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This is a long-standing problem underlying discourse in English.

Female pilot - fine

Woman pilot - really awkward

Describing a human as female, as in, “I met a cute female today, might ask her out,” is not just awkward, it has a strange vibe that’s simultaneously clinical and demeaning. The latter probably thanks to Ice Cube, et al’s usage of it.

We have to shift back and forth a lot.

So, I get why people wanted to move away from "female" as an adjective to describe women. Fair enough. But "woman" as an adjective sounds weird grammatically. As in "woman author" or "woman politician" etc. Bad mouth feel. Angular. Germanic, even. Can we use something a little more grammatically elegant? Just throwing some ideas out ther…

May 11
at
4:26 PM
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