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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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[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 0 points 8 months ago (2 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.

[–] irmoz@reddthat.com 1 points 8 months ago (3 children)

"Suspect" is the noun

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 8 points 8 months ago

Both are nouns. Suspect is the subject, male is the object. You could replace it with, for example "the suspect is a cat", and I think we can all agree "cat" is a noun. "six foot" and "white" are the adjectives in that sentence.

[–] humorlessrepost@lemmy.world 6 points 8 months ago

Both are nouns there. Suspect is the subject.

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

So you don’t think this argument would hold up if they said “Police are searching for a six foot white male”?