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Comment on Why are expressions like "women artists" or "women writers" used?

hedders@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

I'm not a native English speaker, so forgive my ignorance, but isn't "women" a noun, not an adjective? Why not just say "female artists" or "female writers"?

The English language is unusual in that it doesn't have gendered nouns, so we find other, often quite clumsy, ways to indicate it. You're right that it doesn't make sense grammatically; we say it that way simply because it scans better.

As a side note, I've also literally never seen anyone say "men artists" or "men writers". What gives?

Patriarchy. Society defaults to the male. That's not unique to the English-speaking world, of course.

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lena@gregtech.eu ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

As a side note, I’ve also literally never seen anyone say “men artists” or “men writers”. What gives?

Patriarchy. Society defaults to the male. That’s not unique to the English-speaking world, of course.

By this I meant that people more often say something like “male nurse” than “man nurse”, but I agree, fuck the patriarchy.

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- Tenniswaffles@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Because male nurses are uncommon and in that specific circumstance female is the default that most people assume.
  
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  - yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    That doesn’t really answer why “woman” can be used this way but “man” can’t:
    
    Female writer: ✅
    
    Woman writer: ✅
    
    Male nurse: ✅
    
    Man nurse: ❌
    
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    lena@gregtech.eu ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yeah that’s what I meant by my reply, thanks for clarifying
    
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HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Yeah. Regarding gendered nouns, it can be hard to deal with referring to a professional of an unknown gender since the default is generally male.

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