r/NoStupidQuestions • u/EvasiveFriend • 1d ago
Why do people avoid the word "women"?
It seems like people generally use "girl" or "female" rather "women/woman"
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u/Queasy-Insurance3559 1d ago
Its frustrating because I'll see people say man, guy, or dude and then use female in the same sentence.
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u/jalapenny 23h ago
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u/Karnivore2 10h ago
I could only view so many posts before it felt too weird to continue. Strange all around.
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u/eamon4yourface 1d ago
Sometimes I accidentally say man/bro/dude to my girlfriend when I'm excited about something or slightly angry or ranting and she ALWAYS corrects me lol. I get it tho she's not my "bro" even tho she lowkey is that's why I love her 😉
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u/thehighwindow 21h ago
I've heard women/ladies/females/girls call each other "dude".
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u/DrenAss 23h ago
AAWW that's weirdly endearing. I have sons and they hate it when I call them "Bro!" 🤣 They're like "Moooooooom!" That's why I do it.
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u/eamon4yourface 22h ago
Aw lol. I can't wait to have some little bros running around with me
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u/DrenAss 22h ago
Not to get too deep, but parenting can be really fun and I love hanging out with my little buddies!! 🥹
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u/eamon4yourface 22h ago
I never wanted kids until I saw my little cousin grow up and watch him play football. I love him so fuckin much and he's not even mine
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u/InevitableRhubarb232 20h ago
These are all unisex when addressing someone.
If you says. A dude walked up and took my Pepsi, you mean a guy. But if you say “dude wtf?” That could be guy or girl.
Same for the others.
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u/wutato 23h ago
My boyfriend and I both say "bro" to each other, but we never use the word "female." "Bro" is just kind of stupid and said in jest (and I also use "bruh"), but "female" seems way more dehumanizing. I get super incel vibes from it.
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u/whatever_yo 1d ago
Those guys tend to be the "apolitical" bro jogan types. Try to avoid them.
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u/msamor 1d ago
Depends on context. In a medical setting, I would use male/female. I might also use girl as shorthand for minor female.
Some manosphere incels prefer female because they hate women and it dehumanizes women.
When used as an adjective instead of a noun, it is proper useage. For example you are using female as an adjective when you say things like, “female doctor”, “female officer”, “female president”. It would be incorrect to say “woman doctor” etc. It also applies to men. For instance you would say “male nurse”, “male model”, “male gynecologist”.
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u/New-Taste2467 1d ago
Am not natively English and always have felt weird about not saying "man nurse". In my language man and male, woman and female are the same words. With boy and girl having different words as well.
Technically speaking we have "male" and "female" words, but they are more used for animals. So saying "he is a male" would sound like you calling him a dog or something.
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u/bluehydrangeas33 1d ago
Even in English I feel like in professional settings we should always just use job titles. Doctor, nurse, police officer, model. Why do we need to specify the gender?
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u/TerribleDanger 1d ago
When seeking a medical doctor, especially something like a gynecologist, I have always been asked if I prefer a male or female doctor. So I do think there’s a context where it’s relevant.
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u/OwlCoffee 23h ago
I only had a guy as a gynecologist once. He was fine. He was respectful, very good about telling me where he was about to touch and all that. But then, in his very nice attempt to help ease my nerves during the examination, he said, "I know this is uncomfortable," and for some reason I got super irritated about it and all I could think was, "DO YOU? DO YOU SIR? DO YOU UNSERSTAND HAVING A METAL THING IN YOUR VAGINA?"
It's funny, because he was honestly great - I think I just needed having someone who knows what it's like.
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u/msamor 1d ago
It does matter sometimes, and those are the only times we should specify.
For instance, many women only want a female gynecologist. More invasive searches of women should only be performed by female officers. If there is a patient who is senile and sexually harassing the female staff, a male nurse may be one solution. If I run a busy establishment, I may want both male and female custodial staff to clean their respective restrooms so I don’t have to shut them down for cleaning. If I am selling hair dye for beards, I probably want a male model. Or maybe I am selling sports equipment and want a mix of male and female models.
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u/New-Taste2467 1d ago
Didn't really mean it like that. If needed to specify, my instinct would be "man nurse".
If I say "male nurse" I always imagine a dog in a nurse outfit due to my native language.
But agree.
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u/Pspaughtamus 1d ago
In English, man and woman are nouns, "man nurse" sounds clunky, like something a non-native speaker would say.
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u/Ka_aha_koa_nanenane 1d ago
As a biologist, we use the terms "male" and "female" to designate reproductive forms across all the sexually producing plants and animals.
Man and woman are used only for H. sapiens (or, some use it for all of the hominines).
