this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
250 points (88.6% liked)

Asklemmy

43874 readers
1783 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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 ^^

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] BreakDecks@lemmy.ml 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ah, I understand now. You think that "human nonspecific terminology" and "dehumanizing terminology" are oxymoronic. Let me help clarify this for you with a lesson in reading comprehension:

"Human nonspecific terminology" refers to terminology that isn't used specifically to refer to humans. For example, nouns like "male", "female", "subject", or "specimen" can refer to humans, but they can also apply to things like plants and animals. Casually using these terms socially is generally thought of as dehumanizing and disrespectful.

This is opposed to respectful human terminology like "man", "woman", "participant", or "person" that almost exclusively refer to humans.

If a man thinks of himself as a man, but refers to women as "females", people tend to assume he has less than an acceptable amount of respect for women, since he uses less human terminology to describe them than he would to describe himself.

[โ€“] n3m37h@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 8 months ago

This is why I preferred math over English classes.