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 ^^
Oh dear… And why isn’t “a male” just as bad? And what’s intrinsically wrong about those two as a noun? Why is it ok to call someone “a fire fighter“, “a journalist”, and not “a female”? Is it something to feel shame about? Bah. It’s really beyond me. Thank god i live in Italy, where this kind of stuff still struggles to gain traction, but alas it will do eventually, since hey, you know, we’re all living in america after all. What’s more, it’s not entirely true: now you can get scolded even for using female as an adjective (it happened to me more than once), my friend. And it’ll get worse, just you wait and see.
“I had coffee with one of the males at work”
“There’s a male waiting for you downstairs”
“I need to see a male about a dog”
All of them would be weird as fuck, and yes, they’d sound demeaning. They don’t have the same weird-incel vibe, but that’s just an accident of culture.
Right. This is the best way to figure out if it sounds weird.
If you would use “man” then the word to use is “woman”. If you would use “male” then “female”.
So if someone asks is the doctor male or female? No problem. Even if they ask “is the doctor a male or a female?” Still no problem. Kinda odd but certainly not offensive.
The problem arises when someone says “men and females” that does sound weird and kinda insulting. As would “women and males”.
If you would use the word man, use woman.
If you would use the word male, use female.