True - but bitch is generally honestly used as an insult. Bitch, in a sense, means that I am a person with qualities that person does not like and they wish to insult me.
Female on the other hand, just means I am one of the bland faceless homogeneous part of the population with a uterus, all of whom are exactly the same in most ways.
Now, obviously that’s reading a lot into what many would be consider to a pretty innocuous word, but due to the context in which I most often hear female-as-noun being used, I just have unpleasant connotations with it. I don’t get particularly worked up by it or anything, it’s just a general dislike for the word being applied in that way.
Not to continue a hijack - but even woman did not start out as a prefix added to the male term. It used to be wifman and werman, with man just meaning human and the prefixes being the relative gender markers.
Not really apropos of anything, I just thought it was interesting
To clarify, I didn’t mean to state that the objection I thought I was remembering (which I grant, I may be misremembering) was based on linguistic or etymological fact, but that the modern words appear to be bases with prefixes (which I clumsily described in my earlier post as “presenting”).
You can probably find some feminist somewhere who objects to “female” for that reasons, but I’ve never heard of one.
The organizers of the first Michigan Womyn’s Festival (circa 1975) seem to have been the ones to first come up with spelling women with a “y” to leave out the “man”, but this never really caught on even among feminists. Aside from references to the Michigan Womyn’s Festival itself, I don’t think I’ve encountered anyone who seriously used that spelling since the early '90s. Again, I’m sure you could find people who do have a problem with “woman” because it contains “man”, but I don’t believe it’s at all a common view.
I don’t find the word female insulting. It’s the people who use it. Misogynists tend to call women “females”, so I tend to suspect men of misogyny when they talk about females - especially in anecdotal form, when they’re talking about a woman they’ve spent time with or know well. Really big red flag when some guy refers to his ex girlfriend or ex wife as “That female”.
If he has a military or police background, he gets the benefit of the doubt.
“Bitches” is insulting. “Females” is just a red flag for a certain mindset.
Female is just so impersonal. I would much rather be called a bitch because a) You recognize some part of me as an individual; b) It usually means that your self-entitled ass is not getting its way because of me.
I heard it once, about 25 years ago when I was teaching junior high. At a school event, one of the other teachers slipped me a note that said “Look how all the males are crossing their legs.” It sounded weird to me, strangely impersonal, pretty much how “female” as a noun sounds weird and off-putting, except without the ugly misogynistic baggage. Ever since then I’ve felt a strong aversion to using “male” and “female” as nouns. That teacher was an ESL immigrant, so you have to make some allowance. Our school served an impoverished African-American urban community, where I noticed how police parlance was used as everyday common currency among civilians.
The original Anglo-Saxon word for woman was simply wif, but in modern English, as “wife,” it has taken on a narrower denotation than woman in general. So the suffixed form wifmann, as Lamia explained above, meaning ‘female person’, has had to suffice. Kind of like in Malay, parallel to orang perempuan (female person) and orang lelaki (male person), which is how you say woman and man.
The German cognate, Weib, still means woman, but it isn’t the usual word any more. Now they say Frau, which originally meant a noblewoman. The plain, basic words for woman sometimes undergo pejoration, a stigma of lower prestige, so that to keep from insulting anyone you have to say “lady.” This is also true in Malay, where wanita (lady) is what they actually call women nowadays, while perempuan is often considered somewhat coarse language. I hope English doesn’t get like that. There’s something wholesome-feeling about the plain, straightforward words woman and man which all these circumlocutions cannot match.
Count me as someone who doesn’t get the ire over the word female. It just wouldn’t ping my radar to take offense. For the most part no name is going to upset me if it’s directed at me by a person I don’t care about. A stranger calls me a cunt or a bitch? Big whoopity do. Who are they to me? Nobody.
That reminds me how Frank Zappa once said, in his inimitable way, “Girls go with boys, ladies go with guys, and women go with men: A girl wants a boy to kiss her cheek. A lady wants a guy to kiss her ass. And a woman wants a man to kiss her pussy.” Frank’s basic point was that women and men were the ideal types, and the others were disparaged.
Above, I meant to say Scachath explained the etymology of wifmann. Humble apologies, Scachath.
