this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2022
12 points (100.0% liked)
Asklemmy
43945 readers
598 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- 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.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think it's context, really.
If you are given a clinical description of someone:
Then there's nothing negative about it. But if you use it in a way that implies or denotes value - objectifies, then it becomes offensive (i think..)
"What does this female want?" - implies that something about being female changes the speaker's attitude about the request
"You're such a female" - implies femaleness to have expected negative/positive traits that are being used as a blanket assumption for the subject.
"I chose Joey over the female" - implies that "the female" is less appealing than Joey by virtue of femaleness.
There is also something arbitrarily negative about using the clinical "female" over the less clinical "woman" or "girl" in these kinds of instances; although either has the potential be equally objectifying, especially if you consider the more abstract concept of "tone" and history of the speaker...
A lot of it is contextual nuance, and even then not everyone's feelings on it are the same. To be safe though, I would avoid referring to someone as female unless it's factually relevant.
Great answer. Context, tonality and people's mood/feelings vary wildly and are fundamental aspects of how someone will take such a thing.
Your last point is key - when unsure (e.g. not talking to a close friend), choose the most polite words.