Anyone else weirded out when people consistently use the word “man,” but not the word “woman?”

submitted by catawampus from self.GenderCritical

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[–]LesbianOutlaw 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I haven’t noticed a discrepancy. As for myself I use the relevant terminology. If referring to one of the sexes in relation to an issue that can affect minors and adults then obviously I use the term “females” or “males” instead of “men” or “women.” It is inappropriate to say “girls” or “women” if you are talking about a concept that can apply to the sex at any age. You exclude all females younger than 18 if you use the term “woman” instead of “female.”

Many may selectively choose to use “female” more than they use “male” as some kind of subconscious dehumanization attempt but keep in mind that the term has a wide array of uses where just saying “women” would be insufficiently inclusive so don’t assume that everyone using “female” has a malicious intent.

[–]catawampus[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

“Girls” is often used as an umbrella term for women and girls nowadays, what do you think of that? I wonder if it’s due to the fact that society prefers younger women to older women or the infantilization of women. I, myself, had a huge self image problem for a while due to the perceived pressure from society to look younger.

I agree that everyone using “female” isn’t saying it with malicious intent.

More importantly, after the reddit ban, I think it’s important not to police people’s speech, to an extent, but I do think it’s good to observe the intent with which people use words.

[–]LesbianOutlaw 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

“Girls” is often used as an umbrella term for women and girls nowadays, what do you think of that?

I try to refrain from referring to adult females as “girls” because I find it to be an attempt at infantalizing women. Society does not do this same thing to men; while men are sometimes referred to as “boys” it is quite rare and usually only done in the context of pointing out the immaturity of a group of men. Calling women “girls” further feeds into the misogynistic belief that women are mentally children and need to be taken care of by a father/husband/brother/the state.