Women's Issues

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.

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

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

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.

French 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.

CDC reports unprecedented level of hopelessness and suicidal thoughts among America's young women

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?

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

I was thinking about posting this in the Sexism thread, but this thread is probably more appropriate:

So I was browsing through my local library where I found a copy of We Should All Be Feminists, a book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which stopped me dead right on my track.

I first heard of this book few years ago, during my very shameful anti-SJW/Alt-right phase, and dismissing it as a "feminist propaganda trash" (again, I was a dipshit).

Now though, I became a lot more aware of the existence and harmful side-effects of toxic masculinity/patriarchy. So I checked the book out and will definitely give this book a fair chance.

...Also, the book is really short so I can pad my "number of books I read this year" list.

Edited by dRoy on May 3rd 2024 at 10:27:57 PM

Also, am I the only one who thinks the Girls vs. Boys Plot should be seen as just as absurd as a hypothetical "White people vs. black people" episode?

Edited by CosmosAndChaos on May 6th 2024 at 3:39:47 PM

I agree.

Edited by Risa123 on May 6th 2024 at 8:44:29 PM

I mean, if it's in a kid's show and the whole point is that it's absurd...

I actualy agree myself.

Would you be okay with a white people vs black people episode in a kids show? Absurdity isn't really an excuse.

Edited by Imca on May 7th 2024 at 3:49:47 AM

Its basically how some places only hire black people to create a "safe working environment"

If you twisted that around to say white people only, well...You get why its so much worse sounding.

I'll say that society tolerates a division between genders that it does not with race.

For example, in my school there were competitions of boys v girls, you would not do this with black and white.

There also tends to be tolerances for safe spaces or organizations meant to uplift politically marginalized communities compared to the majority. Having woman's or people of color organization or scholarship is more socially accepted than say a white-only scholarship.

My point was it's a way to tell kids that it's wrong. Which I've sadly seen too much evidence that it's not obvious.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on May 6th 2024 at 3:03:15 PM

And the point is that it really shouldn't because it is often used as a justification to exclude girls from activities.

Yeah the division into teams for an activity often quickly turns into a division of activities, and then you’re down the path of assigning people sociable roles based in gender rather than preference or capability.

The culture also carries into workplaces, boys vs girls at office social events is a manifestation in adults and just results in exclusion, especially towards people who aren’t gender-traditional and naturally socialise more with another gender.

Put simply, why should a man who mainly has female friends or a woman who mainly has male friends be forced onto a team with non-friends just because they share a gender?