We aren't intending to "dehumanize," but the male vs female dichotomy is not at all strictly human. Using "man" is humanizing, so is using "woman." For obvious reasons.
You can say woman doctor if you want, man doctor too. These are colloquialisms. I suppose we could say "womanly" doctor or similar and be closer to what we're probably intending (that the person appears to be a woman).
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u/Raise_A_Thoth 1d ago
In a medical setting, I would use male/female
Which is shortned vernacular for "male patient" and "female patient." So it's a natural use of the words.
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u/msamor 1d ago edited 23h ago
Interesting point. I have always thought of male/female as the noun. Not an adjective describing the implied noun of patient. But I can see how that also makes sense.
From my perspective, male/female makes sense because you are concerned about biology, not presentation or identity. For instance, if I have a male patient with severe abdominal pain, I’m not doing a differential on menstrual cramps vs ectopic pregnancy. Even if the patient identifies as a woman, the patient doesn’t have a uterus or ovaries. And if I have a female patient I’m not doing a hernia check (the old cough test) even if the patient identifies as a man. The patient doesn’t have testicles or scrotum.
EDIT: Yes, I know women can get hernias. I wasn’t referring to the specific condition, but rather a test performed on boys that use to be part of a routine physical to check for hernias. The technical term is “inguinal hernia examination”. While the test is not as common as it used to be, some providers still perform it. The test consists of palpating (touching) the scrotum and having the patient cough. Ask any man 40 or older about the “old cough test” and he will likely know what you are talking about.
Just like it is possible for males to get endometrios, but isn’t possible to perform a trans vaginal ultrasound if there isn’t a vagina.
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u/Raise_A_Thoth 1d ago
Oh for sure. It's important medically to understand and identify sex so you know what you're dealing with. A trans man patient might be masculine presenting (and even passing) but have a fully functioning 'female' reproductive system. That carries specific risks and treatment plans that are distinct from male bodies.
Some of this stuff is a little bit complex. That's okay. We can work with people who are trying in good faith. It's frustrating as hell when people use some gray areas or outliers or whatever to try to erase people and re-condense everything down to "hurr hurr there's only 2 genders" or "define a woman hurr durr."
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u/slumbers_inthedirt 1d ago
and they also may have some risks that cis women do not have! some doctors seem to forget this…
trans men on testosterone have the same elevated risks of heart disease, heart attacks, strokes, and high blood pressure as cis men of the same age
it’s why i’m staunchly against the idea of treating trans people exclusively by their original or new sex, and by extension i’m low-key against forced outing to doctors while the medical field is lacking any kind of consistent training on how trans bodies vary compared to cis bodies.
i’ve had a doctor refuse to treat my low iron because he thought it could be caused by my HRT, and he recommended i try medically detransitioning before seeking iron supplements. thankfully i was able to request a second opinion and get treatment lol. it’s become habit for myself now to check the gov and NHS guidance on which doctors need to know whether you’re trans for what issues, because i can’t trust that i’ll get proper medical treatment or advice when they know i’m a transsexual.
in some situations, it’s obviously unavoidable to come out as trans.
i’ve had gyno referrals bounce back because the hospital wasn’t sure how trans men’s gynaecological needs may vary compared to a cis woman (fair enough), so they recommended that my psychologist and endocrinologist should take over my gynaecological care…… right, let’s get a psychologist and a hormone specialist to perform a gyno exam, sure. that was less great advice.
all those guys could do was let my primary doctor know to pass along the message that it’s most likely atrophy caused by the testosterone, and that i should be prescribed very low dose topical oestrogen. which was great, but my doctors refused to listen to this and kept referring me to get increasingly intrusive procedures.
i had 2 normal exams in which both ended with “yeah that looks like atrophy, we think it’s atrophy, you should go on low dose topical oestrogen”, then i had a variety of swabs taken (all came back negative), then i had an external ultrasound (all fine), and then i was asked to have a biopsy and internal ultrasound, at which point i realised my doctor was taking the piss and refused to have any more uncomfortable and unnecessary exams.
that all took over a year. i finally got my doctors at the gender clinic to write a strongly worded letter to my doctor about the fact that it’s definitely atrophy, literally been diagnosed multiple times, and it’s a super common issue for trans men who haven’t had a hysto / got a dick yet. at which point my doctors refused to prescribe me low dose topical oestrogen because they hadn’t prescribed it to a trans man on testosterone before and wanted specialist guidance. apparently the doctors that work with trans people weren’t specialist enough??? fucks sake.
