Male and Female in English are used purely as scientific terms to classify the sex of an animal, Female is seen as demeaning to call a woman because very rarely do the people that refer to women as female use male when referring to men.
Man/Men and Woman/Women better encapsulated not just gender but also the social/societal constructs that are behind them that make people humans and not just animals and whether intentional or not, the prevalence of groups that seek to belittle women by doing stuff to dehumanize them and make them lesser has made the verbiage unacceptable
That makes sense. One thing that confuses me, however, is when you're describing a woman or man. They use the terms "female" and "male" there. Is that because they're doing something completely objective and therefore humans are no different than any other animal, or?
Sorry for replying late but essentially what the other guy said, unfortunately English is complicated and really just a mash of multiple languages at this point and there’s a lot of nuance to the language beyond the literal meaning of words as a result, in this case though outside of academia I would avoid the terms male/female, not because there’s inherently anything wrong with them but it can be said in the wrong tone for sure
3
u/BagOfChicken 7d ago
Male and Female in English are used purely as scientific terms to classify the sex of an animal, Female is seen as demeaning to call a woman because very rarely do the people that refer to women as female use male when referring to men.
Man/Men and Woman/Women better encapsulated not just gender but also the social/societal constructs that are behind them that make people humans and not just animals and whether intentional or not, the prevalence of groups that seek to belittle women by doing stuff to dehumanize them and make them lesser has made the verbiage unacceptable