I've run across recently where most of the commonly held synonyms for woman could be considered sexist when either a male character or male author uses them. Since I'm a male author, and I don't write a lot of female main characters, I've had trouble finding words that other than "Woman" to describe female gender individuals that other readers of this site don't find sexist.
When you look up "Woman," in the Merriam-Webster thesaurus what comes up is "Female, Lady, skirt, dame, gentlewoman, madam, madame, senor, babe, beauty, belle, chick, damsel, doll, gal, girl, ingenue, lass, lassie, mademoiselle, maid, maiden, miss or senorita." All of those terms either don't sound natural coming out of someone who lives in today's world.
Miss, even though it's commonly used in the South, sounds sexist to many women, as I've experienced on my trips to the north. Many women consider Ma'am to be matronly and not used outside of the South. The English have a number of slang words for women, none of them non-sexist.
The problem I'm coming up with is that there's no alternative words to woman for when a first-person male narrator encounters a female. There's no female equivalent to guy, dude, bro, or dude. Any thoughts?
Non-Sexist female descriptive
When you look up "Woman," in the Merriam-Webster thesaurus what comes up is "Female, Lady, skirt, dame, gentlewoman, madam, madame, senor, babe, beauty, belle, chick, damsel, doll, gal, girl, ingenue, lass, lassie, mademoiselle, maid, maiden, miss or senorita." All of those terms either don't sound natural coming out of someone who lives in today's world.
Miss, even though it's commonly used in the South, sounds sexist to many women, as I've experienced on my trips to the north. Many women consider Ma'am to be matronly and not used outside of the South. The English have a number of slang words for women, none of them non-sexist.
The problem I'm coming up with is that there's no alternative words to woman for when a first-person male narrator encounters a female. There's no female equivalent to guy, dude, bro, or dude. Any thoughts?
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