It’s kinda like treating a woman as something subhuman. Normal people call human women, women. But you might refer to a dog as a female dog, for example. Calling a dog a woman dog is weird because their not human, just as calling a human a female is weird, it is dehumanizing.
Comment on [deleted]
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’m not even sure I get what’s bad about that. Are they saying it’s anti-trans or something? I doubt many transwomen would be offended by the word ‘female’ in that context. And if it’s for sexism, that’s not really the sexist part. So I’m very confused.
Jimbo@yiffit.net 9 months ago
Blizzard@lemmy.zip 9 months ago
Calling a dog a woman dog is weird because their not human
Wodog
Diprount_Tomato@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Now let’s fucking do it with all species
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I agree it’s weird, but I’d say the rest of the post is the dehumanizing part. ‘Female’ just sounds like someone who doesn’t understand English very well.
Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Does seem oddly decontextualized, doesn’t it?
ruford1976@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Are they saying it’s anti-trans or something? yes, comment section is also defending OP
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Okay. I’m still confused as to why ‘females’ is anti-trans. I honestly do not get it.
skeletorfw@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Sorry, bit of a long one here, but bear with me ♥️
Specifically it is more often in the phrase “biological females”.
It’s a very unnatural way to refer to a person, and as such is usually a very specifically chosen wording. In a very literal sense everyone who can be described as female can also be described as biological, however here the term has an implied delineation in it. A “biological” and a “non-biological” or “artificial” female. This is where the anti-transness comes in; the appeal to nature of “artificial” women being inferior to the “biological” women.
Now there’s an extra little bit of subtlety here in that it often is contextual. Usually you would not refer to a person as a female as a noun, but rather as female as an adjective. There is a significant subset of people thus who use “female” as a noun either as a substitute for “biological female” or sometimes just as a chauvinistic way of dehumanising women. Either way it’s rarely a good look.
The anti-trans movement, and the right wing in general has a distinct trend in not quite saying what they mean too. So in the same way that the right wing will demonise “groomers”, “scroungers”, and “the woke left” (i.e. LGBTQ+ people, the homeless, anyone that will call them out), the TERFs will demonise the implied “non-biological” females.
It is a parlour trick, an extremely thin veneer of plausible deniability that means they can go “nooooo you’re overreacting, I never SAID that I hate trans people, I just don’t like it when people deny that biology exists”. It’s a way of shutting down arguments so the right wing can say whatever they want with impunity.
Tldr: some nasty folk use “females” as a shorthand for “biological human females” which is a very terfy phrase in the same way as “blood and soil” is very distinctly fascistic.
In this particular case however I don’t think that the reddit OP was being a terf and the mods were definitely just flat out wrong.
porkins@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
If bad people adopt a word or mannerism, does that become immediately cancelled from the acceptable lexicon. Shouldn’t Webster’s update their dictionary or something. Is their a rule book. It is hard to keep up with the times. In the context of classifying the content of an image in a very scientific manner, the poster correctly identified that this person was the female gender based upon their outward appearance. Are we really going to get to a point where we can’t assume someone is male or female and have to refer to everyone as a person and they/them until the person has identified themselves. As someone edging upon 40, that reality seems overly complex and makes it feel like everyone has to walk a fine line or be cancelled.
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Because some anti-trans people deliberately conflate sex (make/female) with gender (man/woman) for the express purpose of invalidating the identity of trans people.
That being said, the example in the OP looks more like either an innocent translation error or the dehumanising use of the word that the “manosphere” (incels and others celebrating misogyny) deploy. Probably the former tbh.
Swiggles@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
I mean transfem and transmasc are common terms in trans communities. I assume it has nothing to do with trans people but a human female is called a woman hence calling women female is frowned upon. You call a female animal a female, but not a human usually.
There is some nuance in their I probably don’t fully understand either as a non native speaker.
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I guess you have a point, but banning for that seems like a pretty big overreaction. Especially when the person who posted it also could have been a non-native speaker.
gmtom@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Nothing in that screenshot mentions trans people? And also I wouldn’t use the people who are making racist dog whistles to try and prove your point.
GONADS125@lemmy.world 9 months ago
This is how incels commonly refer to women. It could be a case for English as a second language, but it’s most likely an incel creep.
Still seems a bit excessive to jump to a ban just for that word in a title tho…
TheBananaKing@lemmy.world 9 months ago
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with using female as an adjective.
A female customer / politician / patient / etc is perfectly fine and normal.
The problem comes when you use it as a noun.
Think of calling someone “a gay”, “a black” or “a Chinese”.
You just don’t use adjectives-as-nouns to refer to people, apart from a very limited set of exceptions.
Instead you talk about a gay, black or Chinese person.
The same goes for ‘female’.
And since there’s already a word for ‘female person’ - ie. ‘woman’ - then going out of your way to avoid it makes you sound like a raging incel.
Sjotroll@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Lol. You people are completely nuts 😂