Pretty sure they meant “as a noun” since almost nobody complains about the use of female/male as adjectives. The OP had it used as a noun, after all.
TIL all doctors, military, police etc. are incels.
Are you ok with calling men “males”?
People forget that there are also girls, teenagers and possibly other variants you may want to specify (plus all the male ones etc.).
By using female/male you cover those bases.
Besides, have you never seen internet posts like in AITA or such using F/M?
Never mind all the professional language (e.g. “military age male”).
Just, come on. Getting insulted over bullshit.
Besides, have you never seen internet posts like in AITA or such using F/M?
I think in those cases they refer to the adjective female and not the noun.
I still don’t see how one is offensive and one isn’t, when they describe the exact same thing.
It’s as if programmers (noun) were offended when someome says they program (verb) or vice versa.
Yea I see how you may not want to be reduced to just a word describing some quality of yours, but come on, going to war over it is really stupid.
I still don’t see how one is offensive and one isn’t, when they describe the exact same thing.
Female as a noun sounds more formal, distant and depersonalizing than woman. Language is all about nuance.
going to war over it is really stupid.
I agree with you there. In most cases, and without additional context, I think it’s best to assume ignorance rather than malice.
On the other hand, it’s also fair to say that this “going to war” only started a few years ago when incels deliberately and maliciously began using the term female to speak about women in a dehumanizing way.
Female as a noun sounds more formal, distant and depersonalizing than woman. Language is all about nuance.
Well, we’re talking about some random anonymous person on the internet. I think not being personal is quite valid, especially since nowadays you never know how they identify.
In fact, I do find it odd how first people were being offended by others assuming their identity, so some circles just began to use more general and broad terms, and now that’s offensive too.
I tend to refer to singular people on the internet as “person”, and I have been corrected by them or.others, i.e. “I’m a woman!” Like, geez, I don’t care or need to know, to me you’re just a bunch of words, you may be a chatbot for what I know.
We’re talking about a creep staring at women and a creep posting photos to reddit, not a doctor treating a patient or a scientist studying people. We’re not talking about someone filling In a form oor using an abbreviation. We’re not talking about technical writing. You can’t just remove context and pretend like the situations are the same. Any language loses meaning without context. Your argument is meaningless because you ignored context. That context is incels using the word female to objectify and dehumanize women and as a dog whistle to call other misogynist pedants to their defense.
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Stop projecting your insecurities.
Damn this reads like a schoolyard fight
I have a feeling all of your sorts are just reading of a script. Some C-grade armchair psychologist has made some half-assed observation 20 years ago and now the likes of you have nothing else to argue with when someone calls out your insecurities.
Anyway, you’re no fun, bye
Dude, seriously, get help. It’s ok to not be ok.
The post they are responding to claims that female is “never” used as a noun. The claim was not restricted to the posted context.
There’s a reason why the Ferengi use “female” as a noun. But some people don’t seem to understand that. When I heard someone use the word “female” as a noun they either are:
× reffering to animals
× sexist
× talking about some incel shit
× a capitalist race in Star Trek
× trolling
or speaking english not that well.
Or using the term to refer to a genetic female, for example in a medical context.
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I’ve never seen someone on the street calling women “females”, I wonder why…
Yeah, so? Every woman is a female, not every female is a woman. Same as that every woman is human, but not evey human is a woman and that every human is a mamal, but not every mamal is a human.
If people are offended by the truth, they should go to truth, as no truths are to be found there. Snowflakes can’t stand the heat. ;)
Based modteam on reddit BTFO a weird neckbeard*
You think people should be banned from a subreddit for using the wrong synonym?
Seems like a really stupid ban.Unless you’re overly online and/or up on the latest trans discourse in the US, calling women females is at worst a little weird, but ultimately innocuous. Could easily be an ESL issue also.Now
ifthere is good reason to believe OP is intentionally using it in the weird incelly way, sure that’s bad. Although unless OP is like intentionally missgendering or otherwise harassing people with the word, I personally think it’s way overkill to police it even if he does mean it in the incel type of way…Edit: Oh wait, I’m slow. The punchline is probably that the “female” in question is either a man or trans. Yeah in that context the probability that OP is intentionally being weird is probably much higher…
I will use whatever words I want. :)
In this case, the OP was probably trolling. But there are many people who go out of their way to be insulted by almost anything these days.
I miss the 90s a lot. The 70s were probably even better but I was too young.
Literally what the Greeks thought about women
I like this sort of humor but I bet it’s offensive to women today. :)
I’m also convinced that joking the same way about a man would be considered funny and totally OK.
Idk, some people have that humor and some don’t, that was pretty much always the case. Humor doesn’t just depend on gender. But humor changes and I doubt that people from the 70s would have laugthed if you showed them a meme from today.
Wdym sussus amogus isn’t funny
Showed it to my girlfriend and she laughed out loud. :)
About memes, I wasn’t even sure what a meme was when it came. Nobody could explain what it was or why it was funny. Now it’s obvious that the meme viewer needs experience from the meme situation, otherwise the meme makes no sense to the viewer.
There’s a context of years of misogyny behind this which make it this way. The problem is that for some people those jokes are not joke and they do believe it. So yeah if you make those kind of joke with people you know for sure(100%) they are not believing in it, I guess there is no problem, just like every possible offensive jokes. Racist jokes surrounded by racists people are not jokes anymore for example
nah, good ban. calling women “females” is creepy, non humanizing and weird. like you’re referring to an animal in a zoo or something. you complaining about it here seems pretty snowflakey
Thinking it’s fair to ban someone for the use of the word “female” seems even more snowflakey tho
Banning is a bit much though. Remove the post and let OP resubmit. Unless OP was beimg an ass about it.
There’s a pretty sensible argument to be made for nipping problems in the bud
True, but there’s an at least equally sensible argument to be made for, if not assuming good faith, then at least not assuming bad faith to the point of immediate decisive action based only on that assumption.
Are you ok with calling men “males”?
People forget that there are also girls, teenagers and possibly other variants you may want to specify (plus all the male ones etc.).
By using female/male you cover those bases.
Besides, have you never seen internet posts like in AITA or such using F/M?
Never mind all the professional language (e.g. “military age male”).
Just, come on. Getting insulted over bullshit.
Adding a heading to a picture or article is a form of classification. It actually should qualify as an acceptable use-case in the same way that I would identify the contents of microscope slides. “A female is seen doing blank” is purely scientific classification. I think that the mod is being anti-science. The ultra-left is a bit regressive.
but aren’t females also human?
I think you will find that not all females are human, see female ducks, female turtles, female elephants etc.
Women necessarily are human, but “females” assuredly are not. If someone refers to “a female” they are most likely referring to an animal, likely livestock. They could also be referring to a particular type of electronics adapter or something along those lines, though. They’re probably not talking about an adult human woman.
The “livestock” part is just made up to make it sound even more dehumanising. It’s used to refer to females of all species, period. Basic animals sure do have their specific names (cow/bull, shewolf/wolf, mare/horse…) But if not you just say “male animal/female animal”
BTW i just realized i could just copy image and paste in comment box, it automatically generates a link. that link can be pasted on URL to share photos rather than downloading that image and then sharing them from the directory.
I think i accidentally ate 2 gummy bears this morning.