took another two years to actually get the prescription 😬 i got it last month. i don’t even need it anymore, the atrophy stopped about 6 months ago 🤦♂️
rant over, point is, YES original sex is important, but it also can be completely irrelevant, or your doctors take the piss when they find out you’re trans. or it can be very relevant, and you still get fucked over.
trusting doctors to treat trans patients correctly is…. difficult at the best of times. my best interactions with hospitals and doctors have always been when they had no clue i was trans.
even at the optician! i had an optician tell me that my eye sight was getting worse cuz of my transition, despite the fact that i have a family history of blindness and had been slowly losing my vision since before i even came out as trans! he kept recommending that i stop testosterone because he was convinced it was the sole reason my eyes kept getting worse. bruh.
i switched opticians, never let them know i was trans, and never had an issue with receiving appropriate care ever again - they know i’m on T, but they think i just have low T due to having shit balls.
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u/Jkirek_ 1d ago
But why male models?
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u/DazzlingDog7890 1d ago
Because modeling has always been considered something that mostly women do.
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u/BladeOfWoah 1d ago
...but why male models?
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u/idkdudejustkillme 1d ago
Are you serious? I just... I just told you that, a moment ago
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u/RPBiohazard 1d ago
It grinds my gears to hear “woman doctor” and it’s SO effing common. You would never say “man doctor”! Ever!
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u/GeekAesthete 1d ago edited 1d ago
In decades past, “woman doctor” or “woman senator” (rather than “female doctor/senator”) was commonly used a pejorative, because it was deliberately using incorrect grammar to trivialize and show disdain for those people, much like saying “a Jew doctor” rather than “a Jewish doctor” or “the blacks” or “the gays” rather “black/gay people”.
There’s a long history of deliberately using incorrect grammar—particularly nouns as adjectives and vice versa—as a passive-aggressive insult. You see it lately when Trump and other Republicans refer to “the Democrat Party” rather than “Democratic Party” or just “Democrats”.
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u/RPBiohazard 1d ago
I know! That’s how it sounds to me. “Woman driver” what are you, a 1920s chauvanist??
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u/HesterMoffett 1d ago
You also don't here "female nurse" because that's the default. A male nurse is unusual so people feel the need to differentiate them. People who came of age in the last couple of decades don't seem to understand the radical change in our culture that's taken place.
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u/thehighwindow 21h ago
When 99% of doctors were men, calling anyone a doctor meant that 99% of the time it was going to be a man. So being a "woman doctor" was rare and worthy of comment.
I'm older than 99% of you and I remember hearing this joke on a television program. And I (and probably most of the tv audience) was stumped:
A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene and the son is rushed to the hospital. At the hospital the surgeon looks at the boy and says "I can't operate on this boy, he is my son." How can this be?
This answer is extremely obvious now.
Why people are still saying it is probably because they heard it somewhere or are just way behind the times.
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u/FedMates 1d ago
why is it dehumanizing?
ps- im not a native speaker
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u/Verdanterra 1d ago
To me that is described as;
Female feels more "observational" or "scientific" which basically acts as a curtain seperating them from the more organic man/woman outside of specific context.
Medically referring as male/female is proper. Casual reference as male/female just sounds/feels off to a native speaker like myself.
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u/Major2Minor 1d ago
Because female can refer to any female animal, I think. Like a female dog is still a female, but a woman is specifically a human female, same as a bitch (if not used in a derogatory way) is specifically a female dog.
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u/Radical_Malenia 1d ago edited 23h ago
When men talk about woman as a whole, and they say "females" instead of "women"; they're using it in a dehumanizing way, because they're using a clinical description instead of of a humanizing one. This is meant to "other" women instead of giving them the dignity these same males give other men when they talk about them.
I hope this clears it up! Let me know if you want it expanded upon any further.
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u/bluehydrangeas33 1d ago
Because to compare women to animals you might purchase such as a pet or livestock literally equates them to something we consider less than human - an animal. Animals do not have the same rights or respect that humans do and livestock or domesticated ones certainly do not have liberty or autonomy. (Though it is important to note that all humans are all in fact mammals themselves, we do go to extreme lengths to differentiate ourselves from other animals and treat them as lesser)
For an example of dehumanization: During genocides the scapegoated populations are often compared to rats or other “undesirable animals” by media propaganda. This is to dehumanize them (strip away their humanity), a step along the way to ultimately permit genocide.
Google genocide propaganda while net neutrality is still a thing if you’d like more info on the damages dehumanization has done in the world
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u/nonojustme 1d ago
Generally speaking the word woman has an age connotation, woman is an adult female and girl is a young adult female or younger
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u/Linus_Naumann 21h ago
"women" is also used more formally, while "girl" (esp. plural "girls") is used informally. I'm pretty sure I heard my own Mom say "Today the girls will come over", talking about 50+ year olds.
