Gender Neutral English and French

[-1=e^ipi]

This thread is to discuss making English and French (and maybe other languages) to be more gender neutral in order to help avoid confusion, be more convenient and to be more inclusive.

Right now in English it is very inconvenient to always write things like him/her, she/he, etc. and many aspects of our language are unnecessarily gendered (policeman, mankind, even the fact that woman is two syllables and contains the word man is arguably not gender neutral). Not only is it inconvenient, but it creates confusion when addressing people with ambiguous or unknown gender. The current situation isn't very inclusive of gender non-binary individuals.

I made a poll for preferred English gender neutral pronouns; please select your preferred option. There have been many attempts to construct gender neutral pronouns for English, although none of the options are commonplace currently. You can read about the justification for different gender neutral pronouns here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns#Summary.

In many cases, moving towards gender neutral language is relatively straightforward (usage of police officer instead of policeman, usage of humanity instead of mankind, etc.). However in other cases it is less straightforward. The words woman and female contain man and male and are two syllables rather than 1. This arguably subconsciously gender conditions people to think that women are secondary to men or that women are less convenient then men. Maybe use something like fem for female or woman (which would be similar to the french word femme and would be just as compact as man).

With respect to how to move society to more gender neutral words, I suggest getting enough support to elect a government that favours gender neutral language and wants to legislate gender neutral language as acceptable English in government institutions. However, don't force people to use gender neutral words if they don't want to (since that is authoritarian and will turn people off), simply make it an acceptable option for those that wish to (it will also help that there is a common standard for gender neutral language). Over time people will use gender neutral words in situations where it makes sense.

French is even worse. The language is intrinsically more sexist than English. It contains gender associations everywhere by assigning genders to nouns that should have nothing to do with gender, be it le stylo, l'honneur, la lâcheté, la porte, etc. Not only that, but feminine endings are generally longer than male endings, which subconsciously suggests to the user of the language that women are secondary and inconvenient. Then you have cases where ils is used to describe a group of males and females as well as il being used to describe the state of the world such as il pleut. This again suggests that maleness is the norm and females are secondary.

There are ways to make french more gender neutral. For example, getting rid of female word endings, replacing le and la with lo (which is linguistically between le and la) and using words like on instead of il or elle. Modifying french to be more gender neutral not only has the advantages I mentioned for English, but also makes the language easier to learn for non-Francophones, which means that there will be more people able to speak French. I'll end this post by providing a random link to someone's suggestion on how to make French more gender neutral. https://www.duolingo.com/comment/4186240

[Canada_First]

This is political correctness run amok. I mean seriously. This is going overboard.

[-1=e^ipi]

This is political correctness run amok. I mean seriously. This is going overboard.

There are benefits to gender neutral language such as convenience, that are unrelated to political correctness.

Also, political correctness becomes a problem primarily when political correctness becomes more important than correctness (example: people thinking criticism of Islam is racist).

Edited July 9, 2015 by -1=e^ipi

[Bryan]

The first two answers in the poll are the same thing. They/their/them as singular neutral is the status quo. And it's perfectly fine.

This is political correctness run amok. I mean seriously. This is going overboard.

Making up NEW pronouns? Yeah, It's really nutty. Fringe lunatic nutty.

[Moonlight Graham]

(...even the fact that woman is two syllables and contains the word man is arguably not gender neutral).

....

The words woman and female contain man and male and are two syllables rather than 1. This arguably subconsciously gender conditions people to think that women are secondary to men or that women are less convenient then men.

I don't understand this logic. You can just as easily make the argument that "man" and "male" as words are taken from a part of the words "woman" and "female", and therefore males are shown to be inferior to women/females because males only shown to be only a faction of what females are. You're finding things that aren't even there.

French is even worse....Not only that, but feminine endings are generally longer than male endings, which subconsciously suggests to the user of the language that women are secondary and inconvenient.

This is ridiculous. How do longer endings suggest women are "secondary"?

[-1=e^ipi]

You can just as easily make the argument that "man" and "male" as words are taken from a part of the words "woman" and "female", and therefore males are shown to be inferior to women/females because males only shown to be only a faction of what females are.

Yes you could also make that argument. Although that argument would still result in the words subconsciously biasing perception of gender.

You're finding things that aren't even there.

Maybe.

[-1=e^ipi]

Right now I'm leaning more towards using they as a singular pronoun. Colloquially it is already used as a gender-neutral third person singular possessive pronoun. Though I think that in order for it to work, you need to conjugate they with singular forms of the verb to help avoid confusion and make it feel more natural as a singular pronoun. For example:

"My friend Sam was talking to a group of undergraduate students. They is funny." vs "My friend Sam was talking to a group of undergraduate students. They are funny.". In the first case it is clear that Sam is funny, which helps reduce ambiguity.

[Wilber]

I can see the point in removing "man" and "woman" from occupations that aren't gender specific but other than that, what's the point?

How is a waitress somehow inferior to a waiter? The term describes an individual, not a status but if you really want to make it gender neutral, what's the matter with plain old waiter? The word itself implies no gender at all. How is a "server" somehow superior to a waiter? How is waiter sexist and actor not? Should we call all actors, pretenders? Actor seems to suit both genders just fine.

Who are the PC brain surgeons who waste everyones time with this nonsense?

[Michael Hardner]

Yes actor has now supplanted 'actress'