OT: A very long twitter conversation about “females.”
Friday, June 7th, 2013I’d use Tumblr for this, but tweet embedding blah blah blah.
Yesterday, I had a pretty fascinating conversation on twitter with @girl_onthego, @vossbrink, and @earthtopus, following on the thing that was circulating about a NYT post using “female” as a noun in contravention of the paper’s style guide.
I’m reproducing most of the conversation here in what is not quite the right order (I did my best; sorting out long discussions on twitter is a real pain).
I keep forgetting to ask: what’s objectionable about using female as a noun referring to a female person? cc: @girl_onthego
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca I’m not *entirely* sure but it’s an objectification thing. NY Style guide says “female” for adj, “woman” for noun, so I don’t+
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca know precisely what the political reasoning is for that. Just thought it was an interesting piece.
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca (In this context, anyway. I’ve seen it used very objectionably in other contexts as a derisive/dehumanizing sort of term).
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego Interesting. I can’t think of a case I’ve personally encountered where it was used more or less objectionably than other words
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego I.e., it sounds neutral to my ear, and I would evaluate its deprecatory value purely based on the content/tone of user.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego But that’s not to say it doesn’t have those connotations in usage either among folks I don’t interact with or in a way I’m…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego just not picking up on.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca This book is one of the most offensive uses I’ve ever seen: amazon.com/The-Re-Educati…
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca I haven’t encountered offensive use of the word in my day-to-day life in a way that sticks out in memory.
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca *nods* Yeah. IMO it’s a strange thin line. I wish others would come into the convo so we could get their thoughts.
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca (On how it’s offensive, not a bunch of dudes going “no it isn’t ever”, lol)
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego Do you have a white example, out of curiosity? Because we may be in standard English vs. AAVE territory here.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca Nope. Entirely possible.
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego If so, it adds layers to the question re: sexism (or not) in the black community, feminist perception of same, and with the…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego question of style guides like NYT, it begs the question of whether it’s just about wanting the paper to sound white. : )
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca WORD.
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego It makes it sound like you’re talking about a non-human species.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink Thank you. That’s what I think I was trying to figure out how to say. @kukkurovaca
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego And if you specify “human female” then you just sound Klingon.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego Hmm. I’m curious about the when/why/how of that.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego My guess is that it’s related to our tendency to default to all animals being male unless specified as female.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego So we end up with lions and female lions even though females outnumber males.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego And when certain words become associated with non-human situations, we avoid using them on humans.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego Except in science fiction where we can use it to signify that another species may consider itself superior to us.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego Etymologically speaking, female as a noun for a woman or girl is not at all new: etymonline.com/index.php?term…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego Of course, that doesn’t mean that the connotation you’re referring to is false, I’m just wondering…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego about its history and about how widespread it is.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego Oh, dude, google ngrams does part of speech tagging. books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @vossbrink That is frickin’ fascinating.
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego I’m now wondering if there’s correlation to slavery or genocide in how “female” gets used.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego Wow. Jump in the adjective usage is later than I’d expect.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @kukkurovaca Kind of correlates with feminism in the 70s?
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @kukkurovaca It does. I would have expected the jump to start mid-60s though and it seems to start in 1970 instead.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego Poking around the un-tagged results for “feminism”, it seems like a lot of feminism, and before that psychology.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego …and sex research.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @vossbrink haha of course.
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @kukkurovaca @girl_onthego I just think of Kipling when I hear nominal use.
— Andrew (@earthtopus) June 6, 2013
@earthtopus As the token linguist, any tips on casually researching usage in AAVE?@vossbrink @girl_onthego
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego BTW, male and female noun/adj. frequency pretty close: books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego and male as noun consistently more frequent than female as noun.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @vossbrink Which maybe tracks back to male-as-default?
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @vossbrink It’s definitely not consistent with “x”=male x, therefore “female x”=female x. Although hard to be certain w/out
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @vossbrink directly scrutinizing the data. May be other patterns in play.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego Huh. Maybe I should blame the rise in consumer electronics instead.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego You mean because of ports? Cf. kukkurovaca.tumblr.com/post/523129142… : )
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @kukkurovaca @girl_onthego animacy is indeed complex, but generally a one-way street: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animacy#P…
— Andrew (@earthtopus) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @kukkurovaca @girl_onthego note the more broadly animate category derived from Latin “masculus” etymonline.com/index.php?sear…
— Andrew (@earthtopus) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @kukkurovaca @girl_onthego so to the extent that this is true now, it defies the history of the language…which gets messy.
— Andrew (@earthtopus) June 6, 2013
@earthtopus @kukkurovaca @girl_onthego Sorry, I get to she-male on there and can’t progress further.
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @kukkurovaca @girl_onthego I have also seen arguments that female is “marked” vs. “unmarked” masc/neuter.*shrugs*
— Andrew (@earthtopus) June 6, 2013
Dude. books.google.com/books?id=qEAJA…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
“Including beauties”
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca have you read any of those?1 para about who she’s the wife/daughter of, then several pages about that man/his descendants
— Andrew (@earthtopus) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @vossbrink @girl_onthego cal.org/topics/dialect… is the closest thing I can google.Doesn’t seem to be much of a corpus tho.
— Andrew (@earthtopus) June 6, 2013
@earthtopus @vossbrink @girl_onthego Dinger. Thanks, though.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@earthtopus @vossbrink @girl_onthego This is something: etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@earthtopus @vossbrink @girl_onthego So, poking around casually, I see lots of uses of both female as noun and “woman” fr. black and white
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@earthtopus @vossbrink @girl_onthego writers. Not sure if there’s a tendency to use female to deprecate. Seems more abstract, though.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @earthtopus @vossbrink Any sense of whether male or female writers use it in a certain way with more regularity?
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink No clue. BTW, I just realized that if you search “females” in google ngrams, you can browse works
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink and be confident the results will mostly be female as noun.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink Ah, jumping ahead a bit in time on Google Ngrams, we definitely see female authors using “females.”
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink google.com/search?q=%22fe…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink Oh, hey, also, you can search back issues of Ebony on google books: google.com/search?q=%22fe…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink The sense I get from browsing it is that “female” is used frequently and without much connotative diff
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink erence from “woman.”
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink E.g., “While a man’s ego most times will not allow him to remain with a cheating woman…”
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink…females traditionally have been more inclined to tolerate their man’s scurrilous ways.”
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink Also, most other results in Google magazine search for “females” are from science publications or stats
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink Wait, I take that last one back. Google’s “relevance” sorting was skewing other results.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink A twitter search for all results of “female” and “women” yields tonally similar results.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink Er, “females”, that is. Also: more female tweets tweeting “females” than male tweeters.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink (Note: that’s based on guesstimation of gender from pic and user name: not very reliable.)
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @earthtopus @vossbrink That’s VERY interesting.
— Rachel Lynn Brody(@girl_onthego) June 6, 2013
@kukkurovaca @girl_onthego @earthtopus You looking at context? Given how so much of the internet is based on hate or objectification…
— nick (@vossbrink) June 6, 2013
@vossbrink @girl_onthego @earthtopus Results for both “females” and “women” are largely awful. (Regardless of tweeter gender.)
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink However, also note that going by the (again, unreliable) apparent race of tweeters complaining…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink about “female” as noun, there’s a pretty even mix of black and white tweeters.
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink But generally tweeters complaining about “female” as noun seem to be using more standard English..
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink regardless of their (apparent) race. Education level/class doubtless a factor, but probably so is…
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013
@girl_onthego @earthtopus @vossbrink The tweeter’s predilection for grammar prescriptivism. : )
— Nick (@kukkurovaca) June 6, 2013