Not sure whether to vote up, as I refer to women as females in order to avoid being sexist, but I can see this already has many upvotes (I wonder what proportion of those upvotes were by women, though). In my experience, most of the prejudiced sayings/memes are directed at ‘women’, not at ‘females’, which is why ‘women’ feels more sexist to me.
(although any reference to sex or gender that is not obviously necessary also feels sexist, so I normally leave any such references out entirely whenever possible.)
Why do you think it is that it can come across as either autistic or sexist?
FWIW I live in South Australia, in case this turns out to be a cultural thing.
These things wash back and forth depending on associations. Hanging out on feminist parts of the internet, I see a lot of ladies rolling their eyes at the term “females”—mostly based on the types of guys who seem to be using it.
Some say they find the term “othering”, because it’s a bit sterile and biological, but I think it’s a mistake to say it’s anything intrinsic in the word itself.
Don’t worry, I used the term to neutrally specify that I’m a straight male and so I’m attracted to straight females. In Italian the word “female” is never ever ever used to indicate women: it would be fantastically rude.
One minor issue that would help social attractiveness- don’t refer to women as “females”. It can come across as either autistic or sexist.
Not sure whether to vote up, as I refer to women as females in order to avoid being sexist, but I can see this already has many upvotes (I wonder what proportion of those upvotes were by women, though). In my experience, most of the prejudiced sayings/memes are directed at ‘women’, not at ‘females’, which is why ‘women’ feels more sexist to me. (although any reference to sex or gender that is not obviously necessary also feels sexist, so I normally leave any such references out entirely whenever possible.)
Why do you think it is that it can come across as either autistic or sexist?
FWIW I live in South Australia, in case this turns out to be a cultural thing.
These things wash back and forth depending on associations. Hanging out on feminist parts of the internet, I see a lot of ladies rolling their eyes at the term “females”—mostly based on the types of guys who seem to be using it.
Some say they find the term “othering”, because it’s a bit sterile and biological, but I think it’s a mistake to say it’s anything intrinsic in the word itself.
Don’t worry, I used the term to neutrally specify that I’m a straight male and so I’m attracted to straight females.
In Italian the word “female” is never ever ever used to indicate women: it would be fantastically rude.