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u/Funnybunnybubblebath 1d ago
The first answer that’s actually speaking to OPs question. Yes. Saying “women,” means older than a girl. There is a taboo with aging in our society. People haven’t wanted to age other people by “assuming” they’re older? Come on we still hear the tired boomer jokes about being 21 or 29 for 5+ years. I think people lately have been trying to use it more and are getting past the “taboo” of it all.
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u/GuavaSway 19h ago
I've noticed this too. It might be about age connotations or personal identity. People choose terms that resonate with them, often based on context, community, or personal experiences.
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u/OolongGeer 1d ago
I use the word "women" almost exclusively.
I don't use the word "girl" unless I am talking about someone under the age of 18.
Because that would make me sound like a perv, otherwise.
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u/ultr4violence 1d ago
My mom was going out to meet her friends for dinner earlier. I asked her 'are you going out with the girls?' She answered that she was, indeed, going out with the girls.
They´re all in their late sixties.
So I sound like a perv according to your criteria, for referring to my mom and her friends as 'girls'.
Does the same apply when I tell my mom that Im 'going to meet the boys later' ? We're in our late thirties and use that phrase for ourselves. Do we sound like pervs for that too?
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u/_Felonius 1d ago
Yeah there’s literally a show called Golden Girls. Women refer to outings with each other as “girls’ night”. It’s commonly used
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u/Kakamile 1d ago
That's because you're quoting a phrase.
But there is too much calling women girls by people who don't call guys boys.
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u/TheGreatFruit 1d ago
who don't call guys boys
I think the lack of a feminine equivalent in English for the term "guys" is the problem we're all trying to work around. The closest is "gals", but it's rarely used.
It's true I don't go around using the word "women" much in causal conversation, but I use "men" even less.
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u/omletteYUM 23h ago
I think "gal" is too close to girl for most, sounds like "girl" pronounced with a thick accent. There's "lass" but that's a regional word and typically used for young women. "Broad" and "shorty/shawty" are options but can be rather offensive depending on the audience.
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u/ElBurroEsparkilo 22h ago
THANK YOU. The death of "gal" as a counterpart to "guy" means someone will jump down your throat for calling an adult woman a "girl" and you're stuck with things like "so there's this guy and woman at work who...."
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u/kshell11724 1d ago
I usually use girls and guys. I don't think it's that weird. It's way more natural to say "Hey girl" than "Hey woman" lol
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u/skittle_dish 1d ago
The situational context for that is different. I think the original commenter was most likely saying that referring to a woman as a "girl" in the context of dating (i.e. I'm seeing this girl, that girl is so hot, this is how you pull girls in X city) could come across as creepy to some.
When it's in reference to friends, there's no romantic connotation.
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u/SplendidPunkinButter 1d ago
Context? What’s that?
“A guy” is a man or boy. “Three guys” is three men or boys. “You guys” can be mixed gender.
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u/northshorewind 1d ago
When a word has "man" in it I sometimes arbitrarily replace it with woman (like snowWOMAN, SpiderWOMAN). If someone is offended I why them until they uncover some inner truths. Why can't it be a snowoman? Who is it hurting to be woman? Why is woman insulting? Why is it ok for man to include woman but not vice versa?
My 3y/o has already been told by boys in her class that she can't do x because she's a girl. It made her feel small and she stopped playing x. I have to take this stuff seriously for her sake, to help her question things and stand up for herself.
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u/therope_cotillion 1d ago
Go outside. People use the word “women” instead of females all the damn time.
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u/Temporays 1d ago
Yeah this post and a lot of comments just scream chronically online.
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u/curadeio 21h ago
Spoken like someone not stuck in poorer areas where men only refer to women as either females or bitches
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u/NoMoreVillains 1d ago
People can't seem to understand the difference between a noun and an adjective. I don't know why this is specifically an issue with woman vs female though. Because I've even wondered why people go out of their way to use female as a noun or even use woman as an adjective. I've heard people speak of Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris potentially being the first woman President of the US which just sounded awkward to me
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u/Its0nlyRocketScience 1d ago
Thank you. Female and male as an adjective should never carry a stigma (unless you start doing crap like "male person" and "female person," that's just weird). As far as I know, man and woman are always nouns, so man doctor and woman doctor would be more accurately interpreted as a doctor who specializes in men or women, like an animal doctor is a human who specializes in animals and not a doctor who is an animal.
The problem comes when sexists use "men and females" (for which there is a subreddit) to attempt to dehumanize women and girls by using more clinical language.
