No, it always sounded weird. Its certainly not a word my grandparents nor parents would've used in casual conversation. In the last few years there's been a hy

No, it always sounded weird. Its certainly not a word my grandparents nor parents would've used in casual conversation. In the last few years there's been a hyperfocus on restricting genders that has caused a minority of native-English speakers to start overusing the word "female" with extra emphasis: which may be leading to learners to consider it a normal word to use casually, but historically it has mainly been applied in formal medical/scientific settings.