when words – and websites – are wrong

Call me picky…

Here I am looking for good words and ideas for an event for a women’s domestic violence agency and THIS is what I find. (And yes, I use thesaurus.com all the time – I love it, it gets the creative juices flowing – it’s like my own little writer’s club – the words speak to me and invite my brain to move in every direction.)

Main Entry:	female
Part of Speech:	adjective
Definition:	womanly
Synonyms:	changeable, child-bearing, delicate, effeminate, effete, fair, feminine, fertile, gentle, girlish, girly, graceful, ladylike, maidenly, matronly, modest, muliebral, oviparous, petticoat, pistil-bearing, pistillate, pure, refined, reproductive, sensitive, she-stuff, shy, soft, tender, twisty, virgin, vixenish, weak, womanish, womanlike

Look at the 3rd to last synonym…no, your eyes are not deceiving you. They have ‘weak’ listed as a synonym for ‘female’. Last time I checked, that was an opinion – a lame, misogynistic, sexist, patriarchal opinion.

If you are reading this thesaurus.com – bring it on. Show me how this is fact, I dare you.

And, please take your opinions off of your resource page….now, I’m off to find a new online thesuarus. If anyone knows one that won’t offend 51% of the population (and some good men out there as well), let me know. By the way, there are other words you’ve listed that are also offensive and not truly synonyms of ‘female’ – shy, virgin, soft…I could keep going.

Oh – and here are some ‘weak’ females:

Serena Hilary Madonna

Related posts:

1. blogging is powerful…and so are google alerts
2. Bonobos, Books & Websites
3. google can finally read flash websites!

test Filed under News | Tags: copywriting, female, strong women, thesaurus, web etiquette | Comments (2)