Still, I once heard a game producer use this exact reasoning to explain why he was against hiring women.
I can't help but think this is far from the norm, thus sounds like the coach in Mean Girls taking everyone not to have sex because they'll get pregnant and sure.
Am I the only person who gets put off when people use the noun form of "female" in these discussions? Why is it always "a female" or "females"? It makes it sound like some kind of animal on a nature documentary.
Maybe it's a regional thing, but I've used the nouns "male" and "female" for as long as I can remember, and I can think of many other portions that do as well. I'm trying to think of why that is and what I use to determine whether to use man/woman or male/female, I use both, but I couldn't tell you, just a long time speech pattern.
Makes more sense if people keep their pairs together what ever they are. When it's men and females it's just what.
Can't imagine why someone would do that, just sounds so awkward.
There's likely no consensus on this, just have to get a feel for the situation and/or whatever the person you're talking to prefers. I know some people that just hate being called "girls," they feel it's demeaning when you wouldn't call a man "boy." Some don't care. Some women are against being grouped in mixed-genders as "guys" like "Hey, guys, wanna go eat?"
I don't think it's possible to never make a mistake when addressing genders, just be contrite if someone has preferences.
My preference is just to call everyone guy or dude (don't ask me why the word is stuck with someone who can barely call themselves a 90s kid (born 1994)), and thankfully I haven't ran into problems except from randos on Tumblr that find my blog thorough chains of reblogs, sho I don't usually care about them. I like to imagine that if my word choice bothered someone in real life I'd make an effort to use their preferred term, but it's never really come up.
But seriously, does this spark dude actually know how pregnancy works? If his only exposure to it is southern sex ed I guess I could give him a pass. Even in South Florida my sex ed was little more than watching the Miracle of Life, seeing pictures of penises with various STIs, being Todd that abstinence is the way to go so you don't get STIs, and that lamb skin condoms do Jack shit.
Thank God I had the internet.