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this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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Women singers legit sounds like cave people speak as in “grug go hunt”. It’s so grammatically jarring.
Women of London - Normal
Female of London - Ferengi/Incel
Women Journalist- Caveperson
Female Journalist - Normal
Men of London - Normal
Male of London - Weird
Men Journalist- Caveperson
Male Journalist - Normal
Etc. I don’t know where this grammatical shift came from, but its only really popped up in the last 5 or so years and feels chiefly American.
For future reference:
Male/female is chiefly used to refer to biological contexts. “Female spiders in some species tend to devour their male mates” is a perfectly acceptable description.
Men/women is chiefly used to refer to human-centric sociological contexts. “Women in technology roles face hurdles that men in similar roles do not.” is also a perfectly reasonable description.
@SatanicNotMessianic @Deceptichum I think that's somewhat fair, but linguistically "female" is an adjective and "women" is a noun. The noun in that sentence is "singer" and female is a classifying adjective.
The original post IS stupid and has sexist overtones, but I don't think they come from word choice.
I think I’m going to have to disagree on the basis of such usages as “women singers/songwriters.”
The differentiation is socio-linguistic, because “female” is often used in a dehumanizing context in English. Sociology-linguistically, it’s similar to referring to “blacks” as opposed to “black Americans” or “deafs” as opposed to “deaf people.” The problem is specifically substituting a noun that historically been used to dehumanize the people to which it refers, because it is exclusionary of the “default” status (male, white, hearing).
I am on the side of the linguists who take a descriptive rather than a prescriptive approach to the analysis of language, but part of being a descriptivist is recognizing the subtext potentially if subconsciously involved.
@SatanicNotMessianic can't say any of that is wrong or unreasonable, but I still do find the expressed intent of the post more misogynistic than the use of the word female in context.