First, some languages do have authorities that bound their language by rules.

Not how natural languages work. Those “authorities” merely claim to be. You can call yourself the king of Kentucky, too.

aren’t turning the word into a pejorative

Yes, they are whether they recognize it or not: their policing would have that effect. Older activists understood that and chose to reclaim words like black & queer as words of pride instead. Newer activists would be wise to follow that example: by instead trying to establish self-demeaning complexes into the language, they are playing themselves.

The rest you wrote is misguided opinion you’d ironically perpetuate.

the people who use “female” to describe women and girls are already using it to “otherize” and dehumanize half the population

Counterfactual. The language community decides the meaning of words through observed usage, and in the preponderance of the community, female is inoffensive. That includes among females themselves. Female is used self-referentially “in-group”: it shows up in feminist book titles, in dating communities (eg, “F4F/M”), classifieds (eg, “need a roommate […] females only”), etc. In conventional language, female is an acceptable word.

From an external, impartial observer, claiming there’s a problem with the word female with little regard for context communicates the problem resides in whatever the word itself denotes rather than the contextual meaning.

I don’t want to throw around the word “mansplaining” willy nilly

Logic has no sex. You’d be wise not to promote sexism.

then it’s an unsettled contest between a split community

a language’s community isn’t bound by any rules: it’s free to change a language however it chooses

I’ve found a language policing minority on here try to pejorate female as derogatory, and I explain to them that by trying to induct sexist presuppositions into the language they’re either sexist or playing themselves

yes, conventions (which include natural language) work that way: the community of users sets the convention

what if I told you images can have alt text?

The rough gist I’m getting is some poorly substantiated claim of ignorance of general exploitation as worse than overt abuse of human rights, eg

Yes, comrade, I’m locking you up and abusing your fundamental rights, but think how bad you’d have it free, doing the same work with a better standard of living & lower economic inequality while whining about exploitation!

Perhaps workers could earn better without “exploitation” in liberal democracies, but historical record & economic data show the opposite:

• the Soviet system stagnated & deteriorated behind liberal democratic counterparts at living standards & economic growth while still exploiting workers & abusing their fundamental rights
• several liberal democracies continue to achieve lower economic inequality & better living standards than communist states.

The Soviet Union gave up & dismantled itself for this reason. There was no tradeoff of human rights abuses somehow yielding a better life for a less exploited, average worker. For all its rhetoric, the Soviet workers got the worst of everything.

Per the philosophy of social democracies, socialism doesn’t require human rights abuses. Authorities abusing human rights are definitely worse than authorities not doing that & letting people fail on their own terms. In the case of those liberal democracies beating the performance of communist states, those “exploited” workers are freer & doing better than the “unexploited” ones. Given the results, it’s hard to find your notion of “exploitation” credible: I think it’s full of shit & mostly in your deluded theory that’s failing to bear out.

So

a government authority takes away your freedom & subjects you to abuse

you depress yourself about having to work & pay for shit or deal with your feelings

same thing! 😊

I can’t believe everyone who buys this equivalence bullshit of illegitimate abuse & coercion in one case and lack thereof in the other. It’s like they have some submission kink to getting dominated.

It’s entirely different when the government authority not only says it but takes away your freedom & subjects you to abuse. How are so many here missing that crucial distinction?

It’s entirely different when the government authority not only says it but takes away your freedom & subjects you to abuse. How are so many here missing that crucial distinction?

How do people avoid smelling their own farts? Do they run away?

Principally because I don’t know who those bitches are.

That’s still pretty normal. People (think they) feel how others do. It takes effort & practice to dissociate and try not to feel.

Not necessarily. It usually means somewhat selflessly feeling or understanding how they might feel enough to care about their wellbeing & treat them compassionately.

If you’re selective about the recipients of your empathy (eg, only those you care about or near you), then you’re not really an empath or a good one. Buddhists had empathy & compassion figured out. Jesus stated it, too, with love your enemies. I’ve frequently seen people try to wield empathy as a cudgel and miss the point.

You just described abilities within the normal range of interpersonal skills: reading emotions. That doesn’t imply feeling them.

OP was ridiculing the projection of emotions people don’t necessarily have but that the subject arrogantly assumes they do.

