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A friend of mine is practicing Japanese and created the sentence
私は女の人ではありません。私も男の人ではありません intending to say "I am not a woman, I am also not a
man"

I offered to improve the sentence as 私は男でも女でもありません, still a little stiff but
sounds more natural at least to my ears. Which got me wondering. I know that
you should not use plain 男／女 to refer to others because that is rude, [which
this question talks
about](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/4380/when-
should-%E7%94%B7%E3%81%AE%E4%BA%BA-%E5%A5%B3%E3%81%AE%E4%BA%BA-be-used-
instead-of-%E7%94%B7-%E5%A5%B3), but what about using them to refer to
yourself, is that fine? Does that sound more natural than using の人?

Furthermore, if I were talking about someone else, and I said
僕の友人は男の人でも女の人でもありません does that sound reasonably natural (albeit stiff).
Furthermore does 僕の友人は男でも女の人でもありません flow better, or is it just unnatural or
ungrammatical?
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2019-01-22T20:10:00.900
65028
2022-06-19T01:06:55.137
2022-06-19T01:06:55.137
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question
word-choice politeness
okay to use 男／女 as opposed to 男／女の人 to refer to yourself?
私は男でも女でもありません is perfectly fine.

  * When you refer to yourself, you don't have to add の人.
  * Even when you refer to someone else, 男/女 tends to sound safe when used predicatively, because you are clearly focusing on one's gender in such a case. It is literary or rude when used as a simple noun (as a subject, object, etc):

>     * あの人は男です。: fine  
>  (男性/女性です is better if you need to speak politely)
>     * 昨日見た女: literary/rude
>     * あそこにいる男と話そう。: literary/rude
CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-01-23T04:13:31.620
65034
2019-01-23T04:13:31.620
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65028
answer