Is it degrading/condescending to refer to a woman as 'female'?

  • Thread starter Thread starter AugustTherese
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Well, someone once got upset with me when I called her “ma’am” and she was a 50 something year old lady. But just because someone will always get offended at something does not mean they are right. Why would referring to a girl or woman as a female be degrading? It’s what they are.
 
I literally just got crucified for referring to a girl whom I was engaged to as ‘this female’ to protect her identity. I had absolutely no clue that people got offended by the use of ‘female’ in the context of referring to a girl/woman, i.e. human being that is not male.
 
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It’s virtually impossible to keep ahead of the language police these days, or to avoid getting in trouble with the brown shirted forces of political correctness.
 
Brittany said:
So it’s possible that whoever is offended is offended because the word sounds like it’s referring to something nonhuman
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But for anyone to speculate as that being my intention, especially referring to someone whom I love and was engaged to, as something nonhuman, seems disingenuous to me.
 
“Non-male” is generally safe. Don’t use the term “broad” either.
 
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TheAmazingGrace said:
We generally don’t call men as “males” outside of hospital records or police reports, so why refer to women thusly?
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Okay, but is not that kind of a non-sequitur? Is that an attempt at equality (sameness) simply by the mere fact of what we do not call men?
 
AugustTherese said:
Okay, but is not that kind of a non-sequitur? Is that an attempt at equality (sameness) simply by the mere fact of what we do not call men?
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Um, yes. Why would it be okay to casually call a woman a female, when we almost never call men males?
 
TheAmazingGrace said:
Um, yes. Why would it be okay to casually call a woman a female, when we almost never call men males?
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That logic doesn’t flow there; e.g. Why would it be okay to casually call a child a kid, when we almost never call adults kids? Hence, non-sequitur.

“Male and female he created them.” Genesis 3:5
 
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I use “males” all the time in casual contexts, or at least, as often as I use “female”…
 
una_ecclesia said:
I use “males” all the time in casual contexts, or at least, as often as I use “female”…
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Fair enough. I never hear “male” used in casual conversation like “female” though, and usually when someone calls me a “female” it’s in a denigrating way.
 
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TheAmazingGrace said:
and usually when someone calls me a “female” it’s in a denigrating way.
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And, that is inherently wrong if that is the intention. But, from the context I used ‘this female’ in, there is no way any rational ‘female’ or ‘male’ would presume this use to be ‘denigrating’.
 
AugustTherese said:
I had absolutely no idea…
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Nope, is it so to call them women? If so then it would be degrading to call men men or males.

Because men and males are a part of women and females.

fe + male = female
wo + man = woman
 
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