this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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It is, yes.
"Female" is the term to refer to the sex of an animal, which does include humans but its usually the term you use when describing a... dog or cat or whatever.
People however prefer when you specifically use any of the multitude of human gender terms for us.
So Woman, Lady, Maam, Gals, Girls, Chicks, etc. These all still are what you call a person
Consider the inverse: When you refer to an animal with those terms, its an act of respect, you've humanized it. If you walk up to a cow and say "Hello maam" it's usually inherently signaling "I like/respect this animal to the degree Im using a human pronoun for it"
Or if you have a pet deg and you go "Lookit this distinguished gentleman" or "How are you today sir?", same diff, you humanized it via the pronoun, which is a way to signal love/affection/respect.
When you do the opposite and call a woman a female or a man a male, it's inherently disrespectful. You've effectively implied you classify them at the same tier as an animal in a laboratory. It dehumanizes.
If you think about all the classic insults for people, a lot of them just boil down to calling them an animal. "Pig" "Bitch" "Cow", "Sheep" etc, if you call people by these terms its usually considered at minimum sorta offensive, but often very offensive.
"Female" is the same, when you refer to a woman.