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Is "female" offensive? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I am not a native English speaker and I have sometimes referred to people as male and female (as that is what I have been taught) but I have received some backlash in some cases, especially for the word "female", is there some negative thought in the word which I am unaware of?

I don't know if this is the best place to ask, if it's not appropriate I have no problem to delete it ^^

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ah, I understand now. You think that "human nonspecific terminology" and "dehumanizing terminology" are oxymoronic. Let me help clarify this for you with a lesson in reading comprehension:

"Human nonspecific terminology" refers to terminology that isn't used specifically to refer to humans. For example, nouns like "male", "female", "subject", or "specimen" can refer to humans, but they can also apply to things like plants and animals. Casually using these terms socially is generally thought of as dehumanizing and disrespectful.

This is opposed to respectful human terminology like "man", "woman", "participant", or "person" that almost exclusively refer to humans.

If a man thinks of himself as a man, but refers to women as "females", people tend to assume he has less than an acceptable amount of respect for women, since he uses less human terminology to describe them than he would to describe himself.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago

This is why I preferred math over English classes.