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this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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In posts like this and elsewhere, commenters kept claiming the noun female to refer to a human is generally derogatory or offensive.
Someone wrote
Despite abundant evidence here (search females), in classifieds, personals & online equivalents (eg, ads that limit eligibility to females), or text corpus searches revealing that the noun female referring to humans is often non-derogatory, so it all depends on the context, they'd insist that usage of the word itself is offensive, insulting, or disrespectful, and they wanted everyone taught to think that until it's the generally accepted meaning. They didn't seem to consider that promoting unconventionally sexist framings (ie, female is a dirty word) for wider adoption in our language serves sexists more than anything, and it might make more sense to resist that.
Outside of a purely descriptive term of the biological differences between the sexes, that is derogatory.
It is often used to dehumanize women, as the term is mostly used when talking about animals.
Often used to dehumsnise women... Where?
Anywhere biggots congregate, incels often use it to degrade women.
Let's ban all words then, in that case.
So you didn't look at the
did you?
Why would I?
You cite no source for what you write as if it was fact.
The fact that you try to make it look like scientific language tells me that you actually know why the term is derogatory, and you doubling down makes me think you argue in bad faith.
Confirmed: couldn't even search females in lemmy. Disregards common classified ads. Claims "bad faith".
Because the claim is empirical, and yours violates plain observation?
Searching random websites is anecdotal, not actual statistics
That applies more to your counterclaim: as a generalization, your claim has a greater burden of evidence, which by only asserting your claim, you haven't attempted to meet. In contrast, I've indicated evidence exists & where it's readily found, which you've ignored. Much isn't required my claim that your generalization is false, because refuting a generalization merely requires counterexamples.
The fact remains that counterexamples to your claim are common, which wouldn't be expected if the conventional meaning were derogatory.
Here's an example quoting a story in the news:
So your claim is that by referring to her daughters as females, this mother is insulting them?
While I might be able to argue in "bad faith", the unsolicited speech productions of the community do not. Do you want more examples?
I see no link to a study or anything, so nothing new
Counterexamples don't require studies.
Refuting the claim "men are generally bald" merely requires the existence of a few men who aren't. You're claiming "female is a derogatory noun to humans": as shown it isn't. Can you explain what the mother quoted in the news is saying about her daughters if your claim about female is true? No, your claim fails.
Deny plain observation all you want: your claim is false.
You have yet to show that it isn't derogatory, so far you just have your own oppinion.
Thus you are wrong.
Now I do see that you are registered at lemmynsfw.com, generally I would not hold your instance against you if you make a resonable argument in good faith, but based on your creepy attitude and fixation with derogatory/demeaning terms combined with your instance of choice tells me that this is a kink, which is fine if done with consent, but you are pushing your kink on others outside of spaces where it is accepted.