• funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    because people who use females will say men and females - presumably because referring to them as women humanizes them

    • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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      8 days ago

      because people who use females will say men and females

      Do you ignore all the instances they don’t?

      • OP’s writer wrote women & used females to refer to female people (girls or women).
      • The post I linked to shows another use of noun female.
      • Singles communities, personals, classifieds, marketplaces offer abundant instances.
      • The word appears often in book titles & passages, especially feminist literature.

      Seems your claim requires ignoring much regular English usage: it’s false.

      presumably

      That’s presuming an awful lot contrary to regular usage.

      Regardless of motive, the act is the same: indiscriminately picking problems over females. If everyone did that, females would be generally accepted as a dirty, toxic word. Again: what good does that advance?

      It’s thoughtless, self-destructive language policing.

        • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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          8 days ago

          No, the writer in OP may not have needed to use males (men & boys). Explain the necessity for males.

          • boletus@sh.itjust.works
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            8 days ago

            Wouldn’t that imply then that he’s referring to women AND girls? Because he does explicitly say men in the post.

            • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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              8 days ago

              Females does mean women or girls, and they wrote young. It is logical to write men when boys are absent or not discussed. Again: where’s the necessity for males?

              The context doesn’t indicate offensive use of females, so picking over that word looks indiscriminate like the critic is stigmatizing the word itself. Again: what good does that advance?

              • boletus@sh.itjust.works
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                8 days ago

                He’s looking for young girls then. I’m not sure that’s such a good thing, nor does it make his use of females any better.

                • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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                  8 days ago

                  Not sure friend requests count as “looking” in that sense. Young girls is a bit of a reach: young females could mean girls or young women where the age of the girl is unspecified.

                  Great job not answering the questions: a sign of real integrity.

                  • boletus@sh.itjust.works
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                    8 days ago

                    Well if you want an answer to the question it’s purely the way it comes off. A lot of women I know get the ick when people use the word female in that context.

              • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                7 days ago

                Females does mean women or girls, and they wrote young

                So OP is asking what’s wrong with young girls that they don’t accept friend requests from strange men, and your asking why people are pointing that out as a problem?

                • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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                  7 days ago

                  asking what’s wrong with young girls

                  Already answered: they wrote young females.

                  strange men

                  They wrote mutuals.

                  your asking why people are pointing that out as a problem

                  Nope: question clearly stated above about picking over a word.

                  You get points, though, for picking over the message instead of a word: notice females not mentioned. 👍

                  • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                    7 days ago

                    they wrote young females.

                    And you just said “females” refers to women or girls.

                    So if they are sending friend requests to “young females” then they are sending friend requests to “young women” or “young girls”.

                    If they don’t want to sound like they are sending friend requests to the young girls of their coworkers (all of their mutuals after all) then “young women” would have been the better word to use.

          • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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            7 days ago

            The fact that the use one form for one gender and a different form for another gender is exactly the issue.

            • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.com
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              7 days ago

              What’s the logic there that makes it offensive?

              The comment mixes women & females so it doesn’t appear fixated on a word offensively.

              When discussing complete sets, it symmetrically places words of a set together: “men, women” and “married, single”.

              When not discussing complete sets, only the words needed appear: they write “single young female” without “single young male”, because there was no reason to write the latter—it’s not part of the topic. The shift to females happens in a new sentence.

              Again: explain the necessity for males. Are you expecting everyone to write males for no reason whenever they write females (or the reverse)? Do we need to do the same with married & single? Are you claiming incomplete sets of words or asymmetry is offensive?

              That shit would be exhausting. Please explain the issue: otherwise, it looks like you’re simply picking over the noun female.