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Non-sexist language (gender-generic, gender-inclusive,
gender-neutral, or sex-neutral language) is language that attempts to refer neither to males nor females when discussing an abstract or hypothetical person whose sex cannot otherwise be
determined. The goal is to keep the language as inoffensive as possible, similar to the idea of political correctness.
Examples
One might state, "Tomorrow I will meet my new doctor; I hope he is friendly."; however, unless one is certain that the new
doctor is a man, advocates of non-sexist language generally argue that it would be
better to state, "Tomorrow I will meet Dr. Smith, who I hope is friendly." (Critics would point out that this example is rather
contrived, since non-defining relative clauses are extremely rare in everyday speech. The person in this example would be talking
like a book.)
A business might advertise that it is looking for a new chair or chairperson, rather than a new chairman, thereby implying
that only a man would be acceptable for this position. Most advocates of non-sexist language would see it as unobjectionable to
refer to a man in such a position as a chairman, provided that a woman would be referred to by the equivalent term
chairwoman.
Likewise, if a woman states that she is dating someone; a system of non-sexist
language might deem it inappropriate to ask her, "Who is he?"; rather, one should ask, "Whom are you dating?" to allow for the
possibility that she might be dating a woman. Such language is an attempt to avoid heterosexism.
Common positions
Views among advocates of non-sexist language are spread over a wide range, from passionate argumentation in favour, to
consistent use in their own speech and writing, to occasional use. However, most people simply decide for themselves whether or
not to use it in their writing.
A great many people have no opinion on non-sexist language and make no special effort to avoid what advocates may describe as
sexist language. However, many terms advocated or proposed by advocates of non-sexist language, such as Ms., firefighter, or he or she, have entered the common lexicon (in some cases, before
advocacy of non-sexist language began), and may be used by those who do not have any particular feeling about the subject.
Still others regard non-sexist language as revisionist, as promoting poor or heavy writing, excessively "politically correct," or simply a cosmetic change that does
nothing to actually repel sexism. They may consciously refuse to use forms of speech advocated by promoters of non-sexist
language. See below.
History
Many of the modern masculine terms in Modern English in use today originated as gender neutral terms in Old English. For
example, the word 'man' was originally gender neutral and qualified to specify male or female. While the male qualification died
out, the female wíf (which produced woman) survived, leaving 'man' with both its original gender-neutral
meaning (people), especially in compounds such as "mankind", and its gender-specific meaning, male.
Both Ancient Greek and Classical Latin show a similar process for anthropos and homo respectively. Both of these
words mean "man in general" or "human being"; as in the modern "anthropology" or "homo sapiens. For "male human
as opposed to female human", there exist the separate words aner and vir, from which we get "virile". The
modern descendants of the Latin homo such as French
homme, Italian uomo, Spanish hombre are specifically male; while in Romanian om is gender-neutral.
It should be noted that the Latin root of "human" is not homo, but humus, earth, which carries a feminine
grammatical gender.
Awareness of the social effects of language was largely a 20th century
phenomenon in the English-speaking world, and has been linked to
the development of the Principle of
Linguistic Relativity by Benjamin Whorf and others. However, a
program to rid Norwegian of sexist presuppositions dates from
the mid 19th century and remains an ongoing part of Norwegian culture.
Add later history here
Disputed issues
There are a wide range of disputed issues in the debate over 'non-sexist language'. Are there inherently sexist language
forms, and if so, what are they? If they exist, should they be changed? If they should be changed, how should this be
achieved?
Are some uses of language inherently sexist?
Advocates of 'non-sexist language', including many feminists, argue that
traditional language fails to reflect the presence of women in society adequately. In general, they complain about a number of
issues:
- Over-use of what they consider to be exclusively gender-specific pronouns like "he".
- Use of "man" to refer to all people.
- Over-use of gender-specific job titles.
- Use of Miss and Mrs. (see Ms.).
- non-parallel
usage, such as "man and wife".
- Stereotypical words such as virile and ladylike
Advocates of 'non-sexist language' see various problems with these uses:
- They marginalize women and create the impression of a male-dominated society.
