I cringe every time I hear another guy refer to women like this
counterpoint:
man and men, just like woman and women sound the same when speaking
male and males, female and females is clearer
I’m sorry, but I did the thing where I write a comment and then delete it because I assume no one cares about my opinion
since you replied though, I should make it clear what I said to give context
I said that man and men, as well as woman and women, sound the same when speaking. male and males, female and females, make a clearer distinction
You pronounce the words man and men the same way? And this is also the case for woman and women?
Am I understanding you correctly?
counterpoints:
This would only hold up if the person is using male/female and not man/female
And assuming this still holds up, why not go with male/woman? The type of people to use this shouldn’t be bothered, i mean thry throw the term “alpha male” all the time
Oh wait, i think the solution is to just use man/woman unless you’re in a very biological discussion
how do you pronounce man/men/woman/women? man and men might be confusable but woman and women are very different pronunciations
It probably depends on slight differences in regional dialect. Where I am from I would say woman and women are often pronounced pretty similarly, while man and men are easier to tell apart.
In my region, woman is often pronounced with an ‘uh’ sound, like womuhn. It’s pretty easy to confuse with women. I have noticed that people in my area will sometimes vary up the ‘wo’ part of women and woman depending on which one they are using. So women becomes ‘wimen’, and woman becomes ‘wumuhn’.
I sometimes hear furries mess up and refer to women as “female humans” or something along those lines, but that’s mainly because furries usually think in “male/female” instead of “man/woman” (or at least all the ones I’ve met seem to). For an example, “Cat-woman” can be kinda ambiguous and (at least imo) sounds kinda odd since “woman” is usually exclusive to female humans. In this example, are we talking about a woman who’s obsessed with cats, a woman who is a cat (a female feline with human features), an anime cat girl (a woman with cat features), or a DC Comics character (a woman who dresses up like a cat)?
Otherwise though, yeah. Yeah, especially, especially when someone refers to women as “females” as in “check out those females over there”. That’s creepy. Even furries would rather say something like, “check out those gals over there”, regardless of context.
Edit: also, does this hypothetical person say “males” too, or is it “man/female”? “Man/female” is a massive red flag.
As a woman who is bothered by the “females” thing, “female humans” doesn’t sound bad to me. It’s because “female” is used as an adjective here. It’s the same reason “black women” sounds fine, but “blacks” sounds bad. It’s reducing someone to their gender only, as if they’re not humans, too. It feels otherimg.
It’s fine if it’s consistent imo.
Men and women - 👍
Males and females - 👍
Boys and girls - 👍
Guys and gals - 👍
Men and females - 👎
Men and girls - 👎
Men and chicks - 👎
Dudes and dudes
males and females is still psychotic if you’re not specifically talking science like biology, statistics, etc. adjectives as nouns are rarely a good sign in general; it’s almost always derogative.
also boys and girls would be fine except most people who use (or claim to use) boys do it in familiar sense only. they’d never call a 40 year old jacked man they don’t know a boy, but they’d easily call a grown ass woman they don’t know a girl. exceptions are some phrases like “big boy” or “my boy” in endearing sense but that’s not how “girl” is generally used, which is a substitute for “woman”.
A lot of prior military folks will use males and females just because that’s how it’s been drilled into them. Male and female latrines, not men and women’s bathrooms. Male and female barracks, not men and women’s dorms. Male and female standards, etc etc.
dehumanization is part of military. that’s not really an argument for it.
adjectives as nouns are rarely a good sign in general
I don’t think that’s true unless you mean within the context of referring to people or something, e.g. the blacks, the poors. But then stuff like “the rich” and “the unemployed” I don’t really take issue with.
yeah, you’re right but they’re two different cases. notice how when it’s right you don’t pluralize it with an -s because some adjectives have a form of a plural noun, so they don’t have a singular form: “a poor” or “a black” is just yikes. you can find words like “rich” as plural nouns apart from the adjective forms in the dictionary. you might find “female” and “black” as a noun for people too, but they should be marked offensive either directly or in usage notes.
so that’s the distinction. “black” or “female” don’t exist as plural nouns like “the rich” or “the blessed”.
interestingly enough there are exceptions. there is no plural noun “the gay” but “gays” usually isn’t offensive as a noun, but also “a gay” is weird and offensive. language is complicated.
I’ve seen moids used as a shorthand for femoids. So that one is confusing.
The ONLY time it’s fine is if it’s in a medical report or scientific paper. Written by actual doctors or scientists. And it is done to dehumanize the subject to make it easier for, say, a medical examiner to write a report without breaking down.
Using male and female for people is inheritantly dehumanizing, and that’s only ok in very specific circumstances.
Whatever you do, don’t google male chicks. God the food industry is awful
Seems like EU has been looking into this https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2022/739246/EPRS_ATA(2022)739246_EN.pdf
More disturbing than the practice is that the industry association used the term “golden bullet” instead of “silver bullet”. Smdh
