Ginmar writes up a possible draft of the Liberal Feminist Conspiracy Agenda.
And I guess she found it fun to write it once, because then she wrote it again.
Both versions cracked me up. Here’s a small sample:
13. Use the word ‘she’ instead of ‘he’ all the time. See how that feels. Also? Try using the word ‘enclosure’ instead of ‘penetration’ and see how that rocks your world. Try ‘womankind’ isntead of mankind. Cope. God knows, we have.
14. Loud car stereos will be outlawed and offenders will get their stereo confiscated. Then they will have to bag up all the leaves in my yard as punishment.
15. Abstinence only will become the fate of repressive twits.
16. Divorce will become easier to do. Marriage will be harder to do, and will require classes.
17. For a few years, you get to deal with having 520 female members of Congress deciding your fate and see how you like it.
18. School teachers will get combat pay.
19. Nice guys will no longer be able to self-identify. There will be standardized tests.
There’s lots more – you should go read both posts.
first: rock. I kick ass on standardized tests. I might move up from “lovable crumudgeon” to “that sweet guy everyone assumes is gay for no appearant reason.”
second: assuming Ginmar shows up to read these comments, is there a way to donate liquor money? there seemd to be quite a few “that I’ll think up when I’m drunk” and I’m curious to see what they end up being. and if you already got drunk and thought them up, then hey, free booze for being clever. and not in the creepy “I want to have sex with you” sort of free booze.
also, I’d love porn with a plot and romantic tension.
one last query: said something about guys wearing tights and codpieces or something? is a kilt ok? kilts are awesome, and I never get to wear mine.
I’m pretty sure I’m a nice guy by anyone’s standard.
I’m a cold, antisocial hermit by anyone’s standard. I’m not an asshole when I interact, but I don’t interact enough to actually be “nice.” But that’s what the Internet is for!
I like the idea of “enclosure” instead of (or, better yet, in addition to) “penetration,” (though when I thought of it, I thought of “envelopment” instead of “enclosure.”) I think some Sarah Hoagland-style feminists took the linguistic fact that we call it “penetration” rather than “envelopment” to mean that men are intrinsically the active party, and that there could not be egalitarian heterosexuality, etc, etc.
How ’bout, “the current op-ed slots of David Brooks, Tom Friedman, and John Tierney will go to Amanda Marcotte, Linsdsay Beyerstein, and Angelica Oung.”
Ginmar practically said all of my own personal musings on gender socio-politics. Brilliant, yet wonderfully snarky list, Ginmar.
The English language needs gender-neutral pronouns… badly. “he or she” and “they” don’t cut it…
wait. why doesn’t “They” cut it? I like They. I’ve been using it for years (he or she seems forced and akward, and just generically using either gender seems odd)
There is “ze,” and “hir,” which are gender-neutral, but they haven’t caught on with many people. They’re like genderqueer Esperanto. I just use they, too.
I love number 12 on the revised list: From now on, if you debate, you must have a reasonable facsimile of a cite. If you call somebody a ‘feminazi’ therefore, you must provide photos of the resultant death camps. Ah, if only such a rule could be enforced.
And as someone who had grammar pounded into her head from a young age, I detest the usage of ‘they’ when it’s used where a singular pronoun should be. It’s just not an adequate replacement for ‘she’ or ‘he.’ There’s nothing wrong with using ‘one’ as a gender neutral pronoun.
I think Piny and Karpad are right about the use of ‘they.’ It sounds right to most people and is easily understood. I use it a lot and I think its use is increasing all the time. I expect everyone will find it acceptable soon.
Some people probably dislike using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun because they think it is a new idea that started with the twentieth century women’s movement. It isn’t, it is a very old use of the word that goes back to the Middle Ages. Examples can be found in Jane Austen, Shakespeare and plenty of other writers. I don’t know why teachers of grammar are so against it.
Acallidryas suggests using ‘one.’ Sometimes ‘one’ sounds fine and works well. I think if you use it a lot, though, you will end up sounding like Prince Charles.
