Asklemmy

43963 readers

1290 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

251

Is "female" offensive? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by Trincapinones@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

287 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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 ^^

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] PonyOfWar@pawb.social 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Depends entirely on how you use it. There are many perfectly valid uses for the word, like in science or on a checkbox where you select your gender. The point where it can get offensive is when referring to individuals or groups of women as "females" where you could instead just use "women". It's language often used by incels and the like.