"Male" and "female" are fine as adjectives, but "female" as a noun is routinely used as a derogative, and definitely has that connotation in (at least parts of)

"Male" and "female" are fine as adjectives, but "female" as a noun is routinely used as a derogative, and definitely has that connotation in (at least parts of) the US. I'm told it's not that way in the military, but it definitely is in many subcultures. Working with poor urban kids, I saw this all the time. "Don't listen to that female", etc. It's not something progressives just came up with--it's very much used as a derogatory term by a lot of people in the US. (There is also the probably-related progressive concept of "people-first language"--you're not an "addict", you're a person who's addicted. Funnily enough, my first introduction to this was Cryptonomicon, and only in the past couple years have I heard it pushed by progressives.)