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The principle of male as norm holds that grammatical and lexical devices such as the use of the suffix-ess (as in actress) specifically indicating the female form, the use of man to mean "human", and similar means strengthen the perceptions that the male category is the norm, and that corresponding female categories are derivations and thus less important.
English dictionaries commonly define woman as "an adult female human" or "an adult female human being". [ 16 ] [ 17 ] In 2020, Merriam-Webster expanded its definitions of female and girl to add trans-inclusive senses ("having a gender identity that is the opposite of male"; "a person whose gender identity is female").
Indeed, in most European languages, personal pronouns are gendered; for example English (the personal pronouns he, she and it are used depending on whether the referent is male, female, or inanimate or non-human; this is in spite of the fact that English does not generally have grammatical gender).
Trump's executive order declares sex as "an individual's immutable biological classification as either male or female" and states that "gender identity" cannot be included in the definition of ...
Linguist Robert A. Hall Jr. argued that these are simply examples of natural gender and not grammatical gender, as daughters are always female and people named Jane are overwhelmingly likely to be female. Moreover, if a person named Jane is a man, there is nothing grammatically incorrect with saying "Jane is bringing his friends over."
However, when an avatar is human and discernibly gendered, it usually appears to be a man. [30] [31] Depictions of skeletons typically have male anatomy rather than female, even when the character of the skeleton is meant to be female. [32] Restroom symbols show the male as the default person, while the female is identified by a skirt. [33]
[7] [11] In the 21st century, the noun female is primarily used to describe non-human animals, to refer to biologically female humans in an impersonal technical context (e.g., "Females were more likely than males to develop an autoimmune disease"), or to impartially include a range of people without reference to age (e.g., girls) or social ...
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