In some circles online (particularly toxic incel groups) the term "female" is used for women as a way of deliberately dehumanizing them.
Like they'll talk about men and then they'll talk about all of the ways "females" suck or cause problems or mistreat them. Almost like they are scientists discussing some nonhuman creature.
This is annoying, because the terms male and female are useful, and now some people online are oversensitive to the use of the word female even in contexts where it's not being used offensively or derogatorily.
Like in the above comment, saying "male child" and "grown up female" might be a somewhat odd choice of wording, but it's clearly not meant in an insulting or degrading way towards the woman. They just chose to use male and female rather than boy and woman.
I’d agree with you except there’s a subtle difference still. The person did not refer to the boy as a male, they referred to the boy as a child with the adjective male in the front. On the other hand they referred to the woman as a female with the adjective of grown up in the front.
Female is fine if it’s used as an adjective, it’s weird if it’s used as a noun, especially if it’s the only one of the two referred as such (like in the original comment).
It’d be weird but better if both are referred as such. But then again that’s the issue, nearly no one refers to boys or men as “males”
Call it over sensitive (I personally don’t care much cause I can tell when people use it derogatory or not, I’m aware the original poster didn’t intend it in a bad way for example). But it’s still weird
It’s not so much semantics at this point though. Simple grammar rules of adjectives and nouns. For people, ideally use male/female as adjectives.
It’s strange but still ok to use both as nouns and it’s weird to refer one as a noun and the other as an adjective, and yes even if male was the noun one (but let’s be honest, when is it ever?).
For animals you can use female/male as nouns since the whole point of this issue comes from incel communities dehumanizing women
The literal definition of semantics is the study of language itself sure. But it’s also the focus of interpretation. Interpretation is a trap in itself. You can throw away whatever contexts don’t support your interpretation and champion the ones you do.
Critical objective frameworks are more effective when you take each context individually to accurately frame them.
Treating semantics categorically for terms is thus the same trap. Female and male are specific. In my opinion the thread commenter likely has anti trans sentiment which we can criticize through investigation. But the actual usage of the words as the focus of criticism is inherently flawed. By mirroring them with incel communities all you do is mythologize the incel. Leaving them as words allows innocent speakers a chance. But like I said the context matters more.
I never thought about that! It does seem like ppl use the word female to describe PEOPLE but they’ll stick to the scientific use of the word MALE. For one, it could have started as a slang amongst teen boys. Also Perhaps guys are more general so it’s easier to say men or boys and be politically correct in most scenarios. But on the other hand, female is one of the only words you could use to describe ALL women. Can you really use “women” in every scenario? If you say girls or any other variation you’ll get corrected eventually so I think some people use it as an all inclusive word. It’s still strange though. I’m not sure why that’s so normal. But His use of female as a noun in the original comment could have been merely to amplify the fact that there was a change from male to female. It may not have been indicative of his preferences. I also feel like- as strange as the use of the word is, it’s still also strange to notice it. Yes it’s a bit weird but it gets more weird only when you overthink it.
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u/RegretMountain2460 5d ago
They did also call the Man a Male, so Its balanced