I actually don’t much care for the use of the word ‘they’. I just find it cumbersome for some reason.
Kilts are great! I just forgot about them.
Glad you liked it.
Number 14 caught my eye. I blast techno on my car’s stereo. It’s never loud enough for me. You can hear me coming four blocks away. I guess I’d better get out my rake and head for Ginmar’s backyard. ;)
I write stories with erotic content that have both plots and romance. I just had two more stories accepted, and I’m getting paid for them. I had no idea I could write erotica, but apparently I’m pretty damned good at it. Erotica is fun to write. I’ve had five stories accepted so far.
I sometimes get stuck having to use the word “they” when either “he” or “she” is not appropriate because the gender of the person isn’t identified. I hate that because I know it’s grammatically incorrect. I’ll start using “one” now. I knew about that one but forgot about it.
Trish, you’re so bubbly over those stories, I’m sure my yard will be cleaned up in no time. :)
Yeah, just as a matter of clean writing, ‘they’ has issues, and I just don’t like cumbersome substitutes. When you really need to specify gender, there’s obviously nothng wrong, but when you’re including both genders, then you should use ‘they.’
This is a holdover from when I first got told that the word ‘mankind’ somehow included women. Uh huh. Sure it does. This was reinforcd by all my textbooks, which pretty much featured only men with the occasional token female in there somewhere. The message was: Girls never did squat.
In Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy coins the gender-neutral term “per,” as in “person.” It’s my favorite substitute for he-or-she, but I don’t think it’ll go anywhere.
This totally cracked me up.
“per” suffers from much the same problem as other words coied by intellectuals. it SOUNDS like it was coined by an intellectual, which means it’ll have a hard time catching on memetically.
it’s like that thing with “brights” as a term to replace the nubulous group of nonreligious.
“they” has a linguistic background as being a singular neutral for humans. it tends to work pretty well.
I never liked the term “mankind” anyway. “Humanity” always seemed so much more useful AND more poetic (hu-man-i-ty. scans much better. also carries specific implications of positive aspects like compassion, sympathy, and connecttedness.)
The main issue with ‘they’ is that a lot of people don’t like it and will snark when you use it, or say it’s ungrammatical. It’s not ungrammatical — that was a rule someone made up when grammar books were all the rage in the 18th century.
If you just don’t like it, fine; there are all sorts of grammatical constructions that I just don’t like. But this dislike shouldn’t be elevated into something bigger than a stylistic preference.
“They” was indeed the accepted singular, gender-neutral pronoun in English for a very, very long time. It was replaced by “he”, not by natural language evolution, but by an act of the British Larliment (Sometime in the 1800’s I believe. I’m too lazy this morning to go look it up.).
“They” is grammatically correct in my book. When someone gets snarky with me, I tell them that as an American I don’t accept the authority of the British Parliment to regulate my language. Why go inventing new prounouns instead of reverting to the traditional, PROPER, use of the one we already have?
Trish, there are many differences between writing erotica stories and making pornography. I point this out because several times on blogs recently I have seen people specifically speaking about pornography and you replying (in defence?) with talk of your erotica writing, as if talk of the two are synonyms and what you’re doing is just like making pornography. It’s very much not the same, but more interesting to me is the way you keep mashing the two together as if they are interchangable. Doing so implies that crtitiques of the mental, physical, and medical dangers inherent in the making of porn, aka prostitution films, are equally ‘countered’ with words written from the complete safety of your home and at zero risk to you.
I guess I’d just appreciate it if when people are discussing filmed prostitution you didn’t bring in your writing for magazines as if making pornography is just like making writing instead of it being real-world people really prostituting with their real-world bodies exposed to real-world pathogens and really getting hurt in the process.
ginmar, very cool list and very funny.
Loud music: the sin and the punishment are one.
You-all who hate extra-loud music can console yourselves with the (true) reflection that in only a very few years, certainly before the person is 30, the person inside the offending car (or apartment) will be unable to hear anything at all without high-tech hearing aids. I kid you not. This practice destroys your hearing.
