this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
250 points (88.6% liked)
Asklemmy
43897 readers
960 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Terms for the sexes/genders are treated differently. In the US, the only term I can think of that has been used derogatively for men is 'boy', and only in the context of racism for disparaging adult men who are black.
On the other side, most of the terms have been used negatively in different contexts. Women were often called girls to infantilize them. Gals was used to avoid formality. 'Ladies of the night' spoiled the term ladies because of the association with prostitution.
On the flip side a boys club isn't disparagingly to infantilize men, as shown in the song 'The boys are back in town'. A girls night out is generally not seen as a negative, but calling women's sports in college girl's sports is while men's sports tend to just be called sports.
So while there are exceptions, other terms for men terms tend to not be used negatively like other terms for women do and that is why women's terms tend to fall out of favor over time while men's stick around.