Umm...can you not call me a FEMALE, there's a name for that.

I can't tell you how annoyed I get when I see men on social media using the word female especially in meme's. It all boils down to respect, misogyny and misogynoir within our culture. Merriam Webster defines female as:

No where in any of those definitions does it explicitly say "female: a woman" nor does it say that female is a synonym for woman. In my eyes, the word "female" and how it is presently used in contemporary Black media is demeaning to black women specifically. In Black hip-hop culture, women are either "bad and bougie" (modest women) or they're hoes, thots, or bitches (sexually liberated woman). While many times it may be inappropriate to call a woman a hoe or a thot, the word female is coded enough where it is acceptable in everyday conversation. It is used not only as code for these slurs but to separate and label the modest woman from the sexually liberated woman. Female being code for a hoe is like "thug" being code for n*gger. It also inflicts a similar type of individualized oppression that "thug" does as well.

"Female" is level one, if he get's too mad level two is "thot", and level three is when you outright get called a "female dog".

You see there are female dogs, female cats, and female lions. The list goes on, but I can bet you probably have never heard the term female human used anywhere except in scientific discourse. That's because there is a word for what you are trying to say! Woman. Whether you prefer woman, wom, or womyn, all of these are correct, humane terms to use. Using the word female dehumanizes women and diminishes them to their gender. It also compares women to animals. While our sex and sexuality matter, women are so much more than their gender and sexual organs, and if you think about it, do you ever hear a man being referred to as a "male"?

What bothers me the most about the usage of this word is that when men are confronted about it, they blame women for being offended. So often men are never open to listening to why we don't want to be called females and instead chastise us by calling us stupid for not going along with the flow. How can this conversation be productive? How do we get men to listen to us and understand why this term is problematic and that some women (not all) do not enjoy being called that? How do YOU feel about the word? If you identify as a woman, does it offend you? If you identify as a man, do you understand why a woman would be offended and do you censor yourself?

#female #woman #thot #misogyny