And even the highest-tech aids (as in, very expensive) are also very imperfect.
“Hey, there, Former Jerk! How are ya?”
“Huh?”
“HEY THERE YOU!!!”
“Huh?”
Of course, when you’re surrounded by the people who play extra-loud music, the consolation might be lessened by the knowledge that they are also destroying *your* hearing. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
wolfangel, I feel you with that. And if they destroy their hearing, they’ll just turn it louder. What I like about the ones in my neighborhood is that they whine that they’re being persecuted while they’re making my windows rattle.
I don’t tend to see women doing this much, so I think it’s another power issue. When they try and whip out the, ‘It it’s too loud, you’re too old thing,” I just use Freud:
“f it’s that loud, your dick must be this small.”
My ex-neighbours certainly did it as a power issue, as they would *leave it on* when they were out of the apt and our landlord was out of town. (I make exceptions for the occasional — very occasional — party which has been mentioned in advance. Not for cars, absolutely not for cars in cities/traffic.)
That is, however, a great response, which I hope I will never ever have the chance to use.
I don’t buy the appeal to “tradition.” “Thee” and “thy” are “traditional” words, but they’re basically considered unacceptable in contemporary American society. And try throwing the word “faggot” into a conversation about bundles of sticks, or use “gay” to talk about how happy you are. Definitions change; words change. We can talk about making “they” more popular, but just because it once was doesn’t mean it is now.
I’d much rather use “he or she” than “they.” “They” doesn’t make sense, and it makes my grammar-happy brain cringe. “Someone dropped their sock in the road”–ick.
Hey, we already have a singular gender-neutral pronoun: it. (http://www.m-w.com even defines it as, “a person or animal whose sex is unknown or disregarded.”) Why not use that?
“per”? suffers from much the same problem as other words coied by intellectuals. it SOUNDS like it was coined by an intellectual, which means it’ll have a hard time catching on memetically.
I don’t understand what this means. “Per” is a made-up word. “Skeevy” is a made-up word, too; does it sound “intellectual,” and if not, what’s the difference? What about “quiz,” which (if the rumor is correct) was made up by somebody who just wanted to see if he could get people to use an invented word? What about phrases like “global village,” which was made up by an identifiable intellectual?
Trish- hate to jump on you, but PLEASE turn your music down! Remember, others like to hear their own music, or NPR, so now that I may or may not have the attention of one of those bafflingly clueless people (sorry) who think it’s ok to force other drivers and the neighborhood to hear their music, I just have to ask. Please.
Katherine:
I didn’t know this! And I thought I was so smart.
“Some people probably dislike using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun because they think it is a new idea that started with the twentieth century women’s movement. It isn’t, it is a very old use of the word that goes back to the Middle Ages. Examples can be found in Jane Austen, Shakespeare and plenty of other writers. I don’t know why teachers of grammar are so against it.”
I use “they” with a little defiance because, as I always say, grammar rules and dictionaries are mirrors, not laws, and must reflect common usage after time.
It’s not usually used on humans (except, sometimes, fetuses and very small children), only on things and animals. In part because of that, it is extremely rude to use “it” on actual gendervariant/ambiguous people; I don’t know any who consider it acceptable use. It has a conspicuous history of consciously offensive use–Sheriff B. Laux called Brandon Teena “it” while taking Brandon’s statement about the rape he suffered shortly before he was murdered.
One solution, no less cumbersome than any of the others, is to simply use the person’s name over and over and over. I know it’s a pain in the neck, but it works.
Of course, I don’t really know if it’s different in other parts of the country; I’ve never seen it in print, though.
Well, I was being a little snarky. If “they” is OK even though it refers to a lot of people, then “it” should be OK even though it refers to things and animals–especially because it technically refers to a person.
I wrote a post but it got lost. I’ll repeat it when I have time.
