Comic Strips

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[–] Bubbaonthebeach@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Yah I got schooled about the usage on a women's page on Reddit a few years ago. Being a woman and female I didn't know that I had been using the term female wrong for 40 years prior to that.

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[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Yeah this place is a little better than reddit in terms of nuance and charitable interpretations, but we still have our share of toxic assholes who will deliberately misconstrue anything you say so they can shame you and put you down just to feel smug/superior.

Sometimes it's not easy to determine what to ignore and what to learn from, but yeah using "female" as a noun is definitely a big no-no these days, even offline.

And honestly, increasingly I've started to notice it expanding to include using the term correctly as an adjective, which is annoying, but I've had to adjust my language accordingly. Now I say things like "a woman doctor" even though it's incorrect and sounds awkward, because I'm afraid to say "a female doctor," lest I be shunned.

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[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 point 1 day ago (1 child)

Same, it's to the point where I now say stuff like "my male friends yadda yadda, but my woman friends blah blah," which sounds absolutely ridiculous but gives people one less thing they can use to totally discount me as a person just for using an entirely innocuous word they don't like.

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[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yeah we really can't downplay the severity, cause that kind of reputational damage, even when it's unwarranted, can follow a person for a long time.

And ultimately that just makes the left weaker. Because someone who could otherwise be a charismatic leader, a persuasive or inspiring speaker, a brilliant thinker, a strategic planner, or an effective community organizer, might be shunned into obscurity because he said something along the lines of "I would prefer to see a female therapist" and people thought that was somehow sexist...

And how many people like that have we already lost due to this BS? How many are hiding in basements right now, waiting for the day they can actually play an active role in the progressive movement?

I think that day is coming, because people are waking up. But there's still some pretty firm resistance in pockets, and it could turn out to be enough to subvert the whole progress that's been made in that regard.

We'll see how it goes though...

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[–] FishFace@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago (1 child)

It's both an adjective and a noun. Most English adjectives can be used as a noun in a pinch, but the connotation may be dodgy.

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[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 day ago

I'm just passing on what I've heard, the way it was explained to me...

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[–] Allero@lemmy.today 4 points 2 days ago* (4 children)

Yeah, I see. I did get called out for using it as an adjective, though, which seemed particularly weird.

Generally, my rule of thumb is: if you can say "male" and it isn't wrong/weird, you should be able to say "female" to the same effect. But practice shows it isn't true.

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[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I think the issue is evolving a bit as people develop a knee-jerk reaction to hearing "female" and snap to the conclusion "🚩🚩🚩"

It's a bit annoying and anti-nuance, but what can you do? I've started self-censoring by using "woman" as an adjective instead, even though it's a noun and sounds awkward as an adjective, i.e. "A woman doctor," "a woman therapist," "a woman lawyer," "a woman relative," etc.

It sounds awkward because it's incorrect, and that would be the correct way to use the word "female," but I get super paranoid about that kind of stuff and overthink it because I've been shunned and flamed about stupid BS like that before and it isn't pleasant, especially as someone politically progressive who happens to be a cishetero-passing white male, so it's like everything I say is constantly under a microscope. And like, I believe in egalitarianism, but stuff like that could get me labeled as a misogynist in a heartbeat. So I try to be aware of it, even if it leaves me tongue-tied at times when I don't know what fucking words are still okay to use, and I overthink how to phrase something precisely the right way so that nobody accuses me of malice...

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[–] Allero@lemmy.today 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

someone politically progressive who happens to be a cishetero-passing white male, so it’s like everything I say is constantly under a microscope

Y E S.

An extremely toxic angle to a lot of progressives and especially the discriminated folks is automatically assuming everything to be evil once it comes out of cishet male's mouth. Like, I get it, quite some people actually are discriminatory, but verifying the person's intent before lashing out shouldn't be too hard. Many, many times the person really didn't mean anything bad.

Sometimes I genuinely wonder how much this toxicity contributes to the development of reactionary right-wing types, and the way they portray the left and progressives as a screaming crowd in search of another scapegoat.

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[–] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 day ago

Glad to hear I'm not just crazy.

I am crazy, but not just that.

Anyway yeah, I think a lot of us on the left could do better to avoid adding fuel to the caricatures that the right-wing reactionaries portray us as, cause it's already a dumpster fire as it is.

And seconded. Radicalization targets the vulnerable. When people feel they're not welcome in any other spaces, they tend to wind up in toxic echo chambers where they get poached by nefarious actors.

Not saying we should welcome everyone with open arms, but if someone's problem is merely ignorance, that can be remedied. As long as there's no malice in their intent, we should be willing to reach out a hand or at least give them a path forward, because it will ultimately grow the left's reach, while minimizing the recruitment pool for right-wing extremists.

I've been flamed for talking about this before, but I think it's too important to ignore.

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[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 day ago

Sometimes I genuinely wonder how much this toxicity contributes to the development of reactionary right-wing types, and the way they portray the left and progressives as a screaming crowd in search of another scapegoat.

You'd be (well maybe not) surprised to learn it's actually a HUGE part of the problem. Having met a number of those people almost invariably they (the younger ones anyway, like 40yo and under) used to be liberals until they disagreed with ONE thing or said ONE wrong word, and then it snowballed from there into them supporting the other side that is all too happy to welcome them, indoctrinate them, etc, just by playing nice. Turns out people are still individuals and "toe the party line or else" works on some but pushes others away, and some of those pushed away can be caught by the opposition with a different disposition, sort of a "catch more flies with honey" situation. Who knew?