Here’s a fun thing to do when you have some free time: count the number of times women are referred to as ‘females’ in the popular media. I think it started in hip-hop culture (eg, “I can’t congratulate these females”), but it seems to be entering the mainstream now. I don’t quite understand it — either people think ‘female’ is less sexist than ‘woman’ (which is of course really, really stupid), or they’re willingly objectifying them. Neither would surprise me, but what I find truly amusing is when women refer to themselves ‘females’.
I don’t see how anyone can argue we weren’t better off 100 years ago, when women were ‘ladies’ and men were ‘gentlemen’. Uptight? If you insist. But at least they had some self-respect.
You finally posted something! Yay!
yeah - i second SMA.
and also, I am confused about the pc terms for this stuff. Apparently, asking for ‘gender’ on a form is non-pc and ’sex’ (which sounds odd to me) is better. Perhaps the idea is to employ the most reductionist-scientific terminology so as to somehow convey only the fact without any nuances about sexual orientation, etc etc. Dunno. I like more polite and less ‘animal’ words too… how can you ignore the linguistic aspects of civilization in human interaction?
Reductionist — exactly. The more I think about this, the more I feel man-made systems (capitalism, socialism, etc.) tend to extremes instead of sensible mayana-ravi, simply because they’re open to interpretation and modification.