I don’t care much about the grammatical pedigree of either term; I’m not one of those “language is free like a butterfly!” people, but…once most people say it, the horse is out of the barn. “They” already is really popular.
If “it” weren’t insulting to some people, and if there weren’t already human-specific gender-neutral third-person singular pronouns, I wouldn’t mind it. But since it’s not okay with the group most likely to have it applied to them, and since they are more likely to use “ze” and “hir,” I’m not.
And I think that it is important that the common lexical definition of “it” is a non-human thing; that means that using it on someone implies that they aren’t properly human.
Someone pointed out earlier that They for an individual is used by Shakespeare, which makes it by definition grammatically correct:
first rule of english grammar. If the Bard does it, that’s the correct usage.
anyone who says something along the lines of “you know, Lady MacBeth really should have said ‘Woe is I'” deserves a punch in the head.
While I don’t get the “violently ill” reaction, I have had the sensation when stuck in traffic next to a car booming bass enough to register on the Richter scale, that it does affect my heart rhythms and make my heartbeat skip or beat irregularly. It’s a weird and creepy feeling.
If grammatical rules are going to be discussed, the dictionary does consider ‘they’ referring a single person as a ‘usage problem,’ and according to dictionary.com, more than 80% of their assuredly distinguished panel would consider such a use of ‘they’ to be unacceptable. Since it’s not unanimous, I guess this means that it can be a stylistic decision. But I say if this usage of ‘they’ as a singular pronoun was so rampant and disruptive to the good of society that an act of Parliament was passed stop it, we should respect this decision.
I still prefer ‘one’ as a gender neutral pronoun, although just for the heck of it it would be fun to only use the default she and see the reactions I would get. Considering all the politely condescending remarks I would get for changing ‘man’ or ‘mankind’ to ‘humankind’ or ‘humanity’ in all the group papers I worked on throughout college, I can’t imagine using ‘she’ as a default would go entirely unnoticed.
A part of me agrees with that, but another part cringes to think of a time when people will freely say ‘nucular’ and it will be considered correct.
I’m reminded of one of the reasons I don’t like going to clubs and bars much — often, the music is so loud it’s painful, and I have trouble listening to the music.
I remember once going to a show at the Berkeley Square in which the music was so loud that I couldn’t actually distinguish the sounds. It would have been nearly literally true to say it was so loud I couldn’t hear it.
I really don’t understand why the music’s so damned loud.
“One” is not a pronoun. I suppose if one so desires, one can certainly use it as such, but one would be wrong, and one’s sentences would be rather annoying. It is basically like using someone’s name over and over, except that “one” is an unnamed person.
This is slightly tangential, but I have come up with an alterative to the “Ms.” title that would respect equality while preserving some semblance of tradition. I try to call unmarried men “Master” so-and-so whenever I can remember to. This is of course the equivalent title to “Mistress” (as it was formerly used) which is now abbreviated as “Miss.” Therefore, women are Miss or Mrs. and men are Master or Mister, depending on marital status.
I think if people can get a new title for having extra education, then men and women should both get one for taking part in the (hopefully) educational and maturity-enducing commitment that is marriage.
re Master/mister: Well, that is the whole butler speech pattern that I occationally throw around in daily conversation because, well, I’m weird. I like messing with people’s heads by doing things that’re unexpected
And fuck parliment. I don’t recall anyone saying that the use of the singular they was disruptive to society. As far as we know, it’s a Victorian era masculine power trip thing. they pulled crap like that all the time. And it’s the legal system of a different government. I’m not obligated to follow a law of a country I don’t live in.
there’s a perfectly good reason to use “they” as a gender neutral singular: because in any situation where you’re talking about an unknown person, you may very well be talking about more than one.
ie: “someone broke into my house, and they may still be here.” or “person X got into a car and they drove off.”
and this tangent has come up before, so you tell me which sounds more akward and forced:
“Did your mother or your father break their leg on your ski trip”
“Did your mother or your father break his or her leg on your ski trip”
granted, that comparison originally omitted “or her” and was used as a proof that “he” is not a gender neutral pronoun (thanks amp)
“Someone broke into my house, and they may still be here” and “Did your mother or father break their leg on your ski trip” sound really, really wrong.
