Eggcorn Forum

Interesting find even if it isn’t an eggcorn. I had a few thoughts…
First, although “species” has a strict biological meaning that would make “male species” ludicrous, the word “species” is sometimes used more broadly to refer to a class of individuals.

But having said that, I can see the reshaping “male species” (with “of the” removed) as being very trendy among an urban chic who are critical of stereotypical behavior of the opposite sex and see “species” as a condescending way to trivialize a group by relegating it to an animal distinction. The category “male species” begs the question whether the utterer would ever refer to females as “female species” (or vice versa for a male utterer). That would determine whether “male species” is being used to distinguish the group from females or homo sapiens in general (as you suggested).

I would just conclude by saying that I wouldn’t be too concerned about its ramifications. Some people think along such lines, and some don’t. The language isn’t creating a new subculture of beliefs; the subculture has long existed, and language is simply being tailored to their needs—whether it be self-validation, self-defense or whatever.

Finally, on the biological front… there have been scientific discussions on the evolution of the X and Y chromosomes on the basis of mate selection over the eons, and, for instance, some say the Y chromosome is vanishing. I seem to recall a discussion along those lines in Matt Ridley’s book Genome, and I simply can’t do justice to the logic from memory, but I seem to remember that the politics of mate selection is involved.

Last edited by jorkel (2008-02-23 11:38:55)

I think that both “male of the species” and “female of the species” allude to Kipling – though the source of the allusion is probably lost on most contemporary speakers, so that it has become merely a cliche or stock-phrase. The c. 1996 pop song “Female of the Species (Is More Deadly Than the Male)”, for instance, is a clear allusion to Kipling.

As to whether people use the male/female varieties with equal frequency, I searched Lexis/Nexis Academic for newspapers, magazines, journals, and trade publications prior to 1 January 1996 (to avoid references to the song – though as you can see below, I still netted several titles).

Unfortunately, I discovered that the Lexis/Nexis “exact phrase” search does not actually search for exact phrases – go figure. Searches for “female of the species” and for “female species” return the self-same set of results. Nonetheless, the searches did allow me to determine the number of news publications in the Lexis Nexis database using some variant of “female (of the) species” versus “male (of the) species.” In addition, I randomly selected 40 articles from each set and analyzed those articles in more detail.

There are 689 occurrences of “female of the species” and variants, to 901 occurrences of “male of the species” and variants.

Of forty articles consulted, 25 (62.5%) contain the phrase “female of the species,” while four (10.0%) contain “the female species.” Twenty-eight of forty articles (70.0%) contain the phrase “male of the species,” and five (12.5%) contain “the male species.” (The numbers do not total 100% because some articles contain other phrases, such as “female of this species” etc.) So in terms of raw counts, the numbers are fairly similar.

I then studied the articles in more detail, for the obsessive.

Of the 80 articles total, ten include proper names, including Kipling’s poem, a novel called “The Male of the Species,” and a novel called “The Female of the Species.” If nothing else, this shows that both cliches are current.

Of the remaining 70 articles (33 “female” and 37 “male”), 19 (11 containing “female”, 7 “male”) refer either to non-human animals or to biological species generally (as in, “In nature, the power to choose a mate… is usually bestowed on the female of the species.”), while 51 (21 “female”, 30 “male”) refer to humans, the latter usually in a jocular tone. Only one of the 70 articles uses species in the more general sense of variety or kind to refer to a non-animate object: “When he started, the term ‘salon’ was reserved for the ‘female species’.”

Thus, the jocular usage, in which “female/male (of the) species” is used as a replacement for “women” or “men” is more than twice as common as more literal usages, either biological or general.

An additional finding is that jocular uses of “male (of the) species” make up a larger percentage of total occurrences than do jocular uses of “female (of the) species”.

Since this is already perhaps too long for a forum posting, I will leave discussion and conclusions as an exercise for the reader.

BUT – I will add one more comment. As to whether, “The language isn’t creating a new subculture of beliefs,” questions of linguistic relativity remain controversial, with many scholars accepting the so-called “weak version Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis