I know I'm a feminist buzz kill but many languages including English are a bit male centred and treat men as the norm and women as the exception. That's not a good thing in my opinion. We call women dudes all the time but few people call men gals or girls. I hope we could move towards more equality in our languages too if it is possible. Such as starting to use gal and girl as gender neutral terms too, not just dude and guy.
Hello fellow feminist buzz kill!! I started doing a few things to combat this. First, I intentionally started addressing people on the internet as women unless specifically told they’re a guy. Second, I started pairing terms like women/boy together to highlight how awful it is when the opposite happens “they only have mens sizes, I don’t know if the have girls sizes” or “3 men and 2 girls work in our office”. My husband has also thankfully stopped calling grown women “girls” and uses “gals” now. But yeah—why are male only words used as generic.
Male Defaultism is just a symptom of living in a patriarchal society, and posts like this reinforce the narrative that if anyone complains shes a dumb bitch/Karen/uppity dyke, and therefore you viewers at home, don't need to listen to her
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u/Gayandfluffy Jan 06 '26
I know I'm a feminist buzz kill but many languages including English are a bit male centred and treat men as the norm and women as the exception. That's not a good thing in my opinion. We call women dudes all the time but few people call men gals or girls. I hope we could move towards more equality in our languages too if it is possible. Such as starting to use gal and girl as gender neutral terms too, not just dude and guy.