yup, struggle session time
edit: no one is right, everyone is wrong :^)
edit 2: this post is actually dedicated to Amy Goodman, please stop trying to sound cool grandma
yup, struggle session time
edit: no one is right, everyone is wrong :^)
edit 2: this post is actually dedicated to Amy Goodman, please stop trying to sound cool grandma
All I gotta say is thank god the two languages I speak, German and Russian, are not widely spoken in the US so our attempts at doing gender inclusivity aren't met with American struggle sessions about imposing American values on the world. For the record, in Austria the usage of the Binnen I is exceedingly common in both leftist circles and is becoming pretty common in wider society too. With the Binnen I, instead of writing "students (m) and students (f)" as "Studenten und Studentinnen", you write StudentInnen. People also often include non-binary people by using a "gap", writing Student_innen or Student*innen. It's been a thing since the 1980s, gradually increasing in popularity.
I don't speak Spanish and am not part of the community so obviously I'll defer to others about latinx vs latine. No dog in that fight. I just wanted to express solidarity because all the Anglos in the thread talking about the imposition of English language norms, like the rest of us can't come to the idea that using gender neutral language is beneficial to women and queer people ourselves, is infuriating.
EDIT: Oh no oh no, fucking Anglos making the city write RadfahrerInnen (cyclist (m/f)) on a sign , poor us!!!
Ahhh, German checking in to get you the struggle session you deserve, I have problems talking about non-binary people in German when they're not there or don't speak German. Obviously when they're available one could always just ask them, but what pronouns would one use for people who use they/them pronouns? "Es" - "It" seems pretty dehumanising. Or how would one refer to a non-binary doctor? Arzt and Ärztin are both heavily gendered, and there is not really a neutral term.
I've been following the discussions and tbh I don't think there's a consensus yet. Same with non-binary people in Russian - a non-binary person I follow on Twitter uses он/а [s/he], I've seen someone else use оно [it], which yes comes across as dehumanising to me as well but if that's what they prefer I can't yell NO YOU CAN'T!! at them. I think some people just continue using he/she, or prefer people to switch within a conversation. I don't really wanna do a struggle session about it because I'm not non-binary lmao, again I'll just defer to them. I'm sure as acceptance spreads, one form will win out eventually, as it always is with language.
My point is simply that these conversations are taking place in non-Anglo communities - it's not like every non-binary person has given up on German/Russian and decided that being non-binary is an Anglo imposition.
I've seen struggle sessions that we shouldn't use it to refer to plants/animals as they have rights or whatever, and so there should be another separate new pronoun for non-human flora and fauna
Animate/inanimate noun class distinctions aren't unheard of in language, but I don't think they'll manage that one haha. Afaik flora typically fall on the inanimate side too. Maybe if they advocate for it as part of a push for veganism, anti climate change, animal rights.
It still wouldn't be the weirdest thing in the history of English pronouns. I'll never be over English borrowing they/them from the Norse. It's extremely uncommon for languages to borrow function words (pronouns, prepositions, etc), it's very interesting that they/them stuck.
The natural solution along these lines would be Ärztx, right?
The natural solution is Ärzt_in :) Can't diss the usage of x when some of us are putting in underscores
But you can't even pronounce that. You already have that in Spanish since before I was even born
Sometimes pronounced with a glottal stop for the underscore
Well you still have the problem which is that it implies you can only be an Ärzt or an Ärztin. So it's inappropriate for enbys. Example
No? You don't pronounce Ärztin (f) with a glottal stop. So Ärzt_in (nb) with a glottal stop differentiates it and makes it non-binary. I'm not saying this is the most perfect solution that everyone should stick to, but it is a possible solution.
Sure it is, it's made from bits from the two gender terminations, so if you can make that case in Spanish you can make that case in German.
So? Every community reaches their own decisions regarding what they consider acceptable in their own language. German has three grammatical genders (male/female/neuter), in contrast to Spanish, so the starting point is different anyway. Kinyarwandans have 16 different grammatical genders/noun classes, I'm sure they could also make lots of different arguments about our struggles but that's neither here nor there.
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.
How?
How?
Every community decides on their own how they'd like to be gender neutral. What works for German may not work for Spanish, what works for Spanish may not work for German. My point is that "you can make that case for Spanish" is irrelevant for German, and vice versa. "Ärzt_in" is what the German speaking community is tending towards finding acceptable.
Re neuter making a difference (imo): it's because then not only are you trying to include enbies, you're very consciously trying to avoid making enbies neuter, as that's typically associated with inanimate objects. It's "der Arzt", "die Ärztin", but you probably don't want it to be "das Arzt[nb-suffix]". So you start playing around with gaps, male-female combos, etc. What's the determiner situation in Spanish? Maybe I'm wrong and you have the same problem.