--- description: 'Female' is quickly becoming a dirty word in American slang: why we shouldn't let it title: Why We Need to Reclaim the Word 'Female' image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) ## Ideas Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [language](/tag/language/) ## language Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Why We Need to Reclaim the Word 'Female'  by [Jay Newton-Small](/author/jay-newton-small/)  ## Jay Newton-Small Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Updated: Jan 24, 2024 12:53 PM CUTPublished: Apr 19, 2016 11:49 PM CUT  by [Jay Newton-Small](/author/jay-newton-small/)  ## Jay Newton-Small Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Updated: Jan 24, 2024 12:53 PM CUTPublished: Apr 19, 2016 11:49 PM CUT As an author of a new book on women, [_Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works_](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B016E1N7UI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1 "undefined"), I’ve often used the term _female_ to describe women in the workforce: female lawmakers, female voters, female police officers, etc. I did this because to say “women \[insert X noun\]” would be grammatically incorrect: _women_ or _woman_ are nouns, while _female_ is an adjective that modifies a noun. So, I was surprised postpublication to see some feminists take exception to my usage of the word _female_. Turns out, particularly in African-American circles, the word _female_ has become a pejorative: links to a _female dog_, and thus shorthand for _bitch_. “The mind-set that also turns a simple question, ‘Where are you from?’ into a purported racist/nationalist attack. _Female_, it appears, must now be assumed to reference female dog and thus the slang pejorative for women, used since the 15th century, of _bitch_,” says [slang lexicographer](http://thetimelinesofslang.tumblr.com/ "undefined") Jonathan Green. “Indeed, if we are to pursue that line, it might simply link to _dog_ another antiwoman term, though more recent.” Green and other linguists have [long documented](http://timeglider.com/timeline/47c1fd13056edb02 [ "undefined") the innate misogyny of slang, where thousands of disparaging terms for women have proliferated over the years, with scant male equivalents. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists “female” as a disparaging term for _men_: --- > “” --- The OED goes on to note that since 1400, _female_ has occasionally been used to describe one’s mistress, which could be seen as pejorative — as a sex object. As Katherine Martin, [head of U.S. dictionaries](https://twitter.com/kconnormartin "undefined") at Oxford University Press, points out the term _female_ has had depreciative connotations for longer than one might expect. She cites the OED’s original entry for _female_ in 1895, in which the editors described its usage as “now commonly avoided by good writers, exc. with contemptuous implication.” Robin Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, says that _female_ has always been a bad word, “maybe it’s just now becoming more explicitly recognized.” A female can be any species, [Lakoff argues](http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/gender.htm "undefined"), but only a human can be a woman, so to refer to a woman as a female “is to subtly downgrade her to a lower mammalian status, rather like calling a guy an ‘ape,’” Lakoff says. That said, “to be able to call a guy an ape is possible only when he is a particular _kind_ of guy — clumsy, brutish, etc. But any woman can be called, disparagingly, a ‘female’ just because of the chromosome thing. Same with the very bad _c_\-word, vs. what ought to be parallel, _prick_, or _dick_. Any woman can get those words applied to her by the average misogynist, and makes no reference to any specific qualities other than femaleness. But to be one of the male words, a guy has to be obnoxious.” Others have argued that the simple distinction is sexist: a female lawmaker vs. simply a lawmaker, a female doctor vs. a doctor, etc. In 1965, the Chicago _Tribune_ ran a story titled [“The Fall of ‘Female,’”](http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1965/04/14/page/16/article/the-fall-of-female "undefined") documenting the crimes of the word going as far back as the 1850s. But when writing about women, it is often important to make the distinction: [female voters have swung every election since Ronald Reagan](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwjW0sbq5pvMAhViGZoKHY5qD1kQFggcMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fjay-newtonsmall%2Fthe-gops-biggest-problem-%5Fb%5F9077708.html&usg=AFQjCNE8JU3k8600rxzsoKr5S8OYccq5EA&sig2=3J0q0Wd1mRyJ-BYEMZr0oA&bvm=bv.119745492,d.bGs "undefined"), for example, or it was [the female Senators who ended the government shutdown](http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/16/women-are-the-only-adults-left-in-washington/ "undefined") when their male colleagues wouldn’t talk to each other. So what is one to do? The simple solution seems to be to turn _woman_/_women_ into an adjective: women Senators, women executives, a woman President. But I would argue that by allowing virtually every word that can be applied to women, except _women_, as negative we are helping men box us in with their “male gaze” of the English language, [as Green puts it](http://timeglider.com/timeline/677b0e65eb2148db "undefined"). The title of my book is _Broad Influence_, an obvious double entendre. The word _broad_ was once a pejorative for women dating back to Dickensian times. It came from the fact that women had broad hips and it was so loathed that feminists successfully lobbied the Olympics to change the name of the “broad jump” to the “long jump” in the 1960s. Of course women have broad hips, we bear children — a fact that we should celebrate, not denigrate. I like the idea that women have reclaimed this term in the modern era, not just in my book title but in a host of feminist usages: _Fortune_ magazine’s Broadsheet newsletter and Vice’s Broadly channel and Comedy Central’s _Broad City_. _Broad_ isn’t the only word modern women are trying to reclaim. In 2014, Sheryl Sandberg of _Lean In_ fame started a movement to [take back the word _bossy_](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-j-bertman/taking-back-bossy%5Fb%5F4985503.html "undefined") in an attempt to recast women leading as positive rather than negative. Perhaps we should salvage other derogatory words, rather than allowing even the simplest of descriptions to be used against us, like _female_. “Language changes, and it is one of the joys of English in particular that it remains open to continuing development, and we must accept those changes, whether or not we agree with them,” Green notes. “If _female_ is to become taboo, then so be it. But to me it seems excessive and absurd, and accept is not a synonym for agree.” And as the OED notes, [_disagree_](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american%5Fenglish/disagree "undefined") is synonymous with _disapproval_: --- > “” --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4300170/female-word/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4300170/female-word/"},"headline":"Why We Need to Reclaim the Word 'Female'","datePublished":"2016-04-19T23:49:40.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-24T12:53:43.000Z","description":"It's not a dirty word","url":"https://time.com/4300170/female-word/","keywords":["language","women","linguistics","female","sexism","woman"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jay Newton-Small","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/jay-newton-small/"}],"articleSection":"Ideas","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/ideas/","name":"Ideas"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/language/","name":"language"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4300170/female-word/","name":"Why We Need to Reclaim the Word 'Female'"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Obama Speaks About Wage Gap On Equal Pay Day","description":"President Obama spoke from Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument on Equal Pay Day.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/sG2JoP7d/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-04-12T19:20:42.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/sG2JoP7d.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4300170/female-word/","duration":"PT1M14S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4300170/female-word/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Microsoft's International Women’s Day 2016 Ad: What Are You Going to Make?","description":"","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/DgnUvK1c/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-03-08T16:51:56.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/DgnUvK1c.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4300170/female-word/","duration":"PT1M39S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4300170/female-word/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```