The Onion

4588 readers

2122 users here now

The Onion

A place to share and discuss stories from The Onion, Clickhole, and other satire.

Great Satire Writing:

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

889

Man who calls women "females" hopes to one day be allowed within 500 meters of one (chaser.com.au)

submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

235 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I use it, and never mean it in an offensive way.

"The pronoun "she" is for females, while "he" is for males".

But now that I see that it's so widely seen as a slur, I'll refrain from using it with people who don't know me well. I'll use "women and girls", now.

[–] derfunkatron 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I’m bothered when ever I hear someone use females as a collective noun for women. Not necessarily because it offends me or because I’m offended on behalf of someone else, but because it sounds so strange to me and the context where it is used is often wildly inappropriate.

The usage is odd; in my experience people who refer to women collectively as females often do not refer to men collectively as males which is often telling about other beliefs and ideas. Also, male/female and man/woman are dichotomies, and using men/females sounds really off.

Referring to people using technical terminology feels reductive and weird to me. Replace female with any other technical identity term and use it the same way: it will get really awkward really fast.

I am aware that the majority of people who use females collectively are not doing so to offend. Hell, the other day, I heard a teacher refer to the girls in her class as females. I doubt she was using it as a pejorative, but she referred to the boys as… boys. The whole thing was weird to me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Yea. "Female" and "male" don't sound weird to me in themselves. I don't see then as in a different category of words than "women" or "boys". But using it in an inconsistent way would be weird to me as well. If in a class, the girls, or women, are in the same age as the boys, or men, then it should be either "girls and boys", or "women and men". Or "females and males". But "females and boys" is just inconsistent.