Learn English – Use of ‘female’ and ‘male’ (in science fiction)

meaningword-usage

Often in science fiction when someone refers to a male or female member of some other species, they use terms like "the klingon female". This also happens between members of that species, so if a Klingon was to refer to a female of their own species, they would refer to her as a "klingon female". For me as a native German speaker, this sounds rather weird as in German this kind of wording would only be used when referring to animals (e.g. female dog) and it sounds rather derogatory. When referring to humans, in German you would always use the equivalent words for "woman" or "man". I have also (rarely) seen that usage in English language non-science fiction movies used on humans.

So my question is, in English is the use of "female" or "male" to describe a person of either the same or an equal species derogatory or not? Are there any connotations to that that I don't get? Is this usage fine among humans (in the real world)?

Best Answer

Police regularly use male and female as nouns or adjectives, a convention often imitated by news outlets:

AKRON, Ohio — Police say two males robbed another male of marijuana and then shot the victim in the ankle when he chased after them. — Cleveland.com, 16 Feb. 2019.

Around 9:30 a.m. Monday, a male entered the TD Bank in Franklin and handed a teller a handwritten note instructing her to give him an undisclosed amount of cash, Mattessich said. … The suspect was described as a black male with a medium build and facial hair wearing a grey checkered jacket. — New Jersey Herald, 17 Jan. 2019.

Police say a lone male came in to the store with a weapon. No physical injuries were reported, police said. — London Free Press (UK), 14 Jan. 2019.

The female cyclist was treated by emergency services but died at the scene. — TheAge.com (Melbourne), 14 Aug. 2018.

On Tuesday, March 13, 2018, a female dressed in scrubs entered a seniors' residence in the West end of Ottawa, and proceeded into tenants' rooms and stole various items — Ottawa Police

Medical literature essentially follows the same convention:

A 20-year-old Caucasian female presented with vitiligo on the knees, with the right knee involved more than the left knee.

54-year-old male presented with difficulty in breathing and was diagnosed with asthma. — Research Gate

What the language of police and physicians have in common is that they use male and female purely as physical descriptives. While this usage may seem impersonal and antiseptic, it is not insulting or demeaning.

This is not to say that the two words cannot be used in such a way:

One of the most disturbing things you can discover, is that some female who you don’t even know has been flirting with your man. The truth is that you should not blame the man, as it may not be his fault. — “Women Who Flirt With Unavailable Men,” Totally Her Media (UK)

The next defining influence on my life was feminism. Its first glad morning, in the mid- to late Sixties, was thrilling. Here were women (not girls) who were no longer content to attach themselves like limpets to some male; who wanted to forge their own lives and earn their own mortgages; who thought — no, dammit, knew — they were as good as men. — Angela Lambert, “Beware the march of liberal thought police,” The Independent, 5 July 1993.

In social contexts, reducing a man or woman to either gender or the purely physical can be demeaning, but not always so:

The New Man was once a radical way to describe a male who wholeheartedly accepted equality in domestic life. — “Whatever happened to the term New Man?” BBC News, 30 Jan. 2014.

Curiously enough, while addressing a male as “man,” in either slang or more formal English, is neutral without further context, addressing a woman simply as “woman” is always patronizing and insulting:

“Now see here, woman,”he said. “I don't know who you are, but I assure you that I have nothing but this boy’s best interests in mind.” — Greg Funaro, Alistair Grim's Odditorium, 2015.

Klingons

Klingons have the distinction of being the only Star Trek humanoids adequately represented in a Google N-Gram, but even here, Klingon man does not appear, which means the term returns less than 40 hits. Klingon woman, however, is by far the most represented:

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This suggests that for writers in the Star Trek universe, Klingons are by default male; females have to be specified:

This was, after all, a young Klingon woman. He supposed Kalrind would be considered attractive by a Klingon. In fact, Kirk could even see her attractiveness, if he made the effort to see her face as a Klingon would. — David Dvorkin, Timetrap, 1988, 43.

Though the Romulans have a fairly egalitarian — though fascist — culture, Romulan woman is the only term that shows up in an NGram, suggesting the same male default.

Klingon female appears in the purely descriptive sense, as half of a male-female behavioral pair, or simply as a synonym:

When a Klingon female wishes to divorce her mate, she simply declares “N 'Gos tlhogh cha! ” Translation: “Our marriage is done!” Oh, and then she belts him ... — Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Q's Guide to the Continuum, 1988, 38.

A Klingon female would address someone as maqoch only if she intended to insult him or her. A Klingon male with any honor at all would never address a female as maqoch. The word maqoch itself may derive from may' qoch (literally, “battle partner”), so perhaps it originally meant something like “war buddy.” — Mark Okrand, Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, 2011.

Kira frowned and turned back toward the older Klingon female. — Day of Honor (anthology), 1999, 298.

The first two examples are drawn from non-narrative works where the use of male and female give the passages the air of cultural anthropology, as if the Klingons were some jungle tribe “discovered” in the 19th c. While this usage, then and now, may betray cultural bias, it is free of affect, which, of course, makes it all the more insidious when applied to real people rather than inhabitants of a fictive sci-fi universe.

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