r/whenthe • u/ObscureRedditor77 • 19h ago

I know what you are

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u/Ditto13248 19h ago

Yes. Using "male and female" instead of "men and women" is like using "humans" instead of "people", or using "sodium chloride" instead of "salt". It's still weird, but in a different way

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u/Atlas_of_history Official Ralsei 19h ago

Reminds me of that one Jimmy Neutron post were a person gets so pissed at him saying sodium chloride that he writes a paragraph about why he's wrong

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u/Ditto13248 19h ago

I was referencing that

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u/Atlas_of_history Official Ralsei 19h ago

Lol

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u/Moody_GenX 18h ago

It took me years after getting out of the Army to stop saying it. I was a military policeman and it was every day nomenclature.

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u/pinkstrawberymonster 16h ago

I so occasionally say to people I don't know "These little humans are unknown to me" and make it sound like I'm a red marsian 

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u/charizardfan101 7h ago

*Martian

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u/therandomham 3h ago

Idk man they sound more like a marsian to me

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u/charizardfan101 7h ago

I feel like we really should separate "human" from "people" though, as one is describing a species, and the other a societal thing

All humans are people, but not all people are humans

All known fully accepted people are humans, but there are some humans who argue that animals such as Orcas and Dolphins are intelligent enough that they should be considered people despite not being human

And that's not even getting into the possibility of intelligent aliens and how we'd also have to refer to them as people despite them not being humans (I'll admit to being unrealistically optimistic here)