Do women wanna be called “women” tho? I don’t mean this rhetorically, but as a genuine question.
I for example, would hate to be called a “man”. It just makes me sound old. I would prefer being referred to as “male”, or anything that isn’t the word “man”. This is applicable to a lot of my friends too. Don’t women feel the same way?
I don’t see what’s wrong with calling men ‘men’. I don’t mind it at all, seeing as it’s a descriptor of what I am using the English language. What’s your problem with the word?
Not a native English speaker, so I guess I’m understanding the word wrong (judging from the other comments).
It’s just that calling someone a “man/woman” makes it seem like I’m calling them old? Like… I don’t think we associate the word “man” with youth, right? Like… Whenever someone refers to me as a man (which is quite uncommon thankfully), I cringe a little inside.
‘Man’ refers to human individuals, especially adult male humans. So the word is pretty flexible, and can technically refer to any human regardless of age.
Not sure where you grew up culturally, but that seems like a very foreign concept to me personally. We use “boys”/“guys” and “girls” to demote young men and women. No one here would get the idea to use “male” and “female”, which to our ears are purely biological words.
Well, English is not the native language where I’m from. So perhaps it must be the cultural context for the word “man”? I mean, we don’t use the words “male-female” much outside biological contexts as well… I’ve just rarely seen anyone use the words “man/woman” for anyone our age (we’re young adults for context).
Here in Australia we use male/female all the time.
I physically cringe when I see Americans say stuff like “woman politician” instead of “female politician”. It sounds so grammatically wrong, that you legit sound like a caveman impression (ex. “Grug go car”).
Having said that, we would also never refer to women as females. There’s some grammar rules that dictate when we use either, but female is certainly the more common term.
Yeah, to my ESL ears man/woman are nouns, not adjectives, and using them as adjectives comes off as childish.
That said, “female X” can also sound clumsy, if it’s implied that a bare X is male, e.g. “politician” and “female politician”, vs male and female politician. There was a twitter account calling itself a “male programmer” which took the piss out of that trope.
I’m just speaking from experience here. Never had a problem with other masc identifiers, but something about “man” squicked me out. It always felt like becoming a man was something far off, but I kept getting older and it never happened…
Now I’m on hormones and am a woman and things are fine. Not saying this is your situation, but it was mine.
Do women wanna be called “women” tho? I don’t mean this rhetorically, but as a genuine question.
I for example, would hate to be called a “man”. It just makes me sound old. I would prefer being referred to as “male”, or anything that isn’t the word “man”. This is applicable to a lot of my friends too. Don’t women feel the same way?
I don’t see what’s wrong with calling men ‘men’. I don’t mind it at all, seeing as it’s a descriptor of what I am using the English language. What’s your problem with the word?
Not a native English speaker, so I guess I’m understanding the word wrong (judging from the other comments).
It’s just that calling someone a “man/woman” makes it seem like I’m calling them old? Like… I don’t think we associate the word “man” with youth, right? Like… Whenever someone refers to me as a man (which is quite uncommon thankfully), I cringe a little inside.
‘Man’ refers to human individuals, especially adult male humans. So the word is pretty flexible, and can technically refer to any human regardless of age.
Not sure where you grew up culturally, but that seems like a very foreign concept to me personally. We use “boys”/“guys” and “girls” to demote young men and women. No one here would get the idea to use “male” and “female”, which to our ears are purely biological words.
Well, English is not the native language where I’m from. So perhaps it must be the cultural context for the word “man”? I mean, we don’t use the words “male-female” much outside biological contexts as well… I’ve just rarely seen anyone use the words “man/woman” for anyone our age (we’re young adults for context).
Here in Australia we use male/female all the time.
I physically cringe when I see Americans say stuff like “woman politician” instead of “female politician”. It sounds so grammatically wrong, that you legit sound like a caveman impression (ex. “Grug go car”).
Having said that, we would also never refer to women as females. There’s some grammar rules that dictate when we use either, but female is certainly the more common term.
Yeah, to my ESL ears man/woman are nouns, not adjectives, and using them as adjectives comes off as childish.
That said, “female X” can also sound clumsy, if it’s implied that a bare X is male, e.g. “politician” and “female politician”, vs male and female politician. There was a twitter account calling itself a “male programmer” which took the piss out of that trope.
100%, I also hate the stupid shit like “actress” as if we need a whole new fucking word when you can just say actor for everyone.
It’s all about context. There are options that are context and age appropriate that aren’t condescending or clinically reductive.
Men’s bathroom and Women’s bathroom > male bathroom and female bathroom
“Hey, guys/gents”, “hey, girls/ladies” > “hey, men”, “hey, women”
First woman President > first female President > first girl President
… honey, there could be another reason you don’t like being called a man. 👀 Just a thought.
Nah, I identify as male. It’s just that the visual of a “man” for me is an older bearded dude with a deep voice… which I’m not…
I’m just speaking from experience here. Never had a problem with other masc identifiers, but something about “man” squicked me out. It always felt like becoming a man was something far off, but I kept getting older and it never happened…
Now I’m on hormones and am a woman and things are fine. Not saying this is your situation, but it was mine.
Why would they want to be called, ‘boy’, ‘male’, etc then?
It happened to me. Being a boy never bothered me, but as I got older becoming a “man” made me dysphoric.
So I became a woman instead.
Fair enough. For me, any gendered language makes me dysphoric when I am not that gender. But of course gender is a very individual and personal thing.