Raising a flag

Yes, fun idea. No problem with that but... that 'flag' is a sail. They're different things.

Using a sail to fly your colours is a red flag.
Sus. Having any issue with a red flag meme. /s
- Immediate red flag in my book
A sail is just a giant flag that says "I'm a boat!"

That is a sail...

It's a multifunctional sail.

Remember, pirates did fly red flags as well as black ones. The red ones meant you were extra fucked.

If you saw a pirate ship with a rainbow flag though , you're in for a mean margarita and a good time.
- I think they’re still after your booty.
I think black was like, "We just want your shit and we'll let you live if you surrender" while red was like, "We're gonna kill and then take your shit or take your shit and then kill you, either way you will not survive," kinda thing.
Sometimes the black one meant they just wanted your hats.

Benjamin Hornigold. No I'm not making that up.
What was the point of the red flags? Or... why would anyone choose to fly a red flag? I'm trying to understand why anyone would broadcast "if we come near you, you're fucked". It seems a bad hunting strategy.

Also, why didn't merchant ships fly red flags to be less bothered by pirates?
- Red meant that no quarter would be given, they're going to fucking kill you. Black flag meant they would take your shit without slaughtering you. Granted, fighting back would still get you killed either way. Pirates tended to make examples sometimes, or want revenge, thus slaughter. Of course if they didn't kill everyone, they might press-gang you into service, and now your a pirate too. So red means you're dead.

Not as bad as the ones that call women femoids.

is... Is that a thing?
- It's an incel thing.
- It's very prevalent on 4chan and the like if you want to look at it and be depressed for a bit

female as an adjective for clarification (like "oh you're looking for that female doctor over there") is ok, female as a noun is just weird

There are contexts where it makes sense, mostly medicine or science, but even in those contexts it's deliberately dehumanizing, which is the point. It is also the only English word for a female human that does not imply age, as woman and girl both do.

The quick sniff test: "Males and females"? Clinical, but probably fine. "Men and females"? Fucking Ferengi freak, avoid that guy
Unless you're speaking about (non human) animals. Saying a dog is a female is fine.
- I knew it! Once I suggested this to someone assuming they're, like me, not a native speaker, and got downvoted to hell. Turned out I was too woke.
- But isn't calling her a bitch also fine in this case?
- Excuse me, but my dog is a lady.
  
  (An obnoxious, clumsy, stupid lady but...)
- true! connotation is a weird thing.

I been wondering people's opinion of "Female" in some instances. Like is "First Female president/athlete/mayor/lawyer" appropriate? "First woman____" doesn't sound right and you wouldn't say "first man athlete to run 2 hour marathon" you would use male.

Most things can be rephrased maybe, but obviously using Females outside these instances is very right wing cringe.

"Female" is fine to use as an adjective.

It's also fine to use as a noun when describing livestock, which is why it's a red flag to describe women that way.
- What is a good word to use for people who are female of any age including young children that are not old enough to be called women in addition to women?
  
  'Women and girls' is pretty clunky when talking about something that is gender specific, but applies to all ages.
Woman as an adjective is picking up in my circles and podcasts I listen to. Woman scientist, woman entrepreneur. It may have sounded weird initially, but I've gotten over it and I suspect it will develop over time to be completely normal.

I wouldn't really compare it to the male/man counterpart, because men aren't demeaned by being called "male" regularly.
- Woman used as an adjective like this sounds so wrong to me (probably because it isn't an adjective). If you wouldn't say man voter, man driver, men reporters, etc., then why would you say woman voter, women drivers, woman reporter? Just because some people use 'female' in a way that you object to shouldn't make all uses of it objectionable. Do you want a world in which we can say 'male patients', but have to say 'woman and girl patients' instead of female patients? Why??
- I agree it works in most cases it works fine but like "First woman astronaut" feels weird.
  
  I mostly didn't want to be accidentally participating in something shitty.
  
  Edit: or like "fastest woman athlete"

Ferengi off the port bow.

Thank you! This is always the first thing that pops into my head whenever I read somebody using "females" instead of "women"

Okay here's my pirate joke.

A ship is sailing the high seas when the crows nest guy calls down, "Pirate ship ahoy!" The captain tells the cabin boy, "Fetch my reddest jacket!" The boy brings the reddest jacket he can find and the captain puts it on. They engage in battle and sink the pirate ship. The boy asks, "Cap'n, why did you call for your red jacket?" The captain says, "So that if I should be wounded in battle the crew would not notice the blood and lose their fighting spirit."

Next day the crows nest calls down, "Twenty pirate ships ahoy!" The captain tells the cabin boy, "Fetch by brownest pants!"

Well since we're telling pirate jokes...

A guy is at a party and sees a pirate coming towards him. He notices as the pirate approaches that the pirate has a little wheel sticking out of his pants.

Naturally curious, the guy asks the pirate, "why do you have a little wheel sticking out of your pants?"

"Arr," says the pirate. "I don't know, but it be drivin' me nuts!"
- How appropriate! You fight like a cow.

Someone should really tell everyone from the south. I had no idea until it was pointed out to me by someone younger. Changed my behavior of course, but was simply ignorant before.

A lot of people use certain words just out of habit, the last thing you need is some SJW jumping down your throat and calling you names cause they don't like your regional dialect. Lots of words I grew up with that were normal or not that bad, and now are considered super offensive. It's not a malicious thing, all you can do is calibrate and learn, but some people get so worked up if you don't use the words they're used to
- Why did you refer to it as shoving something down your throat?