- They can be patronising, for example treating women only as marriage material
- They can perpetuate stereotypes about the "correct" way for a man or woman
to behave.
Opponents of non-sexist language do not accept these arguments as valid.
- Some regard the whole thing as "political correctness
gone mad", as the 1980s British satirical
show Spitting Image ridiculed it.
- Some people believe that while these usages may, on the surface, appear gender-biased, in practice most people think of them
and use them as gender-neutral.
- Some people disagree with feminism and argue that men and women differ enough
that these differences are rightly embedded in the language. In this context, see masculism.
- Grammatically speaking, "he" and its derivatives are often used for gender neutral purposes
A deeper variant of these arguments involves the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the suggestion that our language shapes our thought processes and that in
order to eliminate sexism we would do well to eliminate "sexist" forms from our
language. Some feminists dismiss the effectiveness of such a suggestion, viewing 'non-sexist language' as irrelevant
window-dressing which merely hides sexist attitudes rather than changing them.
Enforcement, persuasion, or evolution?
A tiny minority of advocates for non-sexist language argue that these "sexist" usages should be banned. It is unclear how this
would be achieved. Hate speech legislation does exist in some countries, but
applies to much more clear-cut and widely accepted cases of perceived prejudice. Many editing houses, corporations, and
government bodies have official policies in favour of in-house use of non-sexist language. In some cases, laws exist regarding
the use of non-sexist language in certain situations, such as job advertisements.
The majority of advocates for 'non-sexist language' wish to proceed by persuasion rather than enforcement. One tool of this
persuasion is creating guidelines (see below) that indicate how they believe language should be used. Another tool is simply to
make use of 'non-sexist language' oneself, and lead by example.
In addition to those who oppose any change, some opponents of 'non-sexist language' argue that a change in language should
evolve organically from changing public attitudes towards gender issues, rather than be achieved either by enforcement, or by
persuasion.
Neologising
While some terms, such as firefighter and singular
they, are sometimes denigrated by opponents as neologisms, they in
fact have a long history that predates the beginning of the women's liberation movement. At other times new terms have indeed been created, such as Ms. or womyn. The issue is confused by satirists who invent extreme examples of the
supposed consequences of 'non-sexist language', such as epersoncipation.
Some critics accuse advocates of non-sexist language of "re-gendering" language, replacing masculine in some cases by feminine
terms that are equally sexist. Other critics argue that non-sexist language violates the rules of proper grammar and style.
Some critics claim that words like "he or she" are not real English words, for they only exist in print, not in speech. In
print it is easy for an editor to employ rules of non-sexist language, but speech is practically impossible to control. People
simply don't use words like "he or she" in their everyday speech; instead they use "they" or "he". Only the most determined
reformer would actually use "he or she" in a casual conversation.
Guidelines
Many different authorities have presented guidelines on whether, and if so and where, to use 'non-sexist language'. Wikipedia
is not a style guide, so we present a selection of such sources here.
Many dictionaries, stylebooks, and some authoritative guides now counsel the writer to follow the new guidelines.
These guidelines, though accepted by many, remain in some contexts controversial, and are applied to differing degrees among
English speakers worldwide. often reflecting different cultures and language structure, for example American English in contrast to British English. They are also impacted upon, depending on whether a person uses English as their first
language or as a second language, regional variants or whether their form of English is based on grammatical structures inherited
from a no longer widely used other language (for example, Hiberno-English) or owes its linguistic structure to earlier Old English or Elizabethan English. In these
cases, language structure from their native tongue or linguistic inheritance may enter into their terminology.
Non-sexist language in other languages
The situation of 'non-sexist' usage is very different in languages that have masculine and feminine grammatical gender, such as French, German, and Spanish, simply because it is impossible to construct a gender-neutral
sentence the way it can be done in English. For example, in French, the masculine gender supersedes the feminine; la femme et
l'homme (the woman and the man) has the pronoun ils (they-masculine).
Accordingly, most of the focus has been on more concrete problems such as job titles. Due to the presence of grammatical
gender, the strategy is the exact opposite of that of English: creating feminine job titles rather than eliminating
them. This is based on the idea that it is insulting to call a woman (for example) le médecin (the (masculine) doctor),
as if she changed sex or became somehow more mannish when she went to work.