I’d consider the equivalent to be “bastard” or “asshole” when it’s a comment about the guy being scummy; “pig” when it’s meant as a slam against the guy for being male.
My mind was absolutely boggled when I learned here at the straight dope that the word “lady” was offensive to women, to the point that some of you would even break up with a man who referred to you as a lady. To me, lady is the absolute most polite way to refer to a woman. It’s a bullshit word made up just to sound extra nice, and yet some how it was offensive. Wow.
But now this? Female? Honestly???
I don’t even know if I want to live in this world anymore sometimes. I am just SO glad that I am gay, I don’t have to deal with it.
For the record, if my boyfriend ever introduces me as, “This is my man, Drew” I wouldn’t think twice about it, in fact, it’d be kind of endearing. I’m assuming a huge chunk of the women on this board would be fucking pissed off if they were introduced as, “This is my woman…”, and I’ll never understand it.
If someone referred to me as a male, I wouldn’t think twice. In fact, I have been referred to as male many times by many people and it has never, ever upset me. Especially on the internet, it’s a perfectly fine term to use. “drewtwo, are you a male or a female?” “I’m a male.” I can’t imagine a single use where the term man or male could possibly be offensive to me.
Until recently and on this board, I had never heard of anyone being offended by the word female.
The way I learned the word, it has no negative connotations at all. It is simply is what it is.
Males are males, females are females.
I suppose at a stretch, I can see the argument that it is a little generic or clinical compared to the word woman. But to imagine evil, dehumanizing intentions behind its use, seems pretty extreme for such a common, accurate word.
Since it appears it hasn’t been brought up yet, the etymology of the word ‘bitch’ is actually quite interesting.
It originates, of course, as the correct term for a female dog. It is still used as such in that context, even among people who would never use it in any other manner. After all, we use words to delineate the sex of other animals, and dogs are one of our most important animals. What were we to do? Use ‘he-dog’, and ‘she-dog’ instead of ‘dog’ and ‘bitch’? But, I digress.
Geoffrey Hughes posited that the usage of the term as derogatory came from the popular depictions of Artemis/Diana (Goddess of the hunt/wilderness/childbirth/virgins) as being in the lead of a pack of hunting dogs. These dogs were usually assumed to be female and therefore ‘bitches’. Because Artemis/Diana was both a powerful and widely revered Goddess and because of the fear of the inherent power of women, the Roman patriarchy (and later the Church) began to refer to women who did not follow the dictates of the culture to be submissive to men as “Diana’s Bitches”.
There is a significant movement in Neopaganism today to retake the word and thereby dispel its pernicious meaning. I know personally of two Dianic priestesses who embrace the word ‘bitch’ and use it in ceremony. Whether this will take hold in common culture remains to be seen. I see some resonance in this and the idea of some of my black friends who wish to defang the word ‘nigger’ by using it colloquially to refer to each other. However, I may be over-reaching on this.
Nevertheless, the underlying idea of the etymology of this word which has persisted for centuries is important to understand. ‘Bitches’ were originally women who were not willing to be chattel in a culture that denigrated their very right to be human. The word became synonymous with a dog in heat. Lewdness, malicious intent and capricious behavior (which are present in all humans) were tagged and tattooed on every woman who stood up to a man.
This is the 21st century the last time I checked. I can’t imagine actually using the word ‘bitch’ to describe a woman. But, then, I like women. Some men don’t. More’s the pity.
The reason is that words do not gain meaning purely by how the dictionary defines them, but by how they’re used. Female, as a noun, is used in some official parlances (like the police) and that’s fine - it’s there for clarity (no age boundaries) and they would also use the term male in the same circumstances.
But a man who casually refers to females instead of women in everyday conversation tends to also be the kind of man who doesn’t treat women as if they were full humans. The same goes for males, it’s just that I haven’t actually hard it myself.
Why are there people in this thread still talking about the adjective form of female? I mean, you don’t even need to read further than the thread title - females is always a nound, not an adjective.
SciFiSam, do you have a cite to back up your assertion that: “a man who casually refers to females instead of women in everyday conversation tends to also be the kind of man who doesn’t treat women as if they were full humans” ?