Do they also pronounce "human" as "hugh mon?"

If so, that's a Ferenghi ship.

Uterus having creatures

Squishy Chested Humans

Temperamental Beings

Confusing Loud Wind Atronach

Ever Bleeding Never Dying

Human human Grower

I personally like "Men v2.0"
Ever Bleeding

Never Drying

Spreading her magic

Joke comes from chorus

Or they are just non-native english speakers

Yeah, but those people don't get defensive when you comment on it, while those who are raising the red flag immediately do. It's pretty easy to tell them apart from that point forward.
What a sweetheart you are. Can't even let a webcomic get away with not being inclusive.
Pretty sure non natives will be the first ones to use "woman" and not "female". I know it's not something we say in French anyway, a woman is a woman.
- a woman is a woman
  
  Problematic part
  
  Blague à part, il existe d'autres langue (non-indo-européennes) ou la distinction est moins aisée à faire. Par exemple en Hongrois on dit "nő" pour "femme" et "nőstény" pour "femelle", mais on peut les interchanger dans certains cas et les traducteurs automatiques s'y emmêlent les pinceaux des fois.

he'd probably call women maidens

Except Nichelle Nichols

I wonder if the joke would work better if it actually was a black background. This might also keep the 'its a sail' gang happier.

With an attitude like that, something tells me that pirate won't be getting any booty

Lmao good one

Otoh, some women use this while referring to other women, e.g. "us females need to stick together!" - in a totally positive and inclusive manner (or what looks like that, from me on the outside - i.e. not using language in such manner myself, for either men or women).

So maybe instead of a red flag it's more like an orange one? VERY noteworthy, but not enough on its own to justify cutting off contact with someone, whereas for an actual red flag you would... right?

Drag wonders why that woman chose to say females instead of women. It's a very odd way to phrase it, and the only practical consequence of the change is to exclude trans women. Was that the intention?
- I've seen you around Lemmy for a little while now. Why do you insist on referring to yourself in the 3rd person?
- Well, women can be sexist too, even about one's own gender, so indeed that's a possibility. But as someone else mentioned on this thread, its usage seemed to predate trans really becoming known as being a thing (at least in the surgical sense).
  
  So I - who really knows nothing and isn't really involved, but nonetheless I'll still tell you my opinion! (bc you asked, ofc:-) - say: when in doubt, check the other factors. Perhaps she merely needs educated. Or perhaps we should not nitpick every tiny thing. Then again, is it really nitpicking to tell a woman that she is a human being?
  
  Anyway it still gets back to: is it a RED flag? And if so, what then - like is it worth having any further conversations at all with a person who uses such language? And for that, I say: use one's best judgement.
  
  Then again, perhaps my thinking is outdated - bc NOW it is used to exclude trans women. Sort of? In some contexts it is, while in others it might not?
  
  But I can't recall ever having used it personally, so I cannot really say why this would do such a thing.

Say they're raising a flag, raises a sail instead.

Being imprecise while accusing someone else of being imprecise, where have I heard of such an occurrence before? :-P

(/s, bc it's meant in a humorous rather than serious manner)

FIRE!!

These very same people would have no problem calling women 'people that birth'.

How do I formally refer to a girl I do not respect(because she's a menace) who is late 40's early 50's? So the different terms have implications I don't care for it want to convey.

bitch, or even better, motherfucking bitch asshole
- Karen?
I would get creative with it, just because she's horrible doesn't mean you don't get to have a good time. "The purveyor of lies", "fount of unreason", maybe give her a nickname that relates to one of her mistakes. If you can come up with something new every time it can become like a game, even if you're only saying them in your head.
- Good time of what?
Someone in their late 40s is not a girl.
- Right, so I'm not calling her that.
Wench? Maybe hag?
- I might like a wench.
From the point of view of that girl you're a red flag anyway. But "a menace" works too.
- Red flag? I'm not trying to date my dangerous old hag of a downstairs neighbor. I'm actually filling a restraining order against her.

You people have some weird hangups.

I had sex with a female yesterday.

/s

Human?
- Maybe... The femoid also says she loves when I compile the Linux kernel

I call women "femei"

Is it bad?

It really is just an anti-trans thing.

Naw, they were using that before all the anti trans nonsense. It's more about their inability to see women as human. They identify them more for their gender than being the same species as them. If they started calling them women that would humanize women too much...
Nah, it was a thing for weird dudes well before trans rights entered the public consciousness.

I'm not sure I like the idea of demonizing people just because of a word. Unless it's something as fucked as the n word, it might just be a matter of dialect. Many non-native English speakers I know use female as a replacement for woman. The intent is the more important thing. Sometimes the most well spoken man can also be sexist.

Idk about other languages, but in Spanish "male/female" is reserved for animals*. So it'd be freaking weird to use it in English.

^*it can be used for people but not in 99% of contexts.^
- Sure, but there are other languages in the world. In Bangla, for example, we formally use different words for different genders of animals. But people often add the equivalent of boy/girl in front of the animal name to signify its gender. For us, there are no hard rules for the usage of these adjectives/nouns.

I can't remember how many times I've heard women refer to "males" but if we call them females that's offensive?

Who the hell are you hanging out with? I'd say the term female is used way more often than male.
- The American left has gone just as insane and extremist as the right. Here in Canada we're wondering what you people are on. Even my wife says you're an idiot if you're offended by the word "female".