Esperanto
Esperanto is accused of being inherently sexist, because the generic form of nouns
is the same as the male form and different from the female form. E.g., doktoro = "doctor (male or unspecified sex)",
doktorino = "female doctor"; also doktoroj = "doctors (male, mixed male/female, or unspecified sex)",
doktorinoj = "female doctors". (This use of -in to form the feminine of nouns is reminiscent of German, e.g. Maler, Malerin = "painter".) Likewise for
pronouns: as in English, li ("he") may be generic, whereas ŝi ("she") is always female.
To some critics, this aspect of the language makes the implication that masculinity is some kind of default, and femininity is
an exception. The feature is particularly irksome to English
speakers, since the corresponding suffix -ess is much less used in that language.
Defenders reply that this asymmetric treatment of male and female is not a feature of Esperanto, but only a general feature of
most European languages. In each Romance language, for instance, grammatical genders are assigned to all nouns — even to
unsexed objects, or in opposition the biological sex (as authorité = "authority" in French, guardia = "policeman" in Italian, and virildad = "masculinity" in Spanish, which all have feminine gender). In fact, given the arbitrary assignment of grammatical gender,
Romance and German speakers generally do not make the sexist assumptions claimed by the critics. Viewed in this broader context,
argue the Esperantists, "sexist language" is shown to be a matter of cultural assumptions and interpretations by the speakers,
not of the language per se.
Moreover, since Esperanto does not inflect adjectives for gender (as most of those languages do) it is in fact an "unsexed"
(technically, gender-less) language. Indeed, it has become acceptable in Esperanto to use doktoro even to refer to a
female doctor, a custom that is compatible with the standard grammar. Thus doktorino only needs to be used to emphasize
femaleness; and some have even proposed the use of virdoktoro (literally "male-doctor") when one wants to emphasize
maleness. As for the pronouns ŝi and li, one can use the neutral tiu ("that one") instead. The
alternative ŝ/li is also used, but it has the same problems as "s/he" in English, though it is easier
pronounceable. Some users also use neologisms such as ri as a gender-neutral pronoun.
External links
Finnish
Finnish has only gender-neutral pronouns (it totally
lacks grammatical gender). The word "hän" is completely gender-neutral and means both "she" and "he". Suffix "-tar" or "-tär" can
be added to some words (mostly professions) to "feminize" the word, for example näyttelijä (actor) -
näyttelijätär (actress), but this is fairly uncommon. Also you can always use the basic word for both genders
(näyttelijä for male and female actors).
It has been argued that Finland has been a pioneer in women right issues because
it has no gender-specific pronouns: for example, it was the first European country to give women the right to vote. However, international studies show that Finns are not any more
unprejudiced than users of any other language.
French
See also the French version of this article
In French, feminine job titles are created by adding -e
(l'avocate), -eure (la docteure), -euse (la travailleuse), -esse (la
mairesse), or nothing in some cases such as -iste or -logue (la psychologue). More generally,
"non-sexist" styles can include the use of brackets or capital letters to insert feminine endings (étudiant(e)s or
étudiantEs) or repeat gendered words (toutes et tous, citoyennes et citoyens).
Words that formerly referred to a dignitary's wife (l'ambassadrice) can be used to refer to a woman in that position;
this, like other "non-sexist" forms, is much more common in Quebec than in France. Although the marriage titles have mainly dropped out of use, many cite the possible
confusion as a reason for continuing to use such as Madame le Président or Madame l'ambassadeur. For this
reason, these remain the most frequent, at least in France. (On the other hand, an ambassador's husband would not be Monsieur
l'ambassadrice.)
German
In German, creating a feminine job title is usually done by adding
-in to the word in question. For example, the general term for computer scientist is Informatiker. The male
form is unchanged: Informatiker. The female form, however, is distinguished by adding -in, giving
Informatikerin.
Job descriptions in job adverts are usually formulated addressing both sexes (Informatiker oder Informatikerin).
