After this “fun” little catastrophe of a thread concerning the use of the word “female”, looking at the comment section, it’s painfully obvious that the majority of Lemmy’s userbase are men. That’s not a generalization, that’s a literal fact.
“It’s just a word!”, “Maybe English isn’t their first language!”, and “Overact much?” seem to be the most common replies.
So let’s do what should have been done in the first place and ask women their opinion:
What do you think of the word “female” being used? Especially in the context of the linked post in question? When is the use of the word appropriate vs. not appropriate?
EDIT: I think the post linked got taken down. Good.
…how many other languages actually differentiate between woman and female
In spanish there’s mujer for woman and hembra for female (but only for animals and tools), their opposites are hombre for man and macho for male (this one can be used for humans but it’s despective nowadays).
To ask a persons sex you would use femenino (feminine) or masculino (masculine) where it doesn’t have anything to do with preference or gender roles as it does in english.
hembra not being used for people at all sounds like its somewhat different from ‘female’ to me (as someone who barely speaks spanish)
unless you feel like using ‘female’ to refer to humans in any context is creepy
im confused about what you mean with femenino and masculino not having to do with gender roles or preference, can you elaborate?
When referring to sex feminino and masculino are used, when it comes to gender you use mujer and hombre. You could say mujeres are hembras of the homo sapiens species, but you wouldn’t say it out of a specific academic setting.
Even doctors use “sexo femenino” when talking about women in an anatomical way.
In Serbian “woman” would translate to “žena”, and “female” to “ženka”, but that word is used exclusively for animals. Using “ženka” for a human outside of a very strictly zoological context where humans are just another type of animal is unheard of, and would sound very bizarre.
One contribution to this being a thing in English (some people calling women females) might be the fact that the word is both a noun and an adjective. In the case of Serbian, “ženka” as female and “mužjak” as male can only mean animals that are female or male. For the adjective (as in “female and male anatomy”) we have separate words that mean something like “womanly and manly anatomy”, so you could never mix the two because one is specifically reserved for animals.
The more you know.