Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

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>The second is that "male" and "female" punt on having to refer to the person's age, and in our era of perpetual adolescence people are terrified of being considered a "man" or a "woman."

But many times you want to be clear you're referring to that sex, irrespective of age. So using "woman" isn't any shorter -- writers inevitably end up using clumsy constructions like "women and girls"[1]. We have a word for the union of the sets. Just use it already!

I'd be glad to entertain it as being dehumanizing if we had a less-dehumanizing, shorter term for the same semantic space. But as there isn't...

Similar issue for "male" and "female" as adjectives; to my ear, "woman doctor" and (especially) "man doctor" sound a lot clumsier than "male/female doctor".

[1] From a quick Google search, see the CDC and a big pharma comapny:

"Which girls/women should receive HPV vaccination? HPV vaccination is recommended for 11 and 12 year-old girls. It is also recommended for girls and women age 13 through 26 years of age...". (Emphasis added.) Lovely! http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/stdfact-hpv-vaccine-young-women.h...

"GARDASIL®9 ... helps protect girls and women ages 9 to 26..." https://www.gardasil9.com/

> But many times you want to be clear you're referring to that sex, irrespective of age.

I think it's okay to use "female" when you need to refer to that sex, which often arises in a clinical context anyway (as in your example). But how often is that the case? Typically, you see people say things like "they hired three new males at my office." They didn't hire three little boys!

> Similar issue for "male" and "female" as adjectives; to my ear, "woman doctor" and (especially) "man doctor" sound a lot clumsier than "male/female doctor".

Embrace English's Anglo-Saxon roots! http://www.plainlanguage.gov/whatispl/definitions/orwell.cfm. There is nothing wrong with using two nouns to describe something or someone: http://grammarist.com/grammar/nouns-as-adjectives.

>I think it's okay to use "female" when you need to refer to that sex, which often arises in a clinical context anyway (as in your example).

Yes, but enough writers take this confused hate seriously enough that they feel they have to tiptoe around using "female" even when it's majestically appropriate. You can't win!

>Typically, you see people say things like "they hired three new males at my office." They didn't hire three little boys!

If there were the possibility that they were boys (say, 13 year olds), and you wanted to make absolutely clear that the listener should not conclude they were all adults, and the gender was relevant to the point [1], then "males" would be preferable, yes. (I think this is the position the writer of the article was in!)

>Embrace English's Anglo-Saxon roots!

Sure thing! The vast majority of the population still rejects the construction "man doctor" or "man president", refuting the claim that "woman doctor" is somehow part of some consistent attempt to avoid dehumanizing language.

(I notice you still didn't provide an alternative to "female" as noun that indicates age irrelevance and is less dehumanizing.)

>There is nothing wrong with using two nouns to describe something or someone

There is when you do it inconsistently ("woman president" but not "man president"), and only in response to a collective outrage that won't provide you with a preferable alternative for the same semantic space.

[1] say, the role required you to only pair people of the same sex together, and finding enough males to meet the demand was an issue

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