• knightly@pawb.social
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    4 months ago

    I have a female friend group and male friend group.

    The gendered terms there are adjectives which describe the two friend groups. Sounds fine.

    But using “female” by itself to refer to a woman should be avoided unless the speaker actually wants to sound like a Ferengi.

    No moral conflict or language policing necessary, just an awareness of the tonal implications of one’s word choices.

    • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Right people are human and make mistakes, so to accidentally use the term interchangeable is perfectly acceptable.

      People are trying to make an issue out of nothing, the only op-Ed’s on this is a decade old at this point.

      It’s not a thing, and never will be. Use context to help you instead of just deciding a word is suddenly derogatory.

      • knightly@pawb.social
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        4 months ago

        Hence, this thread where someone pointed out that the word choice might have unintentional implications, which triggered a few oversensitive incels who percieved it as an attack on their choice to speak dismissively of women.

        • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Nah, it’s the reverse, it’s a red flag for men to avoid women who try to say it’s misogynistic and not appropriate.

          Context makes it okay or not, not the word itself.

          Theres also more people explaining why it’s okay instead of people defending it, so I don’t know what your point was there.

          • knightly@pawb.social
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            4 months ago

            For someone who insists that context is the determinant of appropriateness, you sure don’t seem to be considering that women might have a different context for the term. XD

            • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              Of course they do… how’s someone supposed to know that the person they are talking to is a snowflake and takes normal words to the extreme…?

              Did I say otherwise somewhere…?

              This is entirely a feminist problem, not men, not women, feminists. And it’s a wonderful red flag for other people when it’s brought up.

              • knightly@pawb.social
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                4 months ago

                Of course they do… how’s someone supposed to know that the person they are talking to is a snowflake and takes normal words to the extreme…?

                Try asking.

                Did I say otherwise somewhere…?

                Yeah, you acted like someone offerring grammar advice was an ill omen of social decay.

                How are people supposed to learn to avoid sounding like misogynists if we can’t even warn them without triggering extreme moral outrage in sensitive snowflakeslike yourself?

                This is entirely a feminist problem, not men, not women, feminists. And it’s a wonderful red flag for other people when it’s brought up.

                Seems the other way around to me. You’re the one getting mad about words here.

                • schmidtster@lemmy.world
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                  4 months ago

                  Oh hey, are you a feminist and take offense to people using everyday terms?

                  How do you suggest someone asks in normal everyday conversation…?

                  No one has provided grammar advice.

                  It’s not misogynistic, thats the entire point here. It’s only misogynistic to a very small portion of people and they haven’t even done a great job explaining why either.

                  • knightly@pawb.social
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                    4 months ago

                    Oh hey, are you a feminist and take offense to people using everyday terms?

                    I’m not offended, I’m amused. Simply describing the way one’s language choices could be interpreted has become offensive to you.

                    Like, I think saying “feminist” without being specific is itself a very specific signal, because “feminism” isn’t just one thing and the various movements under that umbrella diverge wildly. I can tell by your usage in this context that you’re not actually interested in my opinions on the matter, you just want to simplify me away with a label. Because if I’m a feminist then you’ve already heard whatever it is I might have to say and you could disregard me without consequence, right?

                    How do you suggest someone asks in normal everyday conversation…?

                    “Hey, would it be a problem if I described [noun] as [other noun]?” Seems pretty simple and direct.

                    No one has provided grammar advice.

                    Potato-potahto.

                    It’s not misogynistic, thats the entire point here. It’s only misogynistic to a very small portion of people and they haven’t even done a great job explaining why either.

                    Said the (presumptive) male, as if my word choice in that first sentence fragment wouldn’t have been more at home in a nature documentary than a normal conversation.

                    If the male is offended by descriptions of his language or the dehumanizing tone in these last few comments, then he will either ragequit the conversation, try for a some sort of written jab to regain a sense of dominance, or maybe even learn something about why people think it’s sexist to refer to a person or group of people solely by their sex.

                    We know you think sex and gender are supposed to be synonymous, but the simple fact of the matter is that they never have been. Not even linguistically.