The Onion

This is interesting to me because, as a dude in his 40s, I grew up with adults (and even cartoons) saying 'woman xxxx' being the pejorative (i.e. damn woman drivers!). It's been weird to seem to see this flip.

I use it, and never mean it in an offensive way.

"The pronoun "she" is for females, while "he" is for males".

But now that I see that it's so widely seen as a slur, I'll refrain from using it with people who don't know me well. I'll use "women and girls", now.

TL;DR, most people are reasonable and can tell the difference. We cool.

People where English is not their first language get a pass. There is usually a very telling inflection when someone says "females" and means it in the bad way. I would rather help people with their English and explain that it is best to not say it that way, than get upset over our language being unnecessarily complicated.

The context of how female is said is even more confusing. Best way I think is if you are referring to a group of people or a specific person as female(s), that is bad. If you are referring to something about our gender, a description, or something impersonal, then that is fine. "Female anatomy.", "I hate being female.", "There was a female guard at the station."

While it is puts me on edge when I hear it (in that bad context), it isn't like they called me a cunt or something really foul. It is usually just an immediate red flag that we may be dealing with an incel, but let's see where this goes. Usually doesn't take long to get a confirmation on how they really meant it.

Yeah. I think a fair few people misunderstand the intent of my comment. I agree that the connotation of "female" makes it a word one should be conscious about its usage.

I was strictly speaking of how non native speakers of English may struggle with keeping up with what's socially correct English according to the wider Internet culture.

What issue? I'm not even directly talking about the usage of the word female. I'm talking about the lack of understanding a lot* of English speakers show when "others" use their language.

To use male/female as an example, my language doesn't even have direct translation for male and female, we only have the equivalent to man/woman when speaking of humans. I could totally understand that someone who aren't terminally online may be confused of when to use woman and when to use female, especially as female may seem more formal and thus be confused with being the polite option, just as an example.

*far from all of course

He cray-cray

I feel like the last paragraph made it pretty clear? Most people on the internet doesn't have English as their native language, expecting all those people to understand the constantly shifting connotation of every word feels rather ignorant/ethnocentric.