this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2026
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Men are male
Women are female
Whoever complicated things by somehow making a perfectly normal term offensive is a giant asshole
P.S. but seriously, don't just assume everyone using the word "female" and its derivatives is a jerk. People may not be aware of this odd shitstorm, and just use the word in its completely literal meaning, wishing no offence.
P.P.S. I stand corrected by the commenter below who mentioned terms "male" and "female" are related to AGAB, not gender. In terms of trans individuals and those whose gender is unknown, it makes sense to avoid their misuse.
P.P.P.S. Apparently, that too is debatable. I start to see why it makes sense to drop the words altogether, because it's going to fire wrong either way.
The issue as I understand it is that the words "male" and "female" are adjectives, and when they're used as nouns it can sound dehumanizing.
A vet or a farmer might talk about their livestock as "males and females," but people referring to other people that way is not only incorrect usage, but it's also only ever really used that way by men discussing women as if they're sex objects.
"A female therapist/doctor/lawyer/relative" = β π
"That female over there" = βπ
Yah I got schooled about the usage on a women's page on Reddit a few years ago. Being a woman and female I didn't know that I had been using the term female wrong for 40 years prior to that.
Yeah this place is a little better than reddit in terms of nuance and charitable interpretations, but we still have our share of toxic assholes who will deliberately misconstrue anything you say so they can shame you and put you down just to feel smug/superior.
Sometimes it's not easy to determine what to ignore and what to learn from, but yeah using "female" as a noun is definitely a big no-no these days, even offline.
And honestly, increasingly I've started to notice it expanding to include using the term correctly as an adjective, which is annoying, but I've had to adjust my language accordingly. Now I say things like "a woman doctor" even though it's incorrect and sounds awkward, because I'm afraid to say "a female doctor," lest I be shunned.
Same, it's to the point where I now say stuff like "my male friends yadda yadda, but my woman friends blah blah," which sounds absolutely ridiculous but gives people one less thing they can use to totally discount me as a person just for using an entirely innocuous word they don't like.
Yeah we really can't downplay the severity, cause that kind of reputational damage, even when it's unwarranted, can follow a person for a long time.
And ultimately that just makes the left weaker. Because someone who could otherwise be a charismatic leader, a persuasive or inspiring speaker, a brilliant thinker, a strategic planner, or an effective community organizer, might be shunned into obscurity because he said something along the lines of "I would prefer to see a female therapist" and people thought that was somehow sexist...
And how many people like that have we already lost due to this BS? How many are hiding in basements right now, waiting for the day they can actually play an active role in the progressive movement?
I think that day is coming, because people are waking up. But there's still some pretty firm resistance in pockets, and it could turn out to be enough to subvert the whole progress that's been made in that regard.
We'll see how it goes though...
It's both an adjective and a noun. Most English adjectives can be used as a noun in a pinch, but the connotation may be dodgy.
I'm just passing on what I've heard, the way it was explained to me...
Yeah, I see. I did get called out for using it as an adjective, though, which seemed particularly weird.
Generally, my rule of thumb is: if you can say "male" and it isn't wrong/weird, you should be able to say "female" to the same effect. But practice shows it isn't true.
I think the issue is evolving a bit as people develop a knee-jerk reaction to hearing "female" and snap to the conclusion "π©π©π©"
It's a bit annoying and anti-nuance, but what can you do? I've started self-censoring by using "woman" as an adjective instead, even though it's a noun and sounds awkward as an adjective, i.e. "A woman doctor," "a woman therapist," "a woman lawyer," "a woman relative," etc.
It sounds awkward because it's incorrect, and that would be the correct way to use the word "female," but I get super paranoid about that kind of stuff and overthink it because I've been shunned and flamed about stupid BS like that before and it isn't pleasant, especially as someone politically progressive who happens to be a cishetero-passing white male, so it's like everything I say is constantly under a microscope. And like, I believe in egalitarianism, but stuff like that could get me labeled as a misogynist in a heartbeat. So I try to be aware of it, even if it leaves me tongue-tied at times when I don't know what fucking words are still okay to use, and I overthink how to phrase something precisely the right way so that nobody accuses me of malice...
Y E S.
An extremely toxic angle to a lot of progressives and especially the discriminated folks is automatically assuming everything to be evil once it comes out of cishet male's mouth. Like, I get it, quite some people actually are discriminatory, but verifying the person's intent before lashing out shouldn't be too hard. Many, many times the person really didn't mean anything bad.
Sometimes I genuinely wonder how much this toxicity contributes to the development of reactionary right-wing types, and the way they portray the left and progressives as a screaming crowd in search of another scapegoat.
You'd be (well maybe not) surprised to learn it's actually a HUGE part of the problem. Having met a number of those people almost invariably they (the younger ones anyway, like 40yo and under) used to be liberals until they disagreed with ONE thing or said ONE wrong word, and then it snowballed from there into them supporting the other side that is all too happy to welcome them, indoctrinate them, etc, just by playing nice. Turns out people are still individuals and "toe the party line or else" works on some but pushes others away, and some of those pushed away can be caught by the opposition with a different disposition, sort of a "catch more flies with honey" situation. Who knew?
Glad to hear I'm not just crazy.
I am crazy, but not just that.
Anyway yeah, I think a lot of us on the left could do better to avoid adding fuel to the caricatures that the right-wing reactionaries portray us as, cause it's already a dumpster fire as it is.
