I sometimes hear furries mess up and refer to women as "female humans" or something along those lines, but that's mainly because furries usually think in "male/female" instead of "man/woman" (or at least all the ones I've met seem to). For an example, "Cat-woman" can be kinda ambiguous and (at least imo) sounds kinda odd since "woman" is usually exclusive to female humans. In this example, are we talking about a woman who's obsessed with cats, a woman who is a cat (a female feline with human features), an anime cat girl (a woman with cat features), or a DC Comics character (a woman who dresses up like a cat)?

Otherwise though, yeah. Yeah, especially, especially when someone refers to women as "females" as in "check out those females over there". That's creepy. Even furries would rather say something like, "check out those gals over there", regardless of context.

Edit: also, does this hypothetical person say "males" too, or is it "man/female"? "Man/female" is a massive red flag.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 months ago (2 children)

As a woman who is bothered by the "females" thing, "female humans" doesn't sound bad to me. It's because "female" is used as an adjective here. It's the same reason "black women" sounds fine, but "blacks" sounds bad. It's reducing someone to their gender only, as if they're not humans, too. It feels otherimg.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 months ago

Thanks for writing that out. I'd never quite groked why it (and similar wording) sounded wrong: reducing a person to an adjective.

[–] captainlezbian 2 points 3 months ago

Yeah, it does bother me, but not for the same reason. It’s something I associate moderately with terf lingo. But it’s a yellow flag and not a red one

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago

but that’s mainly because furries usually think in “male/female”

I wonder if that's because that's how they're tagged on e621, or if they're tagged that way because furries already referred to them in those terms.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago