Whatever happened to “femoid”? I know I read that one somewhere.
The future is femoid
So much cultural imperialism in here.
Once US-Americans decide how they want a word used, they will harrass and cyber-bully everyone into using it the same way / using the same word
Boys, you need to realize that english isn’t “your” language. You don’t get to decide how others speak it.
What
“of the feminine species”
Uh, do you want to explain to this guy what a species is, or do I have to?
Well, he didn’t say persuasion, at least…
Trans women want to be referred to as just women, and biological women don’t want to be referred to as Cis women, so other than female, what is there?
I agree that I get the ick from female when referred to by certain men, but at this point, I don’t see another option.
Not wanting to be referred to as cis, is just as ridiculous as not wanting to be referred to as straight. It just means “not trans”. The women who don’t want to be referred to as cis are TERFs, so their opinions are irrelevant.
Is it just as ridiculous as not wanting to be referred to as trans? Why label what something is not rather than what something is?
The problem is female and women aren’t grammatically equivalent, so you can’t just drop one in place of the other anytime you want. It bugs me when people say woman president. Imagine electing a man president. The correct word in that case is male. You’d be electing a male president. I don’t care about anyone’s politics. I’m just getting tired of people in suits on tv using poor language and being asked to be taken seriously. And I’m not singling out democrats. Republicans adopted that language too. There are people on tv who wouldn’t pass kindergarten telling us what they think will affect GDP.
/s?
I sure hope so
The other option is “women”
Works for most conversations, I agree
I love that this dumb dumb made a post on reddit. There are search engines, large language models, and the good ole thesaurus to find words that are synonyms. Figure. It. Out.
Girl, woman
Girl can absolutely be interpreted as condescending if you’re talking to/about an adult
Except “woman” doesn’t mean “female person” anymore, it means “anyone who identifies as a woman” because attaching any common noun at all for people based on sex rather than gender would be accused of transphobia.
It’s kind of like if someone asked what the term for the sexual orientation of someone who is interested in partners they could hypothetically reproduce with is, the answer is there isn’t one and suggesting there should be will get called transphobic.
Do you often find yourself in discussions where the trans-inclusivity/exclusivity of the term is important to know?
Because whenever I use “men, guys” or any other such term, whether it includes trans people doesn’t even cross my mind. Like the discussions if we should welcome “guy friends” at our girls’ game and gossip nights, or if I’m being too naive around “men”. Talking about “males” like an alien species would be weird and mildly offensive. (Mildly because the Finnish word “uros” can imply admiration for a man’s masculinity.)
If you wanted a term for potential partners you could possibly reproduce with, none of the “female, woman, male, man” terms by itself would do, because (even personally known) infertility for various reasons exists.
Just say what you mean. Intersex and trans people exist. For example, “menstruator” or “people who menstruate” if you’re talking about periods. Not all women menstruate, not everyone who menstruates is a woman, and hell, there are plenty of people who have uteruses but don’t menstruate. It’s way clearer and inclusive.
Is it hypothetical because no one has wanted to reproduce with you for some elusive reason?
partners they could hypothetically reproduce with
“fertile women”
“women capable of pregnancy”
Outdated, slight red flag option: “gynephile”
Or you could even try “I find women attractive and would love to have kids with the woman I love one day”
There, language isn’t that hard.
You’re actually demonstrating my point - I said “a common noun” for one and “a term” for the other. The whole point is that any “acceptable” language for those notions (a person of the sort who possesses female genitals and potentially has ova that she could hypothetically carry to term and identifies as a woman and a person attracted to the sort of person they might hypothetically be able to reproduce with) has to have at the very minimum an adjective if not an entire phrase attached to it.
For example, imagine someone tried to re-popularize the old English words to refer to cis folks, using wifmen for cis women in this example. That would immediately be deemed transphobic, specifically because it’s a common noun to refer specifically to cis women and not a shared category you have to use an adjective or phrase to differentiate from.