I would never go around correcting people’s grammar; it’s very obnoxious, not to mention ineffective. But I refuse to believe that the plural “they” is ever acceptable with a singular subject, no matter how “popular” it may be. Boo “they”!
When someone gets snarky with me, I tell them that as an American I don’t accept the authority of the British Parliment to regulate my language.
first rule of english grammar. If the Bard does it, that’s the correct usage.
So, wait: Do we contemporary Americans let British English influence our language, or not? (I vote no on all counts.)
I don’t use it in formal writing. But if it’s really popular, than it doesn’t sound really wrong to very many people. All of the alternatives discussed here–“ze,” “it,” and “he, she, or ze,” sound really wrong to most people I’ve used them in front of, for various reasons.
So let’s review:
1. The use of male gendered singular pronouns for persons of uncertain gender is irritating and sexist.
2. Several gender neutral singular pronouns have been proposed, but none have caught on.
3. “They” is often used as a gender neutral singular pronoun, but this is often rejected as ungrammatical.
4. Using “they” as a gender neutral singular pronoun was considered grammatical in earlier usage.
5. “The meaning of a word is its use,” said Ludwig Wittgenstein.
In short, we’ve already got a familiar word, widely used as a gender neutral singular pronoun, and which has been used that way for centuries. Seems to me we’ve got a solution.
The solution is to switch to “she” for the neutral. It’s time has come.
First, Ginmar: awesome post! :o)
Second, a comment about blasting music. When I was a teenager, I and some of my friends once drove around blasting Classical music. Does that count as bad? (We were a wild bunch – let me tell you!)
Third, about language: I’ve heard a proposal to use “hu” as a gender neutral term.
Examples:
He/She – Hu
His/Hers – Hu’s
Him/Her – Hum
Although there’s still the awkwardness of it being a “totally new word”, at least it’s based on the word “human”, so it’s better than “ze”. Also, it’s very close to the existing gender pronouns, so it’s better than something like “per”.
I think there would still be some difficulty getting people to use it commonly, but a good place to start would be in legal documents or in laws, where the lack of gender neutrality is much more likely to be a serious issue anyway.
Example: “The leasee agrees that hu’s stereo should not be blasted over X decibals after hours, and that if hu does not comply, we will serve hum with an eviction notice.”
Once legal documents start using something like that, I can imagine it becoming more and more acceptable in formal writing, and then finally filtering down to more everyday usage.
Anyway, “hu” wasn’t originally my idea. I read about it a long time ago on soc.feminism. But it made me think “hey, this is really possible” more than any other idea I’ve ever read about gender-neutral pronouns.
And if that doesn’t work, I’m totally willing to go with Amanda’s idea and just say “she”/”her”/”women” for everything.
Oh, wait. The other idea would be to use “amp” as a gender neutral pronoun.
I remember on soc.feminism when no one knew if ampersand was a man or a woman. At least I didn’t know for sure. Only after a while did I start to figure it out.
So it would totally make sense to say: “I don’t agree with all of amps views, but I still respect amp. Amp is quite the feminist.”
;o)
I’d like to point out, as well, that we’re idly debating three potential uses: a third-person singular for general statements, people whose gender is unknown, and people whose gender is known to be ambiguous.
I vote for making the default pronoun ‘she’—I think I said that in the list. Let’s see how that particular shoe feels on the other foot. I hate loud stereeos for a really simple reason: they’re rude. There’s absolutely no reason one should have to hear the word ‘bitch’ at op volume at 7 AM unless one works in a kennel.
we let the bard dictate english grammar, not parliment. the bard gets control because he invented modern english.
