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‘There were no warning signs’: what happens when your partner falls into the ‘manosphere’?
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2025
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Occasionally my partner does or says some things that remind me of the “manosphere” aka 4chan neckbeards.
And when it happens, we talk about it. I don’t pretend or let it go as “he doesn’t mean it” or “he doesn’t know what he’s saying”. I don’t get mad and he doesn’t get mad. We have an adult discussion and I’m careful not to talk down to him.
A perfect example was that he sometimes says “females” when he means “women”. I explain that it’s not a swear word but it’s still derogatory. I explain why. Once I did, he understood and stopped doing it.
It doesn’t have to be a big deal! Communication is key!
No. Stop treating people like livestock.
i don't know how could anyone watch Star Trek DS9 and still call women "females" like a Ferengi
serious answer: by consistently running and reading experiments that refer to male and female patients.
I try my best, but if I've read three-four papers in a day about a topic and all of them use male and female, probably gonna accidentally say female.
Funny you say that! He doesn’t do it anymore but I just sent him this meme from !tenforward@lemmy.world!
As long as you also made sure that if he does say it again he has to pronounce it like tamales
I laughed at this and now I’m going to do that in my head whenever I see that word
Sure, but honestly it sounds tiring if this kind of discussion is a recurring thing.
Yeah, why can't he just agree with you on everything right out the gate?
Agreed! But for me it’s not all that often, luckily.
Good luck with that. A red flag is a red flag.
I'm guessing you're single.
Everyone, keep in mind, there's a lot of losers on the internet who will never find love and don't want you to find love, either.
Don't end up like them unless you want to.
I appreciate that he is willing to learn and grow. We all make mistakes. If you understand why it’s offensive and keep doing it, yeah red flag.
I think the ability to change with new information is admirable.
It is admirable and increasingly rare.
I'm sure this person really appreciates this warning about a person that they know and you don't
It's similar to how I appreciate your reply.
So, are you agreeing that your first comment was useless or that the comment you're replying to isn't? Can't have it both ways.
I think it depends on how often they're coming up with dubious takes, and how often there are repeats.
Like if you have to explain that gay people are just trying to live life, and that's fixing misinformation they got as a youth, fine. Good, even. But if you have that talk and then have to have to again a month later because they "forgot" or picked up more bad ideas? Concerning.
Friend of a friend was always getting talks to patch up his dicey world view, but then he'd go back to the same YouTube or shitty friends and come back two weeks later with a fresh batch of bad ideas. Really have to get to the root of the problem
It logically isn't. While you think that, and anyone spending their future with you should mind it, it doesn't make it true.
Language isn’t always about logic. Discussing things in terms of male/female is fine in many contexts but is often done when discussing science or medical topics. Ex: the male pelvis has a different, narrower shape than the female pelvis. It’s also used in situations where people are deliberately ‘othering’ people. Watch any police bodycam footage and you’ll see that cops frequently say “male/female” when discussing non-police individuals.
In daily life, most people use men/women for non-scientific discourse. The women’s restroom. A group of men at the restaurant. Etc.
But here’s the thing. Male/female are used for any species (a male beetle), but man/woman are only used for humans.
Assholes like Tate push a twist in this dynamic so that men are called men but women are called females because it can be dehumanizing to women. When you say female you could be talking about an insect, but a man is human. It’s a succinct example of their philosophy. That’s why people consider it derogatory.
I think we grasp cognitive meaning & emotive force in language. I think we also understand the concept of twisting words, have likely rolled our eyes witnessing it, and generally agree that a fair, reasonable person should resist it.
The claim is the word itself is derogatory. It's an argument roughly of the form:
These look like errors of reasoning: a persuasive definition (a definition biased in favor of a particular conclusion or point of view) and a type of straw man fallacy. While it can be used in a derogatory way, that's not the general, conventional meaning.
Yet you attempt to defend the claim by a (specious) logic language doesn't follow, either. Language does follow a standard (of sorts): convention. By that standard, the claim is false.
Natural language gains conventional meaning through collective choices of the language community. This general acceptance is reflected in responses of native speakers (not niche online opinions who don't decide for the entire language community).
If (as reported) native speakers require frequent "correction" on a word's meaning, that indicates the proposed meaning isn't generally accepted. A longstanding definition (like "female" as a nonderogatory noun) holds more weight than a novel reinterpretation recognized by fewer.
If the "corrections" aren't, then what are they? At best, a proposed language change—an attempt to push the idea that the noun "female" is derogatory and change the way allies speak.
Is it a good proposal?
Would defining the noun "female" as derogatory weaken sexist ideologies? Unlikely: extremists like Andrew Tate wouldn't adjust their rhetoric because of a vocabulary. They wouldn't need to adjust a single word.
Is it just? Justice requires targeting wrongdoers narrowly—discrediting problematic messages, condemning extremist ideologies, promoting deradicalization. Blanket condemnation based on a word punishes nonoffenders instead of actual wrongdoers. Antagonizing nonoffending parties alienates potential allies rather than foster change.
The result? A reductive purity test that challenges & penalizes allies instead of challenge wrongdoers. That is neither right nor beneficial.
Would making the noun "female" a dysphemism suggest to society that femaleness is wrong/taboo? That seems misguided.
Why that word? The assumption appears to be that usage by sexist extremists taints the word itself as if the word is to blame for their rhetoric. It's roughly an argument of the form
First, is premise 1 true: do figures like Andrew Tate even use the noun "female" disproportionately? I've only seen it among socially awkward individuals: not the same crowd.
More crucially, this argument is invalid: it's a genetic fallacy (guilt by association).