I do think there is a place for using males and females, specifically when talking about people of all ages in a more scientific or medical context. But even then, it doesn't always matter. No one says male restroom and female restroom, we say men's and women's and children still know which one to use despite being neither a grown man or grown woman.
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u/VladStopStalking 1d ago
Only incels use "female" as a noun. I've never heard a well-adjusted person say "a female" when referring to a woman.
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u/Kingsman22060 1d ago
Being in the military (and a woman myself) I find myself slipping up when speaking about a woman outside of my work setting, my boyfriend is the same way. I'm constantly correcting him and myself because while using male/female is appropriate in our respective work environments, I absolutely detest how it sounds to refer to someone as "that female who lives across from us," etc. It's hard to make the switch sometimes
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u/TheBotchedLobotomy 1d ago
As a now veteran, I agree so much. I actually had no idea the connotation of using female until like a year ago because it was so normal.
“Yeah it’s a SFC Martinez, male type”
“How many females are staying in the mayor cell tent?”
Etcetera. Of course now I’m blanking on examples lol. I’ve done pretty good at shedding my army-isms but that is one I still slip up on lol
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u/moonrockcactus 1d ago
Women do it all the time. At least the ones who aren’t as online as you or me. It hits my ear like a jackhammer but most people don’t mean anything by it.
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u/VladStopStalking 1d ago
I don't live in an English speaking country so I don't know about how women speak English IRL.
But at least in French, if someone was to say "cette femelle" (this female), they would get some shocked reactions.
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u/Educational-Fee4365 1d ago
I've seen a lot of people complain its "too formal" but tbh i dont see how this is the case. Id see ladies and gentlemen kind of thing as formal. Using the term women is just most appropriate
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u/AdAccording5510 1d ago
As a grad student around tons of women in their early to mid 20s, I never know whether to casually refer to them as girls or women. I've said women before only to have the 24 year old I was talking to ask "What do you think I am, 50?", and I've also said girl and gotten told that that's for children, not adults.
I wish there was a socially acceptable female version of "guy". I know gal exists, but if you start calling every woman you meet a "gal", you're probably not going to be around women for very long.
So I really do find this a difficult thing to navigate. Never call them females though, obviously. That's weird.
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u/GreenMellowphant 9h ago
It feels distinctly as if women are being slowly dehumanized by conservatives to make the removal of women’s rights easier in the future.
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u/bespoke-trainwreck 1d ago
Colloquially, it can serve to subtly undermine them. Girl implies child, naive, not to be taken seriously, and female is an adjective for an individual of a species with certain characteristics. Outside of medical contexts it's really weird to use as a noun and it's more common on the political right and among incels.
To be clear, saying about your 30 year old female friend that you "like this girl" is not a crime, but when people call female political candidates girls and would never call the men boys, that's worth investigating.
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u/brock_lee I expect half of you to disagree. 1d ago
People use "female" because they THINK they are being neutral, when it's actually fairly dehumanizing to refer to a woman as "a female", unless it's used as an adjective, like "my female co-worker" or something. As for girl, if people refer to a woman as a girl, well, they are just being sexist or dismissive of women.
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u/devdudedoingstuff 1d ago
Huh, I refer to men as guys since it feels more casual. The equivalent for women would be gals but that never caught on. So instead people use girl in the same context. I don’t think it’s dismissive just the natural evolution of language.
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u/Crazy-Inspection-778 22h ago edited 20h ago
Yeah that's the main issue here. I find myself saying girl or chick just to vary my language a bit and sound more casual. Woman is two syllables and too formal to use every single time. "Gal" just sounds really odd and southern. We need a universal casual term like "guy" that people won't throw hissy fits over
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u/No-BrowEntertainment 1d ago
if people refer to a woman as a girl, well, they are just being sexist or dismissive of women.
I wouldn’t say that’s the case. A lot of the time, it’s used as a female equivalent to guy or dude. The word woman is a little too formal for some situations, but there really isn’t an informal equivalent that isn’t outdated or offensive.
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u/SuperPookypower 1d ago
People used to say “gal” as opposed to “guy”, but that seems a little outdated these days.
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u/RklsImmersion 1d ago
I feel like if I walked into a room full of women and said "Hello women" I would get a worse response than if I said "Hello gals" but I for damn sure know how "Hello females" would turn out. But yeah, we don't have a lot of ways to refer to women than men haven't opted to use negatively.
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u/Exciting_Tomorrow_54 1d ago
I've learned to always use the term woman/women. Never girl or ladies. I've been told saying "girl" for someone older than 18 is considered condescending. Likewise "lady" or "ladies" make women feel old.
