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wedrifid comments on Babies and Bunnies: A Caution About Evo-Psych - Less Wrong
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No, I would estimate that to be roughly equal. I don't think females use 'man' or 'boy' to insult other females in the same way as males use 'woman' or 'girl' to insult each other.
The explanation I give suggests only that the use of 'girl' as an insult is not intended to be of the form "You are a girl. Girls are bad, therefore you are bad." It is inteded to be of the form "You have female traits. Female traits on a male are extremely low status. You have status below both other males and females".
It looked like you were using the fact that males insult each other by insinuating that they have female traits to back up the hypothesis that it is more insulting for a male to be referred to with the wrong pronoun. If you think that the reverse scenario is about equal, why would this make it more insulting, rather than just as insulting?
For the same reason that I would take offence at being called a 'bastard' even though I actually couldn't care less that my parents happened to be married at the time of my conception.
If something is commonly used as an insult then that can be expected to cause offence independently of any factual content. So my claim is:
It's a typical insult. Insults bad. That's all.
I think I might be talking past you. Let me try to re-frame my confusion:
Art calls Ben "girly" because Ben has exhibited stereotypically feminine trait F.
Meanwhile, Amy calls Bev "mannish" because Bev has exhibited stereotypically masculine trait M.
It looks like both Ben and Bev should be insulted, by about the same amount, and you seemed to assent to this, above.
Given this background, if Random Internet Person goes on to refer to Amy as "he" and Art as "she", whence your above indication that Art should be more insulted than Amy?
Well put. I'm not myself exposed to what girls do to each other behind the scenes while I know males far better. Would you consider 'mannish' to be a ubiquitous insult? If so then Art should not be insulted more than Amy by 'he'/'she' mistakes.
My impression is that 'mannish' is used less than 'girly' to such a degree that the implied insult (by this specific mechanism) of 'he' is much less 'she'.
I can't think of a way to non-insultingly apply "mannish" to a woman.
And I can't think of 'mannish' being used ever. My impression was that female competition tended to be a little more sophisticated than banal locker room banter.
Well, I don't think it would customarily be said to one's face...
I'd say that "mannish" is an obsolete insult-- in use in the 1940s and 1950s (I'm going by feel on this).
"Looks like a man" is current, and specifically about appearance.
I'm not sure if there are standard insults used by women to other women about other masculine traits.
Have you never seen Austin Powers?
Good point. Now I can think of one.
And that is just damn funny.
Speaking as an actual bastard, I'm more familiar with the term being applied at time of birth, not conception.
Good point.
(I wonder about people who divorce during the gestation period.)