That would be a more sensible argument to make if it was only non-native speakers who attested to this connotation, don't you think? Not the case here.

No need, it's a valid enough point to make when a non-native speaker starts arguing a point with native speakers about the language involved. But Vivien and Aeryn are native speakers, and they feel the same way. It's possible (and judging from a quick Google, even certain) that I underestimated how many people use "a female" without negative connotations, but it's also obvious that the connotation does exist for many people, and that the use of the term can indeed give offense.

I don't disagree with that, certainly not. I've spent some time in the US, but not nearly enough to claim I understand everything about American culture or language (though I have to say I'm not sure why you're narrowing this down to American English alone). But again, the fact that it was an American native speaker who raised the point to begin with makes this rather irrelevant, I think, except to the extent mentioned above, that I perhaps overestimated how generally established the negative connotation was.

I had noted the connotation before (and no, not from my own language like Dom, as my own language doesn't have a cognate of "female" ), and had assumed it to be generally valid, so when Vivien pointed it out, and got Jens and Celia suggesting that she was nitpicking, I supported her. The Google search does prove me wrong in a way, but the point that Jens would be better off not using that word in that context remains, I think.



Edit: I did another Google search and the result is interesting. My first search had been "females are" - and nearly all of the hits on the first few pages for that one are simply about women, without any obvious negative connotation, so that rather disproves my stance.

However, if you search for the singular, "the female is", then you do indeed get the result I was expecting to get on the first search - i.e., predominantly articles talking about animals, plus a few medical articles, and almost no articles where it's used as a normal equivalent for "woman". So, you who are a real American and all - does that stroke with your impression of things, that when "female" is used as a neutral noun, it's generally in plural?