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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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[–] r00ty@kbin.life 10 points 8 months ago

It's mostly this, I would say. But in general there's a valid context to use male/female and another valid context to use man/woman or girl/boy or lady/gentleman.

Most people are not going to hold someone speaking English as a second language to task over it. But if you're speaking natively, there's no real excuse not to know when it is right to use the correct term.

But that's just my own opinion.