• CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Missing the entire point dude. No one is being paranoid about an agenda. That would suggest that people are being unreasonable in their assumption about you using females as a term for women. But about 95% of the time any woman hears themselves being called a “female” it’s some incel crap and they’re about to be talked down to and dehumanized which is the entire point of calling them female.

    And this isn’t meant for you to take offense to and become defensive. We get you didn’t mean it that way or whatever. People here are trying to help you not sound like an incel or red pill douchebag. If you want to continue using that word and have people make incorrect assumptions about you, go for it.

    • Mickey7@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 day ago

      serious question. Why don’t males ever find it offensive to be called males?

      • prongs@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        Because males as a term had not picked up culturally loaded meaning from those who would exploit them.

      • pitaya@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        IMHO “males” is also dehumanising, but I digress. When used in the derogatory sense “females” is often beside “men,” implying that women are inferior to men. It’s become somewhat of a “dog-whistle,” which is a form of coded language that the speaker uses to imply a different message to a specific audience (usually some sort of bigotry) while maintaining plausable deniability. Someone may purposely use “females” to refer to women to indicate their own misogyny to people who share their beliefs, and it is intentially ambiguous to prevent women who pick up on it from calling it out. Tmk “males” isn’t commonly loaded in the same way

      • StupidBrotherInLaw@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Because there isn’t a large, surprisingly homogeneous group of midandrists frequently using the term “males” while promoting unhinged criticism of men.