I don’t mind using she as the default pronoun, just I’m already using a gender neutral pronoun.
my general behavior is they, but omit when able.
for example refering to an infant: “how old is (pronoun of guess)?” becomes “how old is the little dear” or just “how old?”
and for note: This is without a doubt the strongest I have disagreed with many of you in… ever. If I were pope, and this became an issue, I WOULD be willing to cause a scism and declare a crusade against the “he or she” users. I would excommunicate the “hesayers” as heretics and all sorts of evil things.
I really, REALLY believe in the truth of the They-sayers.
“They will not feel fear
fear is the mindslayer
fear is the small death that brings total annihilation.”
of course, I may just be in a weird mood, as most of the evening has been discussing kidnapping a friend and setting him up on a blind date, as I promised to get him a date before he got out of college, and I fear I may be a fae folk, who will shrivel up and die should I fail to keep a promise.
I have no evidence to the contrary, so best to play it safe.
Way back when I was in college, I used to advocate use of the male pronoun for all persons, regardless of genitalia, chromosomal pattern, or legal gender. After all, the masculine is supposed to be the generic, isn’t it? So why not really make it so? I’m a he, you’re a he…we’re all hes here. What the hell do we need gendered pronouns for, anyway?
For some wacky reason, though, this argument used to make a lot of people really uncomfortable and angry.
Of course, I’m very nearly as happy with the idea of making ‘she’ the One True Pronoun. Makes little difference to me. Except, you know, that ‘he’ is one letter shorter.
I just sorta randomly alternate between “he” and “she” as the gender-neutral singular. For something really short, you may just use it once, but for most situations, you’ll be using the gender-neutral singular more than once, so you can switch off. To avoid confusion, it’s best to keep the pronoun used consistent within a single “scenario:” i.e. don’t say, “if someone wants to walk across the room, she will move his legs to propel her body across the room if he is capable of moving her legs in such a manner” if the “she,” the “he,” the “his,” and the “her” all refer to the same person. However, if you say, “if someone wants to walk across the room, he will move his legs to propel his body across the room if he is capable of moving his legs in such a manner. If someone does not want to walk across the room, she will not move her legs in such a manner unless her legs are operating independently of her desires,” then it’s pretty clear in terms of keeping the “someone” clear without being biased, IMHO.
I guess I’d just appreciate it if when people are discussing filmed prostitution you didn’t bring in your writing for magazines as if making pornography is just like making writing instead of it being real-world people really prostituting with their real-world bodies exposed to real-world pathogens and really getting hurt in the process.
So if I write really sexist, hateful, sexually-explicit fiction it’s ‘erotica’ because no actual bitches are getting pimped out righteously in the making of the process? Or is it just that Trish isn’t capable of deciding what the right term for her own writing is? Geeziz. I write erotica, you read sexually explicit material, she reads porn.
“They” works fine and I don’t particularly care if it makes people snark. 99% of snarkers end their sentences with prepositions and you can nail them rightbackatcha on that one.
It’s just that ‘they’ makes me think uncomfortably that’s it’s a wee bit too neutral. It makes me think of that sentence, “It puts the lotion in the basket…”
The whole point the Secret Feminist Conspiracy wants to switch ‘she’ for ‘he’ is so people who think that it somehow includes women can get a taste of their own medicine.
Why must you pick needless fights, mythago? I think I made the significant differences between words written and people prostituted clear in my original post.
Woo, I started a discussion! XD
I thought neutral was what we wanted. I thought the trouble was treating male gender as assumed in contexts in which gender ought to be irrelevant.
actually, I think the point was to make certain members of society very uncomfortable all of a sudden when their particular sexist standards get fucked over and mess with their heads.
because the international feminist conspiracy(c 2005 ginmar) isn’t about equality. it’s about revenge for years of putting up with that jackass from accounting. Equality is the internation feminist movement. but feh on them. equality later. revenge now.
Why must you pick needless fights, mythago?
If you’re going to disagree with Trish’s phrasing, I don’t think you have much standing if I then disagree with yours. The definition of “needless” is not “any disagreement not started or endorsed by Samantha.”
