I am not a native English speaker and I have sometimes referred to people as male and female (as that is what I have been taught) but I have received some backlash in some cases, especially for the word “female”, is there some negative thought in the word which I am unaware of?
I don’t know if this is the best place to ask, if it’s not appropriate I have no problem to delete it ^^
Let me break down the explanations given, because most of them boil down to this:
As a noun, yes, because it’s mainly used in biology like that (“A hawk female”) and thus can come off as dehumanizing. As an adjective: No (“A female cashier”, “A male cashier”)