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Is "female" offensive? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by Trincapinones@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I am not a native English speaker and I have sometimes referred to people as male and female (as that is what I have been taught) but I have received some backlash in some cases, especially for the word "female", is there some negative thought in the word which I am unaware of?

I don't know if this is the best place to ask, if it's not appropriate I have no problem to delete it ^^

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[–] aberrate_junior_beatnik@midwest.social 4 points 8 months ago

Fun fact (that I have heard and was not able to verify with a quick search so take this with a grain of salt): the English spoken in the US is closer to the way it was spoken in Britain in the 1700s. The gentry made an intentional change to their pronunciation in response to the rise of the middle class, which filtered down to the masses.