Use of 'female' and 'male' (in science fiction)

Police regularly use male and female as nouns or adjectives, a convention often imitated by news outlets:

AKRON, Ohio — Police say two males robbed another male of marijuana and then shot the victim in the ankle when he chased after them. — Cleveland.com, 16 Feb. 2019.

Around 9:30 a.m. Monday, a male entered the TD Bank in Franklin and handed a teller a handwritten note instructing her to give him an undisclosed amount of cash, Mattessich said. … The suspect was described as a black male with a medium build and facial hair wearing a grey checkered jacket. — New Jersey Herald, 17 Jan. 2019.

Police say a lone male came in to the store with a weapon. No physical injuries were reported, police said. — London Free Press (UK), 14 Jan. 2019.

The female cyclist was treated by emergency services but died at the scene. — TheAge.com (Melbourne), 14 Aug. 2018.

On Tuesday, March 13, 2018, a female dressed in scrubs entered a seniors' residence in the West end of Ottawa, and proceeded into tenants' rooms and stole various items — Ottawa Police

Medical literature essentially follows the same convention:

A 20-year-old Caucasian female presented with vitiligo on the knees, with the right knee involved more than the left knee.

54-year-old male presented with difficulty in breathing and was diagnosed with asthma. — Research Gate

What the language of police and physicians have in common is that they use male and female purely as physical descriptives. While this usage may seem impersonal and antiseptic, it is not insulting or demeaning.

This is not to say that the two words cannot be used in such a way:

One of the most disturbing things you can discover, is that some female who you don’t even know has been flirting with your man. The truth is that you should not blame the man, as it may not be his fault. — “Women Who Flirt With Unavailable Men,” Totally Her Media (UK)

The next defining influence on my life was feminism. Its first glad morning, in the mid- to late Sixties, was thrilling. Here were women (not girls) who were no longer content to attach themselves like limpets to some male; who wanted to forge their own lives and earn their own mortgages; who thought — no, dammit, knew — they were as good as men. — Angela Lambert, “Beware the march of liberal thought police,” The Independent, 5 July 1993.

In social contexts, reducing a man or woman to either gender or the purely physical can be demeaning, but not always so:

The New Man was once a radical way to describe a male who wholeheartedly accepted equality in domestic life. — “Whatever happened to the term New Man?” BBC News, 30 Jan. 2014.

Curiously enough, while addressing a male as “man,” in either slang or more formal English, is neutral without further context, addressing a woman simply as “woman” is always patronizing and insulting:

“Now see here, woman,”he said. “I don't know who you are, but I assure you that I have nothing but this boy’s best interests in mind.” — Greg Funaro, Alistair Grim's Odditorium, 2015.

Klingons

Klingons have the distinction of being the only Star Trek humanoids adequately represented in a Google N-Gram, but even here, Klingon man does not appear, which means the term returns less than 40 hits. Klingon woman, however, is by far the most represented:

This suggests that for writers in the Star Trek universe, Klingons are by default male; females have to be specified:

This was, after all, a young Klingon woman. He supposed Kalrind would be considered attractive by a Klingon. In fact, Kirk could even see her attractiveness, if he made the effort to see her face as a Klingon would. — David Dvorkin, Timetrap, 1988, 43.

Though the Romulans have a fairly egalitarian — though fascist — culture, Romulan woman is the only term that shows up in an NGram, suggesting the same male default.

Klingon female appears in the purely descriptive sense, as half of a male-female behavioral pair, or simply as a synonym:

When a Klingon female wishes to divorce her mate, she simply declares “N 'Gos tlhogh cha! ” Translation: “Our marriage is done!” Oh, and then she belts him ... — Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Q's Guide to the Continuum, 1988, 38.

A Klingon female would address someone as maqoch only if she intended to insult him or her. A Klingon male with any honor at all would never address a female as maqoch. The word maqoch itself may derive from may' qoch (literally, “battle partner”), so perhaps it originally meant something like “war buddy.” — Mark Okrand, Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, 2011.

Kira frowned and turned back toward the older Klingon female. — Day of Honor (anthology), 1999, 298.

The first two examples are drawn from non-narrative works where the use of male and female give the passages the air of cultural anthropology, as if the Klingons were some jungle tribe “discovered” in the 19th c. While this usage, then and now, may betray cultural bias, it is free of affect, which, of course, makes it all the more insidious when applied to real people rather than inhabitants of a fictive sci-fi universe.

Man and woman refers only to members of the species Homo Sapiens. It is not a generic gender term that can apply to other species.

Further - because the Klingon world is made up, and we don’t know their language, then the writer is not able to say, for example ‘Vardikon’ for ‘Klingon male’ and ‘Komptree’ for ‘Klingon Female’ - as we don’t know those Klingon words - for ‘woman and man - in Klingon’.

And, if the author decides to teach us those words, there’s quite a lot s/he has to write. Which then doesn’t work if a reader dips into a later section of the book - having missed the explanation.

So that’s why the author is probably using ‘Klingon female’ and ‘the male’ etc.

It’s not derogatory in English.

It can be used to artistically emphasise aspects of gender - say, to contrast - for example ‘the female stood before him, battered, frail, bloodied, as the giant raised his hand...’ Contrasting her as ‘weaker’ in comparison to ‘the giant’ by emphasising her gender. Also potentially making a broader statement about ‘womankind’ at the same time.

The thing is that ‘woman’ and ‘man’ refer to ‘humans’, not to Klingons. Only humans can be ‘woman and man’. Man-man and womb-man - woman.

If you used ‘female’ in a more mundane situation like ‘the female shop assistant came up to me and she said...’ then that’s ok and not derogatory. It might be used to differentiate her from, say, ‘the male shop assistant’.

Man - ‘ a member of the species Homo Sapiens...’

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/man?s=t

There's a specific reason this formation is used in Science Fiction --it's meant to emphasize the alien nature of the speaker, and the fact that the speaker and human beings are of different species. It's a deliberately distancing and dehumanizing/depersonalizing locution, an oft-used writer's shorthand to denote an alien perspective.

Given that, you wouldn't use it in ordinary conversation. It would typically be insulting in English, just as it is in German.

With that said, there are exceptions. "Females" is sometimes used as a playful equivalent to "women" in contemporary black American slang, but usually only if the speaker is male. Also, as @KarlG indicated, it can be used in institutional or scientific descriptions (perhaps because of the depersonalizing effect, and perhaps to avoid the numerous additional connotations of "man" and "woman").