Every time I stumble upon a tweet that makes a joking generalization about men calling women 'females,' the replies are pure chaos. Unlike most controversial tweets, the meme is usually met with more confusion than hostility.

The two basic schools are those who are adamantly against that usage of the word and those are have never really thought about it and are confused as to why it's even a question. Frankly, I understand the bewilderment. The word 'female' has always made me feel uncomfortable, odd, but it's difficult to convey why exactly that is. Whenever I've broached the topic with friends, they've voiced the same sentiment: the word just makes them feel weird. So, why is that? Why does a seemingly innocuous synonym for 'woman' set off red flags for so many people?

Let's concede that the usage of 'female' to describe a woman isn't grammatically incorrect. Although the primary use of the word is as an adjective denoting "the sex that can produce eggs," there has always been a secondary usage of the word as a noun meaning "a female person or animal."

But I believe it's the second part of that noun's definition that gives many women pause when the term is directed towards them: "person or animal." By virtue of the term's biological connotation, it feels dehumanizing. A "female" could just as easily be a dog or a bear as a human, while a "woman" is unquestionably a person.

Reading into the implications of this word may seem unnecessary, but there's a long history of dehumanizing language being used to justify poor treatment of women. For centuries, the idea of women being inferior or "less human" than men was used to justify their disenfranchisement and oppression. Of course, this was a different sort of dehumanization than what is prevalent today. While the primary issue today is the objectification of women reducing them to sexual objects, the dehumanization of the past took the form of women being viewed as less evolved than their male counterparts, more akin to children than adults capable of sophisticated thought. It was widely accepted that a woman's biology, having intellectually and physically stunted her, was her destiny.

Even today, when these pseudo-scientific mindsets are no longer common beliefs, the dehumanization of women continues to permeate certain aspects of society. The most extreme and disturbing example of this lies in the so-called 'incel' community, a group which has produced numerous mass murderers. The perceived reason for their rage is that duplicitous, conniving women are denying them the sex they believe they are owed. In this mindset, a woman is not a person but a commodity they have been robbed of. Notably, women are hardly referred to as women in incel online communities but are almost always referred to as females or by the even more degrading term 'femoid,' making it abundantly clear that these groups don't see women as fully human.

Now, to be clear, I'm not implying that everyone or even most of the men that describe women as 'females,' share these toxic sentiments. I believe that in the vast majority of cases the word is used innocently, without thought to any of its undercurrents. 'Female' isn't a slur or an insult in and of itself, so feelings about it are foggier and harder to discern than in many other issues of social semantics. However, I can't deny that, for many people, the term reminds them of ideas about women that can be insulting or even downright dangerous.