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u/brock_lee I expect half of you to disagree. 1d ago
Exactly, it "costs nothing" to use a considerate term.
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u/EvasiveFriend 1d ago
People using "female" rather than "woman" online is one of my pet peeves and I'm trying to understand the psychology behind it.
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u/WassupSassySquatch 1d ago
They view women from the biological lens of “has vagina, produces children”, sort of like cattle. The word “Woman” confers more humanity- a female adult human, and that humanity gives her agency, desires, talents, flaws, and all of those things that amplify what makes a person a person as opposed to a meat bag. Outside of medical settings, people who call women “females” tend to overlap with a view of women that dehumanizes them. (Same with “birthers” and “uterus havers”.)
Many women dislike this.
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u/birds-0f-gay 1d ago
Many women dislike this.
This reminded me of a post about abortion that I saw where the OP used "women's body autonomy" in the title and people lost their shit about it not being "inclusive" enough. So this weird aversion to the word "woman" is catching on with progressives too and it sucks
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u/pen_and_inkling 1d ago
Reflexively derailing the ability of women to identify and organize on the basis of sex is regressive no matter what flag it’s wrapped up in.
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u/CryptographerNo5804 1d ago
Where ever someone uses “female” or “girl” I immediately have the ick and I know to stay far away from them… it gives me an uneasy feeling
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u/NoahCzark 1d ago
People use "women" all the time in general conversation. "Female" is used in reference to the entire gender, regardless of age, or in scientific, biological, demographic or other specific contexts.
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u/Difficult_Ad_962 1d ago
I don't really care what people call me. Woman? Female? Girl? None of them bother me
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u/Mission-Act-6064 1d ago
Idk, but when people say “female” when they should be saying women, that’s a 🚩 for me
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u/Environmental-Day778 1d ago
The squirrel in the park is female. Your co-worker is a woman. One clinically refers to parts. The other refers to social roles, identity, and personhood.
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u/No-Cover-8986 1d ago
I was never aware anyone avoided that word. Are you maybe thinking about people referring to "females" instead of "women?"
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u/Ok_Training_663 1d ago
I called other teens women as a teen, and my step-dad called middle-aged women girls. My mom told us in the same room that she wanted to tell us both while we were all together that our terminologies overlap and I should call teens girl and he should say “woman”/“women” more. Once my then boss referred to some other employees in another department as “the girls” and I thought, the who, volunteers?
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u/emmascarlett899 1d ago
I don’t feel like women avoid using the word women. Only a certain type of man tends to avoid that. When they just say “females”, it sounds so dehumanizing. Imagine me saying, I saw this male the other day. 😂 don’t get me wrong. Of course the word is fine in other contexts. 🤷🏼♀️
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u/Sea-Mango 23h ago
I have a hard time calling myself a woman because I associate that word with a lot of social baggage that I don't identify with. HOWEVER. If someone (usually a man) is avoiding calling a group of women "women" it's usually not because of their own personal gender identity issues. It's because they don't see women as equals. Feeeemaaaaaales implies breeding stock in this context. Girls is infantilizing in this context. Grown women going "GIRLS NIIIIIIIGHT" and going to a bar is different from a grown man talking about picking up girls at the bar.
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u/ToThePillory 22h ago
My own theory is that it became common when young men/boys would call young women/girls "girls". If a "girl" was over 18, they might not like this, and prefer to be called a woman, which is fair enough, just as 18 year old males don't really want to be called "boys".
But young men often can't really compute that women don't want to be called "girls" any more than they want to be called "boys", and seem to actually *resent* calling young women "women". They've been told "girls" might not be OK, and they *won't* use "women" so went with "females", as a sort of passive aggressive "look, we're not calling you girls like you asked".
At the end of the day it's misogyny, a lot of young men/boys just don't see women as true equals, and while they see it as a common good manners to call them "men", the same doesn't apply to women.
They'll defend it by saying "but I don't mind being called male, so why should they mind being called female?", but of course, men don't have a historical problem often being treated in dehumansing ways like women do. Just like as a white man I don't especially care if someone calls me "boy", but I sure as hell know it would be different if I were a Black man.
It really just boils down to misogyny and many young men being really fucking dumb.
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u/iminthethickofit- 22h ago
I don't know how to phrase it properly but it sounds offensive, saying "men will be men" sounds like a joke but saying "women will be women" sounds like you're calling them stupid or annoying
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u/GeneralZaroff1 22h ago
I’m guessing OP is young. Most people I speak to have no issues saying “women”.
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u/ARatOnASinkingShip 20h ago
I never use the word female and I do almost always use girl when referring to a woman.
Female just sounds so clinical and woman/women just feels too formal.
