It's international women's day. Lots of articles and toots are being posted about women in various industries, sports etc...
An unfortunately far too common phrasing will be to use the word "females" instead of women, or girls, or women and girls. Now there's a strong grammatical argument that says female is an adjective and should only be used as such. "Female engineer" "female president" "female assassin". But this hides a much darker historical reason why we shouldn't use "females"
1/n
The rest of this thread is behind a CW.
Back in the 1800's a surgeon in the US was doing some unethical research that would go on to form the basis of the medical discipline of gynaecology. To do this, he experimented on white women, and black slave women. When publishing his findings, he didn't want to humanise the black women he was using as test subjects. So he described them as "females". This is the origin of the usage.
2/n
So everytime someone uses "females" as a noun, they are reinforcing the dehumanisation of women that is built on unethical experiments on black women.
This is international women's day. I'm not going to name the evil bastard in question. We should learn from his mistakes. Not hold him in any regard. Even if a item of medical equipment most women become intimately familiar with us named after him. Some even calm him "the father of gynaecology".
3/n
we know the names of three of the women he experimented on.
Anarcha Westcott, Lucy, and Betsey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_of_Gynecology_Movement
Quixoticgeek
fritzoids