And seconded. Radicalization targets the vulnerable. When people feel they're not welcome in any other spaces, they tend to wind up in toxic echo chambers where they get poached by nefarious actors.
Not saying we should welcome everyone with open arms, but if someone's problem is merely ignorance, that can be remedied. As long as there's no malice in their intent, we should be willing to reach out a hand or at least give them a path forward, because it will ultimately grow the left's reach, while minimizing the recruitment pool for right-wing extremists.
I've been flamed for talking about this before, but I think it's too important to ignore.
I feel like the only time I referred to males and female were regarding things like census designations, medical terminology.
Outside of that it's bros and bitches.
It's politically incorrect to call them bitches. Now you have to refer to them as poochies.
Why can I not refer to my male friends as bitches?
Because .ml's wordfilter will change it to removed so it looks like you're calling them something worse like the n-word.
Their filter also blocks "pussy" because apparently slang terms for vaginas and shortenings of the word pusillanimous (depending on context) are "misogynist" or something, definitely not just them over-reacting to terms they don't understand, noooo.
It was a quote from the Netflix show Orange is the New Black.
Who said you couldnβt?
Alright, as a non-native English speaker, I missed the part about "male" and "female" being strictly about AGAB.
The more I know!
(And no, I'm not a transphobe. If anything, this comes as an illustration that people may be less knowledgeable, not more evil)
Eeeeeeeehhh its complicated. Gender and sex are different, but are sometimes used interchangeably. Male and female isn't strictly AGAB in all circumstances. The sex field on all my documents says female, despite the circumstances of my birth. Many trans women self describe as female, while others don't.
Transphobes often say female as an attempt to be exclusionary of trans people. Misogynists often say females, because calling half the population women implies we are people. Generally its a bad sign when someone says "female" as a noun.
But female as an adjective is pretty normal. A male model or a female engineer is a perfectly normal and fine way to describe people.
I see, so on top of that, it's extra confusing because everyone means different things. I see the angle many trans people take, and that's what I assumed initially.
Thanks for sharing!
It's not about AGAB, this fucker is just talking confidently about shit they're clueless on. "Male" and "female" are constructed categories that have always been used to describe social and physiological phenomena alike. And furthermore, even if for whatever reason one were to use the terms solely to describe biology, pretty much all the traits that are used to categorise "biological sex" that actually matter in people's everyday lives can be changed.
It's neither accurate nor acceptable socially to describe trans women as "male" nor trans men as "female," and anybody pushing the narrative that it is is not our ally.
So a trans man, being fully biological female ends on ER. The personnel shouldn't refer to them as female and instead give them the treatment intended for males?
It's about precision and safety to use a correct language in the correct contexts. When talking to the patient, they should obviously not call them a woman or utilise a dead name. But that's a social context. Not a medical biological relevant one
"Biological male" and "biological female" are transphobic slurs. The correct term is cis, which means on the same side, in contrast to trans which means across.
If that trans man is on HRT, he will be better served by medical interventions intended for men than women. That is how HRT works. Cells only know sex from the hormones. Change your hormones, you change how every cell in your body behaves.
In the case of an ER, trans people will almost always refuse to disclose that they are trans, or will outright deny it. That is the only way to get good care from doctors who are not experts in trans medicine.
These unevidenced assertions that trans people are medially distinct from cis people are harmful, and gets people killed. Stop it.
But in the above case we're talking about a trans person, whom isn't transitioning in a physical/biological aspect. Hence they're a man, but their physicality is female.
They'd be best served the care you'd give other females. Rather than what you'd aim at males.
I don't think you're necessarily being malicious here, but please, for the love of all that is good, think for just half a second and stop saying shit like this, especially in front of people who are well-meaning but not knowledgeable on the topic and might actually listen to you. It's not only factually misleading, but also not helping us, you're just disseminating the idea that on some level we aren't actually who we say we are.
My sibling in satan, you are the one spreading transphobia during the era of woke 2.0
Male: π©
IDK, that would technically be a red pennant, and not a red flag
Men can be male or female.
Women can be male or female.
Nonbinary people fan be male or female.
(Okay there's also a category of intersex)
One is a social gender, one is a physical sex. There's a big difference, let's take a transgender man. Whom is a female and do not intend to transition. They'll largely appear and act like most men do, but they'll be female. Them being female only matters in a few contexts.
But man is not equal male. Far from it.
Similar idea was already mentioned in this thread and got disagreed with and downvoted into oblivion, so I assume this is controversial
See P.P.S and P.P.P.S
No
Personally I disagree, I use them exclusively for gender, and encourage others to do the same. If sex is needed for discussion a two word phrase can be used to clarify.
Under what you say "female housing" could mean only/all afab people, all women are welcome (because it's being used as an adjective), only cis women and nontransitioning afab nonbinary people are welcome, and various stages of transition needing to be met by trans woman for us to be welcome.
If you want women only housing, you say that. If you want female only housing, you say that.
Although none of them would ever refer exclusively to AFAB.
Women only, would refer to anyone considering themselves a woman (non binary not included)
Female only, would refer to anyone legally considered a female (I believe most countries have a signature in the SSN - I'm aware the US don't, but it's still an internal field registered somewhere)
If you say female and don't specify which species, I assume you fuck goats. Have a nice day.