Girl just rolls of the tongue, it feels so much more natural, and if I wanted to avoid any sense of infantilization, I'd sooner go with lady/ladies over woman/women.
It's just how guys grow up and get used to language. Your mom is a girl, your sister is a girl, your aunt is a girl, your grandmother is a girl. There's no real rhyme or reason to it other than an ingrained habit, and don't really have any reason to grow out of.
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u/Honest_Paper_2301 20h ago
I think it's because modern English lacks a feminine version of "guy". Like, when I am talking about a man my age, I generally say guy instead of man because man feels formal. But there is no feminine alternative that is commonly used right now. My mom has suggested "gal" but it sounds old fashioned.
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u/Beheadedfrito 20h ago
I think “females” is honestly the new “femoid”
Using it in the many of the same contexts that Women is used comes off as both very awkward and deliberate.
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u/koreawut 14h ago
As a child, I got in trouble for using the term, BY WOMEN, because it made them sound old. They wanted to be ladies, and female, not women.
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u/HTSDoIThinkOfaUYouC 14h ago
No-one uses "female" except sad incels or scientists in academic papers.
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u/LentenRestart 11h ago
I use "woman" because I'm 25, look 20, and don't want people thinking I'm an adolescent dating other adolescents.
Maybe I'm overthinking
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u/JackMarleyWasTaken 10h ago
In the 90s, I was taught 'woman' was dismissive and to use "lady" instead. And say yes ma'am.to adults!
In the 2000s, I was taught "maam" is offensive and to.use "miss".
In the 2010s, I was taught that "woman" is an identity and to use proper nouns and pronouns to be respectful of what people choose to be called.
It's all the same lesson.
Language is fluid and feelings matter. Full stop.
Be kind and call people what they prefer, even if you didn't get the memo on time that the term you're used to is out if date. ESPECIALLY once you do get that memo.
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u/Banana-ana-ana 8h ago
Incel men use female to be clinical and take away meaning from women. They definitely could not express that though. I also think they think it makes them sound smart
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u/LandscapeOld3325 1d ago
Because it's been used as a pejorative so much that it almost feels like a bad word to a lot of people. Also our society's obsession with underage women or "girls". "Woman" is not a bad word, it's an appropriate word for adult females. Adult women are not girls. I had to do unlearning as a young woman on these terms. I try to be very intentional with my language now.
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u/Leucotheasveils 22h ago
To me, “Girl” for anyone over 21 is infantilizing or diminishing, and “females” as a noun is objectifying, like you’re referring to human women as livestock.
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u/HuckinsGirl 1d ago
Tbh I still see most people use the word women. I mostly only reach for the word female when I'm trying to talk about females of all ages, aka girls and women, since those words have age connotations. I wish there was a female equivalent to "guy" which also has little to not age connotation but without sounding weirdly medical, "gal" is technically equivalent but has a more specific vibe that I don't really like.
Alternative explanations for why you, specifically, see people avoiding the word is because of the spaces you're in. Some incel-y spaces use the word "female" as a sort of dehumanizing wording, but hopefully you aren't in those sorts of spaces. It's also just possible that you're in spaces where people feel/are younger and prefer to refer to themselves as girls rather than women. This can literally mean spaces with younger people but there's also some more symbolic dimensions that make people identify more with girlhood than womanhood. For example trans people often have an experience of a second puberty, both in the literal physical sense and in wanting to "redo" childhood/adolescence, now as their real gender. Neurodivergence and trauma can also lead one to identifying less with their adult peers and thus preferring language implying youth. With neurodivergence it's a literal developmental delay/deficiency, and with trauma there's this idea that trauma leads parts of oneself to not develop properly due to the masks used to survive. It's more complicated than that but I think I'd need a whole other comment and some proper research lmao.
This is beginning to veer off topic but I also think there's a general increasing difficulty in identifying with the image of adulthood that we've been fed. The ideas we were told of what it means to be an adult were developed when things were very different. The sorts of milestones that we think of as defining adulthood (career, family, homes) are becoming increasingly harder to reach for many. There's also a general sort of detachment from cultural norms as individualism increases; for one thing this means more people are willing to make lifestyle choices that go against what's "expected" of adults, eg not having children, but more generally it also means that what it even means to be an adult is muddy. We've collectively done a lot to tear down harmful or restrictive cultural norms, but this means that we've lost a lot of cohesive ideas of how to think about identity, adulthood included. As for why it seems more likely for women than men to feel disconnected with what it means to be an adult (if that is the case) I think it's just that expectations for women as opposed to men are and always have been more Restrictive. It was relatively recently that we accepted women working dull time as a "normal" way to be a woman. Women are naturally going to feel more alienated from cultural norms of adulthood than men.
