Asklemmy

44151 readers

918 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
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

251

Is "female" offensive? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 9 months ago by Trincapinones to c/[email protected]

281 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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes, it would be weird to use that combination. I can't think of why anyone would other than overt sexism. That doesn't answer the question of what term would work for across ages for either gender though.

It is also weird to see bathrooms labeled as men and ladies instead of men and women. Another example of inconsistency in how society sees women compared to men.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I think the important part is to be consistent. "Female sports leagues don't get the same attention as male sports leagues". Of course, that particular sentence sounds weird, but I'm sure it could be made to work. Personally, I'd use "women's and men's" and hope that it's implied that the same is true to girls' and boys' leagues.

As for bathrooms, now that I think about it, most are only marked with the signs/images. No words. But "men/women" and "ladies/gents" seems common for places that bother putting words.

Of course, the most common bathroom I see is "CUSTOMERS ONLY" (or sometimes COSTUMERS, lol).