I know this is an English-speaking website so we are primarily talking about English here, but since we are at... There are also languages (my native Czech for example) which are rather lacking in gender-neutral terms. In fact, it is impossible to say a lot thing in gender-neutral in Czech. Masculine gender is in fact used as as neutral of sorts.
Edited by Risa123 on Jan 23rd 2023 at 7:01:05 PM
And mind you, this is only the English language were are speaking about, when it comes to even more gendered languages like Spanish it's pretty difficult to use gender neutral terms without it coming off as awful sounding.
Not to mention the backlash that comes from trying to adopt gender neutral terminology from other languages.
Spanish also has that issue, and it also runs into the problem that gender neutral terms are seen by some as an imposition by the anglosphere.
Edited by raziel365 on Jan 23rd 2023 at 10:03:14 AM
Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, maybe we should try to find the absolutes that tie us.Same in Welsh; gendered words are male or female and if you need to go neutral or non-binary, you default to masculine. There is no gender-neutral "teacher", for example; you can say "male teacher" (athro) or "female teacher" (athrawes), but if you want to say "teacher without reference to gender", athro is the word you use.
Edited by Wyldchyld on Jan 23rd 2023 at 7:17:45 PM
If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.Portuguese is also impossible to be gender neutral.
Specially since the "gender neutral sounding word" is an entire different word with a different meaning.
Porto, porta and porte; male, female, neutral; Port, door, carry.
As an example.
Inter arma enim silent legesFrench is in a weird place. Except for a handful of gender-neutral words (or more accurately, words with identical forms for masculine and feminine), gender is always marked in writing (and like in other Romance languages, the default gender is masculine). But due to our funky phonology, the difference is not always heard.
I know Filipino is a gender-neutral language, since it was a Spanish and American colony, it had some occupations where there are no native words to describe it or because the native counterpart is too wordy and/or archaic, and had to use Spanish or English loanwords.
For instance, employee is "epleyado", engineer is "inhinyero", lawyer is "abugado, actor is "artista", even though it applies to any gender. Yet, in occupations that are traditionally and/or stereotypically genderded, "nars" (nurse), "weyter" (waiter), "guro" (teacher) are applied to any gender. To any other (genderd) occupations, it has been changed to more native gender-neutral terms like "kalihim" for secretary.
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I just wonder when will sexism be just as socially unacceptable as racism or homophobia?
Including when women call other women "whores", "sluts", the b-word, etc?
Intended to embody the Beware of Vicious Dog trope plus Super-Speed. Yup.It already is. Or do you think people just suddenly stopped being racist and homophobic?
All three are still serious problems.
Edited by M84 on Feb 14th 2023 at 9:58:52 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
I consciously made it a habit to adopt gender-neutral terms since childhood as part of my own personal beliefs in egalitarian feminism. It's honestly not that difficult for a lot of young folks to modify their speech, but you're absolutely right about the clunkiness when it comes to character limits. Although, singular they is infinitely preferable to the then-popular he/she/it formulation.