Yep, they’re special.

You’ll get over it or you won’t. 🤷

Same point in saying anything online: none. That’s social media.

Lemmy is great place to say shit about reddit that reddit won’t let you say because it’s a moderation hellscape.

It was already explained, it’s the premise their activism supports by advocating the disparate treatment of female as a slur. From an external, impartial observer, claiming there’s a problem with the word female with little regard for context communicates the problem resides in whatever the word itself denotes rather than the contextual meaning.

Moreover, the position they advocate is counterfactual. The language community decides the meaning of words through observed usage, and in the preponderance of the community, neither female nor woman is offensive. That includes among females. Female is used self-referentially “in-group”: it shows up in feminist book titles, in dating communities (eg, “F4F/M”), classifieds (eg, “need a roommate […] females only”), etc. In conventional language, female is an acceptable word (as is woman).

Imagine online activists started condemning usage of the word dutch as a slur. It’s bizarre: there is nothing wrong with the dutch, yet they’re acting as though we should think so & resist that urge? Why are they propagating problematic presuppositions we don’t have about the dutch? Why are they trying to make this official? Are they some special breed of stupid?

Continuing this analogy, they drag you into fights by claiming you’re a racist for using the word when you’re not actually saying anything offensive about the dutch. You & the rest of society know the word dutch isn’t offensive, yet these activists insist it is by pointing to some fringe online community spewing vitriolic propaganda about dutch inferiority specifically using the word dutch. You repudiate their claim by asking why some fringe group irrelevant to wider society gets to decide the meaning of words, but they condemn your “hurtful” language and say you’re as bad as them or one of them. Don’t be an asshole & use another word like Dutchperson, Netherlander, or Hollander they say: it’s the right thing to do & shows socially conscientious, moral rectitude.

While our society includes both a minority of sexists & a vast majority of non-sexists who use the word female differently, these activists privilege the language & rhetoric of the sexist minority over the non-sexist majority. Why should the sexists get to decide the meaning of words for everyone & the unequal ideas to perpetuate in society? Who does that serve?

Older activists recognized that doesn’t serve them & took a different approach. Against higher odds, black activists reappropriated the word black as a word of pride. Non-heteronormative activists did likewise with the word queer. Instead of antagonizing non-sexists by treating them as sexists or fulfilling an inferiority complex to make sexist language official, online language police would be wise to learn from the older activists & follow their example.

it’s because it’s extremely often used in such a way that people (typically men) will refer to men as men and refer to women as females. It’s why you may see the phrase “men and females” thrown around as a response.

Right, so the premise is there’s something wrong with the word that names an entire gender. The campaign isn’t “don’t use ‘men and females’”, it’s “don’t use ‘females’”. They’ll write about Ferengis whenever a suspected non-female uses female: they’re not examining meanings & context to draw critical distinctions. ‘Men and females’ is merely a rationalization.

The effect: female is a slur, yet male isn’t, so female is stigmatized. That disparity raises the impression that femininity has such deficiencies even their name is a term of abuse unworthy of pride, and that females are too frail without society coming to defend them from the adversity of their name. In contrast, masculinity is sufficient for its name not to raise adversity, and even if it did, males have the fortitude for society not to come to their defense. That unequal treatment of words implicates females disfavorably thereby stigmatizing them.

Think who that serves: is opposition to the noun “female” unwittingly subscribing to stigmatization & sexist thinking of those who’d welcome the stigmatization? The language police are playing themselves here.

Treating the word female like male, however, wouldn’t raise such questions & impressions, and it wouldn’t ostensibly support a sexist premise and play into its consequences.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all pejorative terms of mental incapacity went the way of idiot & imbecile? Why shelter derogatory words^[1] from ameliorating?

When a term begins as pejorative and eventually is adopted in a non-pejorative sense, this is called melioration or amelioration. One example is the shift in meaning of the word nice from meaning a person was foolish to meaning that a person is pleasant.

I’m certainly not perfect in that regard, but in principle, the language that we use shapes our thoughts more than we realize

The support for that is weak: the influence is mild & easily overcome. An insult isn’t meant to be productive, it’s supposed to convey contempt & unflattering ideas about the recipient of the insult.