Here’s my two cents. It’s hard for people to keep up with the euphemism treadmill. There was a time when the word “female” didn’t have the negative connotation that it does now mostly thanks to co-opting by incels. It should also be stated that the word “male” doesn’t have the same negative connotations and it’s similar to how there’s slurs for black people but none for white people.
So why do people find “female” offensive? Well for starters it’s dehumanizing. Women is a less academic term and female implies some biological essentialism. I think the crux as to why it’s a big deal now is that women do not refer to themselves as females in the manner that men do. Men do not think of themselves as males, they do not call other men males, men call themselves men. male and female are simply outdated terms.
I suspect one day as society moves towards a more genderqueer position men and women will become unacceptable to say too. Idk. Like I think we need to acknowledge that there is such thing as a euphemism treadmill, that languages change, words become offensive or nonoffensive over time, and like all we can do in order to be a fucking decent human bean is to conform to society’s standards as to what is acceptable as according to the treadmill. Unless it’s some shit like calling the homeless, the unhoused. Then in those specific instances we got to run against the treadmill. But in this specific instance, we need to run with the treadmill on this one. Nothing feels better than conforming with society.
The groups I know which organize women workers are also the groups arguing for better language. The liberal groups I know who argue against inclusive language are not only seldom the groups which often are not in solidarity with women workers when there are strikes or conflicts between bosses and workers (and take any breach of protocol as the left being unreasonable the demands breaking civility). Of course the latter sentence doesn’t have to be true for all, but it is a surprising amount.
The Comintern was in practice quite inclusive and also policed what kind of words could be used for certain ethnic groups. Unquestionably the Comintern did achieve a lot. Since they achieved a lot I don’t give arguments about that you can do either support women workers or instead change language much credit. The last half century did show also that you can do more than two things at the same time.
In light of that info, I retract my previous argument.