Use of female/woman, male/man

[cktwo]

Arghh! I cannot read the Saturday Guardian without this infuriating me.

Tell me if I'm right.

You cannot use female on it's own as in "there were two females present".

It has to be an adjective as in "there were two female police officers present".

But the newspapers and especially people on TV constantly interchange the two and say things such as "the woman police officer was present". Surely you cannot say that as you would not say "the man police officer was present" would you????

Clarification PLEASE PLEASE please before I drive myself insane.

I hate it and am pretty sure it's wrong. Write to the Readers' Corner at the Graun - they'd love to hear from you

Ooo! My Mum says "as a female" and it drives me bonkers too.

we-ell, back in the day when police officers were known as policemen, the women were always referred to as WPCs or Woman Police Constable (don't think any of them progressed further up the ranks )

So using the phrase "women police officers" could be a throwback to then.

I don't know about pluralising females/males, I never knew it was a problem.

The word Female is both a noun and an adjective (I think) so they can say "there were two females present", although it does sound clumsy.

"The woman police officer was present" is perfectly correct in terms of grammar, but I agree is nearly aways irrelevant to the news story.

ok have looked it up. Female CAN be used as a noun (bah) but many feminist linguists object to its use (as a noun or an adjective) because it stresses the purely biological aspects of being a woman. So there. I think a complaint to the Graun along those terms would do very nicely

I hate it. Surprised to see it in the Guardian. It's very Daily Mail. Ugh. "Females". You rarely see men described in the same way - I find it mildly derogatory - reducing me to my genitalia somehow.

Is ok for guinea pigs, not humans imho.

If I was described as being female I don't have a problem, but just a female is horrid. It always makes me say "a female what!!!". Like you say M&J, we are not guinea pigs

so when I see a toilet with "female" on it - is it an adjective or a noun?

It may well have been to prevent repeating the word "woman" several times.

Kewcumber - IKWYM. The toilet isn't female so it should say women on it??

I give up trying to get my head round it

Well I think it should say "women" on it too. But female is more common.

whatever happened to 'lady'? as in 'lady doctor'? maybe we should go back to using that instead

Lol at 'lady doctor'! They still say that at my local surgery.

I teach DS "lady" and "man", suspect that may not be politically correct. Bigger problme however is that he can;t say lady and so calls everyone "man"

surely that should be 'lady' and 'gentleman' kewcumber, as in 'gentleman farmer'

atcherly i think we should encourage the use of 'gent' as in 'e's a proper gent'

yes it should but for a 2.6 yr old "man" is so much easier to say. We'll move to gentleman when he can cope with more than two syllables!

lol

There is a college in Oxford where the men's and women's toilets say 'Fellows' and 'Secretaries' respectively.

that's lovely threadwormm. i'd like to see toilets labelled 'fellows' and 'gels'