It's fine if it's consistent imo.
Men and women - 👍
Males and females - 👍
Boys and girls - 👍
Guys and gals - 👍
Men and females - 👎
Men and girls - 👎
Men and chicks - 👎
Seadogs and wenches - 🏴☠️
ヾ(⌐■_■)ノ♪
Comrades - ☭
males and females is still psychotic if you're not specifically talking science like biology, statistics, etc. adjectives as nouns are rarely a good sign in general; it's almost always derogative.
also boys and girls would be fine except most people who use (or claim to use) boys do it in familiar sense only. they'd never call a 40 year old jacked man they don't know a boy, but they'd easily call a grown ass woman they don't know a girl. exceptions are some phrases like "big boy" or "my boy" in endearing sense but that's not how "girl" is generally used, which is a substitute for "woman".
A lot of prior military folks will use males and females just because that's how it's been drilled into them. Male and female latrines, not men and women's bathrooms. Male and female barracks, not men and women's dorms. Male and female standards, etc etc.
dehumanization is part of military. that's not really an argument for it.
Tamales and females
Guys and Dolls - 👐 (jazz hands)
Men and chicks - 👎
What about "dudes and chicks?"
Picture you gettin down inside a picture tube.
dudes and dudettes?
Context is king, so I don't think this is universal. Decent list though.
Chaps and dames
Bros and broads - 🤔
Claims to be fe-male
Isn’t man made out of iron
Disappointment
Remember kids, iron man is Fe male.
This is EXACTLY what I hear.
If you need me I'll be over in the corner stroking my lobes
They sound like Ferengi lmao
"hUmOn FeEeMaLe!"
Don't even get me started on how the average right-wing/incel/pilled male is basically already an honorary ferengi...
Sharpen their teeth and give them some giant lobes and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Some of them even shave their heads already...
Don't lump those of us who own our baldness in with those pricks. I have enough trouble with people thinking I'm a cop as is.
Oh, and you can forget about wearing any kind of wrap-around shades! Might as well put on a red hat. I feel your pain.
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.
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.
Thanks for writing that out. I'd never quite groked why it (and similar wording) sounded wrong: reducing a person to an adjective.
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.
Whatever you do, don't google male chicks. God the food industry is awful
My girlfriend calls women "females".
Where is your god now, Raychelle?
Does she pass the Bechdel test?
Is muffled sapphic moaning considered dialogue?
During the whole Olympic controversy on the Algerian boxer, Imane Khelif, questioning her actual gender, someone was making mental gymnastics that she still has testerone level higher than "vanilla females".
Lol, vanilla females. That alone says a lot.
Not that we need to open this can of worms here, but it's a pet peeve of mine that "vanilla" has become a term used to mean plain, boring, sheltered, standard, mediocre, underwhelming, basic, and uninteresting.
Vanilla is an amazing flavor that comes from orchids that must be hand pollinated to cultivate at scale, and has a long and interesting history. It's the second most valuable spice after saffron.
Just feels wrong to use that as a synonym for bland and blah.
Well depends on context i guess. Like saying "my women teacher" just doesn't sound as good as "my female teacher"
That’s an adjective, that’s fine. It’s about using “females” as a noun.
Yep. Same with saying "a Trans Woman" versus "a Trans".
"the transes"
Female as the adjectival form of woman is normal and ok. As a noun for a human it tells me you’re on one of a few varieties of bullshit
The most offensive part is using the noun as plural when it's meant to be singular, as in your example
I had a woman boss who would always refer to women as female (like “you know the manager of that department is a female?!”). I’m still not sure how I feel about it.
I agree with the post. It's coded derogatory speech while being technically correct. Personally, I would go as far to say it's a dog-whistle and is absolutely a flag, especially if it renders any speech clunky and labored, or side-steps a person's gender transition status.
Also, here's something I've observed that may be relevant.
IMO, most of the time people use gender when telling a story, it's not relevant information in the first place. In light of recent events, public awareness, and politics, non-gendered speech (in English at least) is automatically the most inclusive way to go and it's a good habit to develop. The exceptions here are where it's information that supports the story, disambiguates complicated situations (e.g. talking about a drag persona), or where it's gender affirming in some way (e.g. respecting pronoun preferences).
I see this happen a lot, especially where woman/female is used as extra information when expressing anger, frustration, and disgust. For example, I hear "this woman cut me off in traffic" far more than "this man cut me off in traffic", with "this person" or "a BMW driver" as a maybe-neutral-but-also-likely-male coded qualifier. To me, it suggests a kind of negative bias for gender, which may or may not be unconscious (depends on the person). It may seem like a small thing, but it's freaking everywhere and it's gotta stop.
For the rare occasion where sex or gender supports the story, "my teacher, who is a woman, ..." or "my teacher, (s)he..." does the job. Yeah, it's is a bit tougher on the tongue, but you should only need to say it once for the whole telling.
There's vanishingly few places where the use of the word female is correct. The test is generally if the word male would also be correct and not weird there. If the speaker is talking about men and females then we have a problem.
There's also a couple exceptions where the misogynist language got assimilated but it's so normal that you can't tell just by their use of the word. Like the military talking about female soldiers. For example there is a need to distinguish between male and female body armor. But also they talk about the needs of soldiers and female soldiers without a hint of disparagement. It's just how they make it clear there needs to be a second latrine ditch and the camp shower needs to have at least canvas walls. The only fix most of us can see for this is persistently referring to men as male soldiers too because women soldiers sounds weird and doesn't solve the problem of default soldier vs qualifier soldier.
Exactly. The use of "female" is clinical in that context. It's meant to be sterile, emotionless, professional, and adequately descriptive.
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