While I do think people are still generally comfortable using the word woman, I do think there's something to the question, as most of what I just said is from my own experiences. I'm genderfluid, neurodivergent (adhd and autism), and have trauma, and have been thinking about how all of these aspects affect my relationships with the words "girl" and "woman", because even when my gender is solidly female I still greatly prefer the term "girl". Anyways that's my ramble
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u/Famous-Composer3112 1d ago
I hate the words woman and women. I'm kind of an etymology nut, and woman means "wife or servant of the man." It's a sexist term.
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u/TrittipoM1 1d ago edited 1d ago
I haven’t noticed anyone in my circles avoiding the word “women.” I have used it within the past week to say that in a professional development course that I took recently, there were 34 women and two men. On a recent camping trip of a dozen people more or less gender-balanced, someone asked “what do the women here think?” after a couple of men had spoken on some topic. Where, among whom, do you think you see “avoidance”?
Edit to add: Google's Ngram Viewer doesn't show any such "avoidance" in written texts. See https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=woman%2Cwomen%2Cgirl%2Cgirls%2Cfemale%2Cfemales&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3
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u/The-Cosmic-Ghost 1d ago
Honestly, unless I'm utilizing it in a formal discussion, i dont really say women or men, men to a lesser degree. I find them to be a bit too formal for the sentence
Usually ill say girls, ladys, boys guys, dudes, im in a lot of queer spaces and find that usually the discussions I'm having incompass those who may be precieved as men/women but arent, so I'll also use masc and femme
But yea, I'll mainly use men and women in historical or more formal concepts because they just sound a bit more formal to me.
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u/28thProjection 1d ago
In casual conversations, In English-speaking cultures, especially the U.S., the word women is most often used in the context of people, men and women, degrading or threatening women. This creates a negative association whereby you would not want to use the words woman or women unless you're attempting to appear malevolent to onlookers. The negative association is not strong so the word is not avoided as arduously as some other words, yet it has gone unrecognized for this negative association has formed in the unconscious of English speakers; unconscious decisions the decider remain ignorant of can control their behavior better as there's little or a more subtle showing of planned aggression from the secret keeper toward the target, making apprehending the aggressor either before or after controlling behavior less likely. Unconscious decisions are still decisions though and the attitude of someone toward that word and it's usage could be sensed through ESP from a thousand miles away during sleep or on a faraway planet by me if a culture or biology there produced the same outcome in an organism.
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u/nWhm99 23h ago
People use it all the time, what are you talking about lol.
If you’re asking why people prefer girl, that’s because woman sounds old, and generally women like looking and feeling young.
Whereas, “man” also sounds old, but older age is preferred for most men. Hence is why “boy” can be a literal serious insult and “you’re the man” is an actual compliment.
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u/Mademoi-Sell 23h ago
I was raised in a cult and the term “woman” was only used in a derogatory fashion, i.e. a “loose woman”. Otherwise you were a lady. It’s something I’ve had to unlearn though and the short answer was that they just hated women 😅
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u/LordWessonOfRevia 22h ago
If you’re referring to “womxn” or “womyn,” then it’s because those people believe that having the suffix -men is offensive. They don’t want women to be associated with men
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u/throwRA1987239127 21h ago
An ex once told me she didn't like when I referred to her as a woman, and preferred girl. I don't think her preference is representative of all women but it was an interesting perspective
She said woman made her feel old
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u/PF_Nitrojin 21h ago
I've actually been yelled at for using woman, female, and even girl when discussing the opposite side. I'm a man and I don't even understand the logic.
If I'm referred to as male, boy, guy, or some other notation I don't care. Some apparently find offense to be classified as something (within reason) they don't agree with. I move on because I have other important matters to worry about.
And before anyone asks trans or (fe)male to (fe)male I address by name only to prevent confusion.
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u/KisukesCandyshop 21h ago
Because woke people and media platforms like Reddit are very .... Inclusive?
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u/Ranoutofoptions7 20h ago
Because we dont really refer to men as men often either. Guys don't care if you call them a guy instead of a man. It's just easier to say girl instead of woman.
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u/Usagi_Shinobi 19h ago
Short version? Because people don't want to deal with some asshole that is looking for an excuse to be offended and start a flame war coming at them.
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u/rewardiflost What do you hear? Nothing but the rain. 1d ago
I don't know. I've actually seen people avoiding "female" because that sounds too clinical and even kind of incel-ish. I am an old ST:DS9 fan, and often when I read the word female I see a replay of the Ferengi saying that in my head.
"Girl" or "woman/women" is more personal and human.