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Headline should read 'The female cypher-breakers who...' I do hate such abuse of language. Would the Smithsonian have written 'a man mathematician'? Of course
by dingaling 8y ago
Headline should read 'The female cypher-breakers who...'
I do hate such abuse of language. Would the Smithsonian have written 'a man mathematician'? Of course not.
- Spoygg 8y agoI'm not English native speaker, why is it abuse? There is also book "Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II" that uses the same term.
- mjw1007 8y ago"Female" is an adjective and "women" is a noun. In English you can very often use a noun to qualify another noun (like in "house brick"), but it's rare for "A B" to mean "B which is an A" (more often it's something like "B for an A" or "B concerning an A"). The form "Woman X" is relatively recent (it's appearing because using "female" for humans is becoming mildly taboo), so it seems odd to someone who isn't used to it.
- pvg 8y agoThe terms aren't perfectly symmetric and interchangeable so the Smithsonian is doing the sensible thing to avoid making it sound like they're talking about some species of fish.
- chongli 8y agoThis has started to crop up because the term female has taken on negative connotations. Similarly for girl. Thus woman is becoming the all-encompassing word in a way that does not parallel the male terms.
- oytis 8y agoJust curious: what are negative connotations of "female"? I'm not a native speaker.
- rhapsodic 8y ago>Just curious: what are negative connotations of "female"? I'm not a native speaker. I am, and I'm not aware of any. But if there are, they probably grew out of the weird taboos that, in some segments of English-speaking culture, tightly control what terms one is permitted to use when speaking about gender-related issues. Most of us, fortunately, don't consider ourselves bound by these taboos.
- chongli 8y agoIt's very subtle. "Females" is a term used for women in some of the seedier corners of the internet. It implies grouping women with female animals rather than grouping them together with men as human beings.
- enriquto 8y agoI have read your comment several times and still fail to find any meaning to it. Is it some sort of joke/sarcasm ?
- chongli 8y agoIt's completely sincere. I have seen it happen plenty of times. A quick search and perusal of the headlines backs me up. [1] [1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=referring+to+women+as+females&t=iphone&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=referring+to+women+as+females&t=ip...
- leereeves 8y agoSeems to be an extreme fringe position supported by a few articles from Buzzfeed, Jezebel, The Root, Reset Era, a YouTube video, and a reddit post with 7 votes. The rest of the results are about calling women "girls" which can be offensive for obvious reasons. Perhaps you could point to a specific example where "it implies grouping women with female animals rather than grouping them together with men as human beings."
- 8y ago
- teddyh 8y agoThen why not simply write “The code-breaking women who…”? There’s no need to abuse the language pointlessly.
- gsich 8y agoIt's a problem of the english language. But it's stupid nonetheless.
- dang 8y agoAlright, we've given you "code-breaking women" per teddyh below. All: please step away from the title now. There's an interesting historical story here and no need to fill the thread with smoke.