Well, why?

It seems a fairly ordinary question, especially since it’s something a lot of grown men (and some women) do, even though many women have explicitly stated their displeasure with the phrase. What is it that is so appealing about calling a woman a female that makes the people who do it so vehemently defensive about it?

Why do women hate when you called them ‘a/this/them’ female(s)?

Let’s tackle it from a different angle.

Let’s ask a follow up question.

“What kind?”

Two people are addressing a person of the opposite sex. One calls the person ‘You this woman.’

To which we ask, ‘Who?/What kind/Which one?’

The only appropriate answer to that question is an adjective.

Ugly. Angry. Foolish. Lazy. Beautiful, Horny. Intellectual. Woke. Pick-Me.

The other calls the person ‘This female.”

To which we ask, ‘Who?/What kind/Which one?’

The only appropriate answer to that question is a noun.

Human.

Do you see the problem?

When you call a woman/girl a ‘female’, you strip them of their personhood, their humanity. You reduce them to their birth sex simultaneously depersonalize and reduce them only to the sex organs they were born with and the hormones their bodies produce naturally. You ascribe them a neutral term, one that allows you generalize their behaviour as universal, instead of individual. It is why we never call men/boys male. It is why when a person of the masculine gender is ‘mature/responsible’ we call him a man, and an immature one a boy. We know inherently that these phrases matter. That even the simple act of distinguishing between a man and a boy is giving personhood. Even animals are called by the noun that describes that female gender/sex, so why is it so hard for you to do the same to humans.

Because the way the system works is to first depersonalize them. You really can’t harm someone you don’t think of as a full-fledged three-dimensional person, instead of a fascimile for a whole gender that spawns all vertebrate and some invertebrate species. After all the only thing that all species of females have in common is their ability to procreate.

You might read all of this and scoff, and that’s fine. But at least do this, it will only take you a breath and two syllable to say woman instead of female. One if you say girl. We’re not asking too much of you.