this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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The way I explained it to a chronically single friend who used this word problematically all the time, and made him stop: Female is a word that describes gender and/or sex. My wife is female, and so is my dog. My wife is literally a woman, and my dog is literally a removed, so if I speak of my wife with the same sterile language that I speak of my dog, then my wife would easily conclude that I have no respect for her. I then asked him how the dating world was treating him, he said "bad", and I said "of course, because you treat women like dogs".
Never heard him say it again.
This is a good way of describing it for non-US or non-native speakers. The context is important. If you are speaking in an environment where linguistic sterility or pedantic exactitude are paramount, use female because that is the correct term. Things like studies; medical, statistical, anthropological, etc. If you are in a social situation, use a non-sterile term like woman for an adult, girl for a child, or some other non-pejorative colloquial term. If "chick" or "dame" or "babe" are acceptable to the girls/women of the social circle, go wild with them, if not, don't. This is viable advice for any pronoun or colloquial reference, no matter the gender/sex of the people around. Their emotions matter.
Also, if you are speaking with physists about physics, object pronouns become appropriate because no matter how offended people get, they have a volume and warp spacetime, so therefore they ARE objects. ๐