Same thing applies to orientation - we have a lot of words for sexual orientations. But a word for a person who is attracted to cis people of a given sex relative to one’s own is unacceptable - the very idea that there could be a term for it is transphobic. Despite sexual attraction being one of those rare cases where what genitals you have and whether or not they’re the original equipment is actually relevant.
Also wouldn’t “gynephile” meaning one who has an attraction to women still not be precise enough, since women includes trans women by definition, at least the feminine ones?
I think you’re just chronically online. Just say female if you’re in a conversation and want to exclude trans women. Most trans people won’t care as long if the context isn’t transphobic. I really don’t see why it’s unacceptable to have an adjective if you’re describing a subset of women. Like there’s not a singular noun for “tall men” but if you’re actually not being transphobic then whatever.
Again with sexual orientation, it sounds like you’re saying that because chronically online. There are people who say it’s transphobic to say straight but exlude trans people. Again, context and intent matters. You can just say straight. This one is tricker because not all trans people have surgically transitioned, genital preference matters, and orientation is a spectrum.
And it’s a tough subject within the trans community itself, because it’s frustrating to present as a gender, transition in every way to that gender, be accepted and pass for that gender, only for someone to say they aren’t attracted to you only after they find out you’re trans. What other conclusion would you have other than transphobia? And it doesn’t help that it often is accompanied by blatant transphobia.
So if someone is calling you transphobic, either the context is also transphobic or they’re misunderstanding your intent.
So that hypothetic person is turned off by learning someone is infertile for any reason?
Let’s say yes, since we’re in a hypothetical. Breeding fetish, perhaps? Maybe just someone who’s specifically looking for a long term relationship leading into children?
You thought you ate with this comment 😂
Is this why they always ask how to define “woman”?
If someone asks you to a define a women, chances are they never met one in real life.
Meanwhile: males, dudes, guys, homies, fellas, bois, bros, lads, laddie, mates, geezers, chaps, gents, boss, hoss, cheif, buddy, pal, son, sonny, sonny boy, muchacho, hombre, old timer, Mac, Joe…
“Yeah what’s up?”
I don’t think we need to cancel Guys and Dolls just yet.
I love that half of these are fully gender neutral terms of endearment in Australia 😂
Honestly a lot of them start out as or still contextually imply “males” in the US, but can be used gender neutrally as well now too. Like “how you guys doing” vs “hanging out with the guys.”
It’s interesting isn’t it? “Guys” can include women, and can even be a group of only women, but you can’t talk about a single woman as a guy - “I snogged this gorgeous guy last night”.
Using “guys” for a group of only women works only in 2nd person. You can say “I love you guys!” to a group of women, but you can’t say “I was hanging out with the guys” when talking about the same group.
Sexism is a helluva drug.
What is a woman?
Try taking to one and find out.
Someone who covers her drink when you enter the room
Dudettes
I identify with this unironically as a low conscientiousness male feminist.
Women implies the existence of nimen and tamen
Hmm. Wōmen… Men of Wō… I don’t mean to be racist but their triads freak me out.
Ooo help me learn today if you don’t mind… Where does this prefix grouping come from?
Edit: found it, I think: Chinese?
Yeah, what they’re saying doesn’t make much sense logically though.
Men here is 们, the plural marker for people. Wo (我) is I or me, wo+men (我们) we or us, ni (你) is you, ni+men (你们) is you (plural), ta (他/她/它) is he/she/it, and ta+men (+们) is they.
Some other variants exists, and there’s specifics on the usage. I also missed the tone markers on the pinyin because they’re a pain to type.
Anyway I’m not sure what joke or point they were trying to make.
They say fluency happens when you make your first cross language pun, so riffing on a mediocre meme feels like halfway there.
Correct; wo, ni, ta are the singular forms I, you, he/she/it. Adding the -men suffix turns it into the plural we/you/they.
So literally, ‘we’ are ‘women’.
Mmmmm… ramen