Thus, the proposal doesn't advance (and may undermine) a good cause, is unjust, may rely on incorrect premises, and is poorly reasoned: it's not good in any sense.
or legal or technical or any context for impersonal abstraction. Such language has appeared in classified ads for apartment rentals: there's even a movie about it. Not derogatory. Context matters.
While US policing has serious issues, this claim seems forced: impersonal terms are standard in legal settings.
Recalling an earlier question: do they?
Though interesting if so, that alone doesn't make the word in general derogatory. Nonderogatory instances are common (as you've identified). If a word requires a particular message to be derogatory, then the message (not the word) is responsible.
The use of a word in a derogatory message doesn't make it derogatory. That would require an unattainable level of purity (ie, never appear in derogatory messages) for nonderogatory words.
Your argument really shows the people who "consider it derogatory" misattribute an entire rhetoric to a word.
Final thought: humans don't need constant reassurance that they're humans to know they aren't being demeaned (unless they're painfully insecure).
tl;dr The claim that noun "female" is derogatory is false according to conventional meaning established by the language's community, corroborated by the frequent need to "correct" native speakers. Moreover, the claim doesn't advance (and may undermine) a good cause, is unjust, may rely on incorrect premises, and is poorly reasoned.
It is if you say “man” and “female” instead of “male” and “female”. While it can be a noun, it’s mainly used as an adjective to describe sex.
It’s like saying “A black owns the shop.” Instead of “A black man owns the shop.”
Notice how calling someone “a black” is kinda icky?
The rule of thumb I use is that you shouldn't use adjectives as nouns when talking about people. The adjective needs a noun to describe.
I was going to comment that, a while ago, I saw someone on Lemmy make almost exactly this comment.
Now I wonder if the person I saw was you or, alternatively, whether you saw the same person.
I don’t recall where it came from. I definitely read it somewhere and didn’t come up with it on my own. Probably here on Lemmy or on Reddit before that! It was the first example I saw that was able to articulate why it doesn’t feel right to say “female” as a noun when referring to a person.
Well, good on you for your progressive perspective and your willingness to express it.
That's extra cringe if they do: that person needs to sort out their words. Is it not if they say “male” and “female”?
It's hard cringe & awkward: certain to provoke odd looks.
Referring to someone as an instance of their gender could be icky & cringe. That it's also derogatory doesn't follow: the easiest counterexample is "a male".
What makes you the ultimate authority on what terms a woman can consider "derogatory"? Where do you get the power to decide what words other people should use to describe their own feelings? What makes your opinion about it more valid than those of others?
Have you considered that the same word can make two different people feel two different ways? Unless you've got the power to know exactly what another person is feeling, there is nothing that makes your thoughts more valid than the thoughts of others in this matter. Doubling down that "derogatory" isn't the right word to use gives the impression that you don't believe "female" actually feels derogatory to a lot of women. Gotta wonder why that might be.
I don't need to be or decide it and it's not my opinion: the language community is the ultimate authority of their language. Their collective choices establish observable conventions. Linguistics is dedicated to that approach.
Subjectivist fallacy: your opinion/feelings don't make claims true. Up doesn't mean down because someone feels that way.
Language has conventional, established meanings.
Another comment fully argues, explains, & criticizes your argument, which I won't bother to rehash here.
Way to absolutely miss the point.
A not-insignificant amount of women think using the term "female" is derogatory. Women who feel that way are part of the "language community." You're talking like we're some outsider group, whose use of English is less valid than yours.
Language is alive - it evolves, it changes. As well, English famously doesn't have an established body to define meanings. Rather, English words are based on common usage. Women commonly experience the usage of "female" in a derogatory sense. We didn't designate it this way - all we're doing is pointing out that it's used in this way. Just because you don't feel a derogatory sense from a given word doesn't mean those that experience it that way are wrong.
If you had gone out to research the usage of "female," including how people perceive it in different contexts, you'd see just how many anglophones disagree with you. But those people would probably, by and large, be those who've experienced that word in a derogatory way - in other words, they'd be women. So how about we stop acting like this is a semantics issue and get to the point you're really saying, which is that women's experiences and opinions are somehow worth less than yours.
And a nonsignificant amount don't. That doesn't establish a generally accepted convention of the language community.
True: still not a conventional definition per earlier remarks.
Exactly: convention.
Incomplete evidence or composition fallacy.
Nope, it's about established convention: see earlier remarks (noticing a pattern yet?). My arbitrary opinion isn't "valid", either, per same remarks.
And plenty of innocuous instances exist as discussed before. That doesn't make a word itself derogatory:
I don't deny derogatory instances. Do you deny nonderogatory instances?
People can draw wrong conclusions about their observations, especially if they disregard conflicting observations (incomplete evidence fallacy). Observing derogatory uses while disregarding nonderogatory uses doesn't justify any conclusion about a word's conventional definition.
It varies by message, so it's not the word itself.
Straw man fallacy. Not implied.
Male's haven't been actively repressed as a result of their gender for thousands of years. Simply switching the genders does not work because they're not equitible terms. Systematically speaking, they come from different backgrounds and expectations.
I take your point that "female" as a durogatory term is relative to the context it's used in. But we can't pretend we've lived in a world of equal opportunity that treats men and women, males and females, equally in trying to make that point.
While I agree with the first part, that is not implied or necessary to refute the argument as presented.
They argued the same reasoning applies to "male" (literally). It clearly doesn't.
Therefore, whatever the reasoning could be, their argument isn't it. Basic logic.
If a sound argument exists, we should present that. Otherwise, we're pretending to reason.