The whole point the Secret Feminist Conspiracy wants to switch ‘she’ for ‘he’ is so people who think that it somehow includes women can get a taste of their own medicine.
Try sentences on them like “Every mother should breastfeed his child” or “Each ballerina must purchase his own shoes.” They’ll wave their arms around and say THAT’S DIFFERENT because clearly you’re talking about women! Well, gosh, you reply, since “his” and “he” are gender-inclusive, and refer to both men and women, why can’t you use them for an all-female group? (If you are lucky, their heads will actually blow up, a la Scanners. I long to observe this phenomenon.)
I got into fights in a lot of classes about this. “Everyone loves his mother”, they’d say, and I’d say, no, that’s not grammatical with the bound pronoun reading (except in the context of a boy-only group, but let’s ignore that). Well, the reason it’s ungrammatical is irrelevant, the *point* is about binding, so can you get an interpretation where for each person, that person loves his mother. No, I would say: this is ungrammatical. (It is, actually, for me. And the reason my feelings mattered so much is that often there were 2 native English speakers in class, including the professor.)
It never occurred to me to give the breastfeeding example, though I wish it had.
I did notice that, in general, people under 20 had the same intuitions as I did: he is just plain ungrammatical as the gender-neutral. (I’m making a vast generalisation on age, here. But it’s more or less accurate, though it leaves out large numbers of adults who feel the same way.) Which means that this is a change that has, mostly, finished happening: there are still fights going on about whether the gender neutral is he and/or she (but not, apparently, she and/or he) or they, but it’s not just plain he.
I wonder what speakers of languages in which every noun has a gender have to say about this sort of thing.
AFAIK, most of them are not like the European languages and do not have male or female genders, just human and a bunch of non-human genders, so presumably this problem does not come up as such.
It was European languages I was thinking of. In Spanish, for instance, you have gendered definite articles, and almost all nouns are either “male” or “female,” and take a gendered definite article. That seems like a bigger problem for gender issues in daily language than we’ve got embedded in English, and I wondered how speakers of those languages try to deal with the problem.
I do not know of any movement to change the general pronoun from il(s) in French, or of any arguments similar to those in English — though of course their 3rd person plural are also male/female. You can use “on”, though.
AFAIK, if a language has gender which is related to male/female — again, lots of languages don’t: gender means kind in these languages; the association of syntactic gender with male or female (or neuter) is very European — it uses masculine as the default.
Brian: I’m not quite sure what you’re meaning. Actually, in Spanish, the whole thing in English about using supposedly gender-neutral “he” vs. other alternatives is in some ways not as much of an issue.
Firstly, when you’re referring to a sort of unversal, general human, you probably use the word “persona” which is feminine anyway. You’d never do as you would in English and say “man”–“hombre” definitely means a male adult person. You could say “human being” (“ser humano”) which is masculine…..but again that sounds really stilted for just everday speech. Or you can talk about “people” (“la gente”).
Also, Spanish is a pro-drop language, which means that when the personal pronoun is the subject you often don’t use it at all. For example, you wouldn’t normally say, “Yo soy de Canada,” but just “Soy de Canada”. Finally, the 3rd person pronouns (damn, or are they adjectives?) for “his”/”her”/”their” are the gender-neutral “su”/”sus”.
As for the inanimate objects having gender–ok, I’m sure there are historically sexist reasons for all that, but as a modern speaker you in no way think of, say, a book having “masculine” qualities just because it’s “el” or a table being in any way “feminine” just because it’s “la”–even when you’re referring to them as “él” or “ella”. To be honest, thinking about it in those terms is trying to impose an English-speaker’s conception of language onto Spanish-speakers….or in fact the speakers of a number of languages. From what I understand, English is about the only European language that doesn’t have gender for nouns.
However, I do know that some feminists in France had concerns over sexism in French, but since I don’t speak it and don’t know the idiosyncracies of its grammar, I can’t say why that would be.
Crys T, that’s pretty much what I was asking about.