Haha! I didn’t even notice it was a zombie! D’oh!
When people who are in law enforcement, the military, or the medical field use it, it’s okay. Anybody else, it’s a red flag for issues with women.
White, male, 55. I think it is quite appropriate. In the world of PC, one can get one’s buns in a sling if they are not as clinical as possible. Even the most obnoxious sexist will jump on you (when there’s a crowd already attacking you for sexism for your using the word ‘woman’, ‘girl’, ‘lady’ etc…) that strikes some newly-out-of-her-empowerment-class Melissa Ethridge wannabe wrong. Been there, done that. Didn’t dig it, baby.
Later, dudes; later, females.
hh
I have never once heard, or heard of, someone attacked as sexist for referring to a woman as a woman.
(Is there a special word for a female zombie?)
Okay, here’s a thought I haven’t seen yet in this thread.
Consider these analogies:
– Well-known “fact” that Eskimos, who deal extensively with frozen water in all its forms, have umpteen words for “snow” and “ice”. (One of Cecil’s columns on this, in which he points out that so does English.)
– Well-known “fact” that in certain primitive farming cultures, there are dozens of words for “sweet potato”.
While these “facts” are debatable, there seems to be no doubt that they are “well-known”.
If someone needs to deal extensively with subject “x”, then there will likely be many words for it, each with some specific meaning. English example: Our many words for “horse”: foal, colt, filly, mare, stallion, gelding, pony, paint, bay, etc. (many can be used as either nouns or adjectives).
If you DON’T deal much with horses, then you probably only need one word in your vocabulary for them.
Males who have NO use for females in their lives, and who have little need to talk about them, may be not feel a need to have an extensive vocabulary to name every kind of female. One word will suffice. This may also likely apply to males who have only ONE use for females, as a sex object (which sounds like the case described in the OP).
So when you hear males refer to females simply as “females” (in particular, using the word as a noun), you are probably listening to a (possibly misogynistic, as suggested in an earlier post) male who has written females out of his view of existence, and thus has no need for lots of vocabulary for them.
See, this skeeves me out as well. The impression I get from this post is that you don’t respect women who want to be respected, and take the opportunity to attack and mock their efforts at earning respect (your jab at “empowerment”) and their political or sexual identities (the reference to Melissa Ethridge).
Because you aren’t comfortable respecting women, you go out of your way to mock them.
Yeah, if you were inclined to answer “yes” to the OP’s question, it seems to me that handsomeharry’s post would be a pretty good piece of supporting evidence. Of course, people who think like that generally know they’re being insulting, and don’t give a flying fuck, so pointing it out probably won’t do any good.
There’s the occasional “womyn” who gets angry if you don’t spell it with a “y”. Or there were at least, I haven’t run across any recently.
No, there really isn’t.
My husband was in the military for a dozen years. I don’t really find “females” offensive, as long as the person will use “males” in the same context. I find female far less offensive than chick, girl (for a middle aged or older woman), bitch, or ho. I do think that some men seem to use “female” as a derogatory term, because they can’t use the word they really want, which is bitch or whore.
Not insulting by any measure, but it is detached considering the context - nothing more (43, male honky)
Seems pretty thin, honestly. You’re starting with a hypothesis is based on conjecture, (your assuming men who call women females don’t use other words to describe them, which isn’t established and seems unlikely) and then adding a couple of more levels of conjecture to explain first why they might be doing that assuming they are, and then core motive behind what might cause them to think that way, if that is what they’re thinking. Some men might use the term for the reasons you’re assuming, but it’s huge jump from ‘some might’ to ‘are probably.’ There’s no reason to assume that level of malice.
Besides, I think you’re overthinking it. I’m not a gender-linguistic-ologist, but you don’t have to be one to notice that people pick up phrases from social groups. Military and cops are trained to talk that way. A lot of people look up to those groups.
I think it’s also safe to assume that some people (though not all) who use it are doing it deliberately. The ‘niggard’ of gender pronouns. That’s petty, but hardly dehumanizing.
So, learned it in the military, picked it up from someone else who did, deliberately imitating military-speak, and petty trolling would seem to me to be the most likely reasons. Only one of those is negative, and that one, while annoying, isn’t worth getting offended over. You don’t beat trolls by explaining to them how bad they are, you win by rolling your eyes and not sleeping with them.
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Acid and fire does stop their regeneration, but is illegal in most of the non-Texas states.
Acid and fire are also illegal in Texas, as well as the 49 other lesser states.
I don’t know how I feel about that. I mean, I agree with the anti-typed damage laws, of course, but I’m kinda disappointed. I expect a certain level of over-the-top carnage from Texas.
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If you outlaw Alchemist’s Fire, only outlaws will have it. Then we’ll have to rename it Outlaw’s Fire, which sounds like a notoriously crap country/metal fusion band.
I’m already on the fringe when it comes to these sorts of discussions. I see it the same way I see people using woman and women as an adjective. If you use male/man/men in the same way then fine, I don’t care. But if women are always females to you but males are men, then I assume you’re harboring some issues about gender.
It’s not offensive (I don’t think), but it makes you sound like a dumbass. Like that sort of overly precise and clinical speech cops or soldiers use to make them sound…I don’t know…like someone with a high school education trying to sound more official.
No, that’s just historical revisionism. The American feminist movement really embarrassed themselves some years ago the way they went over the top, and much of the Left is now trying to pretend that phase of the movement never existed. Problem is, I was there; I personally remember just how crazy they got, how they alienated everyone from the general public to most American women to feminists outside of the country with their blatant hatred of men, their tyrannical attitudes (Russian feminists referred to American feminists as “Stalinists” at one point, I recall) and their bizarre ideas like, yes, referring to women as “womyn”. In fact that’s a relatively mild example of how bad they got.
I think male/female sound technical; if used in a technical sense it’s fine, if used in normal speech it’s strange to say the least, whether it’s also offensive depends on context and tone.
Macho can also specifically mean mule, or among friends “dude” (¡hola macho! = hey dude!) and hembra an attractive grown-up woman, in some contexts and always between men. A 15yo wouldn’t be described as a buena hembra or a mujer de bandera (lit. a flag-raising woman), a 30yo would. You wouldn’t address a woman as hembra unless you want to get in deep shit or you’re doing it as a joke and know she’ll understand it that way (so, better just not). Mechanical or electrical parts which would be jacks and jills in English are machos and hembras in Spanish.
My mother uses it in Spanish in a very specific context, but she’ll also use female in the same way. She says “I specifically wanted a husband who was as different from my father as possible, and I got one, but then I would be surprised when he did things my father would also do - until I realized some things are just ‘gender, male; number, singular’; any guy will do them. Other things are ‘gender, female; number, singular’, and those are the ones that drive guys up the wall.”
I’m not saying that no-one has ever used “womyn.” I’m well aware of the word’s history within certain sections of the feminist movement. But you claimed that there are women who actually get angry if others don’t spell it with a “y,” and i really don’t think this is true.
To be quite honest, while i agree with you politically about plenty of issues, you’re not someone i place too much faith in when it comes to an evaluation of feminism and the women’s movement. Just about a year ago, you claimed:
I simply don’t believe that this ever happened, and it makes me rather suspicious of your motivations and attitudes regarding women and feminists.
Eh, with some cops and soldiers, they NEED to use this language, because the sort of language that they grew up speaking isn’t really appropriate in their jobs.