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Is "female" offensive? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by Trincapinones@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I am not a native English speaker and I have sometimes referred to people as male and female (as that is what I have been taught) but I have received some backlash in some cases, especially for the word "female", is there some negative thought in the word which I am unaware of?

I don't know if this is the best place to ask, if it's not appropriate I have no problem to delete it ^^

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[–] maryjayjay@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (14 children)

"the suspect is a six foot, white male"

Sounds fine to me

[–] Queen___Bee@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (8 children)

I think that's because the descriptors come after the noun in reporting. Similar to how documentation is done for other professions, like healthcare. If it's out of the context of reporting, or other situations listed in the site below, it sounds grammatically strange or rude.

https://myenglishgrammar.com/lessons/adjectives-function-as-nouns/

Source: I'm in healthcare.

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[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 0 points 8 months ago (7 children)

“the suspect is a six foot, white male"

think that's because the descriptors come after the noun in reporting

No they don’t. The word “male” is the noun here.

Why did people upvote that?

[–] Silentiea@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Because it's still acting as a descriptor rather than an identifier, despite playing the syntactic role of a noun instead of an adjective. It's more about semantics in this case than syntax.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No it is playing the syntactic role of a noun. An object is a noun.

[–] Silentiea@lemm.ee 2 points 8 months ago

I know it's playing the syntactic role of a noun, that's what I said. But it's playing the semantic role of a descriptor. The "thing" being described here is a suspect, one that is white and also male, as opposed to a male who is white and also suspected.

Syntactically, the word male was a noun. But semantically, it's still just describing the suspect, rather than identifying the thing to be described.

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