Sometimes a form of contraction with capitalization inside the word is used ("InformatikerIn"), which is considered by some
people as a corruption of the language, especially if it is overdone by creating feminine forms of gender neutral words (for
example a German feminist who called a group of non-feminist women Arschlöcherinnen - female assholes). The use of
slashes is commonplace, too, such as in Informatiker/in.
German has three third person nominative singular pronouns: er
(male), sie (female), and man (either). Man is frequently used in general statements, e.g. Man kann nicht hier parken -
"One cannot park here." This pronoun man is distinguished from the noun Mann (capitalized and with two n's),
which means "male adult human".
German has distinguished forms of pronouns for her and him. The use of pronouns is non-discriminatory since it distinguishes
both sexes in a consistent manner rather than marking only the feminine as is done with job titles.
The traditional phraseology of the language reflects a domination of the male over the female, as in many other languages.
There are fixed phrases where the male form comes first, such as man and woman (Mann und Frau). The use of Fräulein to address young women is very uncommon these days, but it lacks a male
counterpart. While "herrlich" ("Herr" means Mister, Sir, Lord, or God) has the meaning of marvellous, magnificent, lordly, or
splendid, "dämlich" ("Dame" is a formal term for Lady) means "stupid, silly".
Comment: You should not over-interpret different possible translations of one word into English. This works in both
directions. The different English meanings of "Herr" are never confused in German. And "Herr"->"herrlich",
"Dame"->"dämlich" is just a wordplay, but in reality it does not have any real meaning.
External link
The Swiss weekly newspaper WOZ - Die Wochenzeitung
edits all published articles to non-sexist language.
Hebrew
In Hebrew, which has a high degree of grammatical gender,
virtually every noun (as well as pronoun of second and third degree) is attributed as either masculine or feminine. Therefore,
there are laws constituted in Israel that require job ads to be written in a non-sexist
form, often with a separator '/' (e.g. "dru'shim/ot", "maz'kir/a") to explicitly proclaim that the job is offered for both males
and females equally.
Hungarian
Hungarian does not have gender-specific pronouns
and lacks grammatical gender: referring to a gender needs explicit statement of "the man" (he) or "the woman" (she).
"Ő" means "he/she" and "ők" means "they". Hungarian distinguishes persons and things, as you refer to
things as "az" (it) or "azok" (those).
Korean
Korean, like other languages in East Asia, does not use pronouns
in everyday language, because the meaning is clear in the context. In case of confusion, there are pronouns to clarify the
position, but normally the actual subject (person) is used rather than the pronoun. As for job titles, these are not
gender-specific. Again, the meaning is normally clear in the context.
Spanish
In Spanish, it is usually quite easy to change an -o to
an -a, or to add an -a to an ending such as -or (la camarera, la doctora). Other
endings can be left alone or changed (la juez but la alcaldesa). -ista is left alone. (One problem is
el policía, "police officer", since la policía means "the police force". The only useful feminine term is
la mujer policía.) A fashion current in Spain is to use the at sign (@) to
replace -o or -a, especially in political writing (¡Ciudadan@s!)
Tamil
Tamil has a gender-neutral form for the third-person plural, which
is also used for the third-person singular in all formal communication. Most job titles are derived from this form as they are
mostly used in a formal context. They are thus gender-free.
Turkish
Turkish is a gender neutral language, as most other Turkic
languages. Nouns are in generic form and for both males and females and this generic form is used. For example:
Doktor (doctor), eczacı (pharmacist), mühendis (engineer) etc.
The Turkish equivalent for he, she and it is O. For example:
- O, gece yürümeyi çok seviyor. (He/she/it likes walking at night)
- Onu çok seviyorum. (I love him/her/it so much)
There are a few exceptions, where it is mandatory to provide gender (because of the nature of the foreign word origins):
- İş + Adam + ı = İşadamı (Business + Man = Businessman)
- İş + Kadın + ı = İşadamı (Business + Woman = Businesswoman)
There are very minor exceptions, which are constructed from native Turkish words after 1900s:
- Bilim + Adam + ı = Bilimadamı (Science + Man = Scientist)
- Bilim + Kadın + ı = Bilimadamı (Science + Woman = Scientist)
Please add more languages and examples.
See also: gender role.
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