'Françaises, Français': Why the French language need not be so sexist

[Klaralven]

Last edited Thu Feb 25, 2021, 12:55 PM - Edit history (1)

Opponents of gender-neutral writing have opened a new chapter in their battle to leave the French language “uncorrupted”. But experts say their rearguard action is neither backed up by history nor suited to present times.

After stirring heated debates about “Islamo-leftism” in universities and meat-free meals in school canteens, France’s ruling party has fallen back on another cause célèbre of the conservative camp: defending a status quo in the French language that is unmistakably sexist.

On Wednesday, lawmakers from the ruling LREM party and the opposition Les Républicains tabled a bill calling for a ban on the use of gender-neutral text – known as “inclusive writing” – among government officials and civil servants.

The move comes three years after a government memo warned ministers against using écriture inclusive, which the Académie française, France’s overwhelmingly male-dominated language watchdog, had previously bashed as an “aberration” that places the language in “mortal danger”.

https://www.france24.com/en/culture/20210225-fran%C3%A7aises-fran%C3%A7ais-why-the-french-language-need-not-be-so-sexist

[MineralMan]

1. The C-circumflex does not show up in thread titles.

Most accented characters do not.

It does appear in the body text, however.

In French, nouns have gender, and so do adjectives. It will be very difficult to change that in the language. Probably impossible, since it is an integral part of the language itself.

Is the language sexist? Not really. It is the language itself that has genders for virtually every noun and adjective. That will be impossible to change, I think.

[Klaralven]

3. Put in a regular C to make the title more readable.

Guess the titles are not Unicode?

English is unusual for a European language in not having gendered nouns with matching adjectives, adverbs, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_type_of_grammatical_genders

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. workaround for the cedilla

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1256&pid=18006

ç

[Klaralven]

11. Thank you!

[DarthDem]

4. Not quite the debate

Last edited Fri Feb 26, 2021, 02:34 AM - Edit history (1)

No one's proposing changing the language, which would indeed be pretty much impossible. It's just a question of special usage to be more inclusive of women, because (as you may know) when the language refers to a mixed-gender group (i.e., such a group does something or is addressed), masculine plural pronouns are used. DeGaulle remedied this by addressing the populace as "françaises, français," noted in the title of the piece.

[MineralMan]

6. Well, it is sort of changing the language.

And the French are very, very protective of the language, with an academy dedicated to keeping it "pure."

English is far simpler with regard to gender in language. However, even English has a habit of using masculine pronouns with collective groups. We're trying to get rid of that, but it's difficult even with a non-inflected language like English.

We're using "they" and "them" now, but that's difficult to standardize.

Ridding a language of patriarchal usages is very, very difficult to accomplish, since countless millions of people use the language constantly, properly or not.

Even in our most revered documents, masculine forms are widely used to represent all people, regardless of gender. "All men are created equal..." for one example. In historical documents, changing "men" to "people" isn't going to happen, although it probably should. So, the change will be gradual and halting. Altering language is a very difficult process, and requires people in general to stop using old forms and usages. It also requires careful rewriting and forethought to maintain a smooth flow of writing.

As a professional journalist and writer, I've been very careful in my writings to avoid gendered pronouns and many collective nouns for decades. Sometimes, that has required careful rewriting to work around common usages. In the 70s through the 90s, it was difficult to get non-gendered language past my editors, who wanted to revert back to traditional usages, but I persisted. Eventually, I became more skilled at writing naturally without using gendered pronouns. I got less and less blowback from editors over time, as acceptance of non-patriarchal forms became more and more common.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

19. It's strange to see the somewhat new practice of using "they" and "them" as singular.

Gender is neutralized, cardinality is ignored.

The few pronouns seem to be the only gender-specific parts of English. Nouns are mostly neutral, except for relation nouns like aunt, uncle, mother, husband.

If you can write without gendered pronouns and not make it seem "forcibly hip", you're a better writer than me (a low bar).

[MineralMan]

21. A lot of it is just using plural nouns, so you can use they and them.

"Think of your customers like family members. They will become more loyal over time."

Instead of:

"Think of every customer like a family member. He/She will become more loyal over time."

Pluralizing lets you avoid the masculine and feminine pronouns.

"Users, subjects, visitors, guests, anglers, drivers, pilots, etc."

That's just one of the easier tricks.

Use non-gendered labels exclusively. "Servers, staff members, clerical workers, etc."

Once you start doing that, it becomes second nature as you write, so you don't have to edit to remove gendered language.

[Emrys]

26. To be pedantic (in keeping with many of the replies to this OP!), singular they/them is not new.

It dates back to the 14th century (the link will tell you probably more than you ever wanted to know about the issue). There were setbacks in its acceptability thanks to the prescriptive grammarians of the 18th century, but it has a long history of usage, more heightened nowadays amid increased sensitivity to self-identification and gender identities.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

31. I bow to your pedanticism. Who'd'a thought to look to the 14th century?

Forsooth, my Chaucer membrance retreats to the fog of age.

Well done!

[Act_of_Reparation]

8. Impossible to change?

English used to be grammatically gendered.

[MineralMan]

9. Not in the same way French is.

English is very broadly a non-inflected language. However, it does use some gendered pronouns. It's much easier to change the use of a few pronouns and replace words like "waitress" with "server" and so on than it is to change the gendered grammatical structure of a language like French. And yet, we're having plenty of trouble eliminating gender-related words, even in English.

For example, the cat is le chat in French. All cats are les chats. A kitten is un chaton. Obviously, though, there are male and female cats. You could, perhaps, refer to a female cat as la chatte, which makes structural sense in that language. However, la chatte is already in use, as a crude word for "vulva." So, if you try that in Paris, you will be thought to be rather ugly with your use of the language, and you will be misunderstood.

Gender in inflected languages is structural, rather than indicative of the sexual characteristics of a noun. And, since the language is highly inflected, adjectives also reflect the gender of the noun.

English has no such structure, and has not had since the days of Chaucer. Even then, such structures were rapidly going away.

[Act_of_Reparation]

59. I'm not talking about Modern English.

Old English was highly inflected. Modern English is not. Ergo, languages can change.

[MineralMan]

60. Languages change constantly, through usage.

They tend not to change, however, through prescriptive rules. American English, for example, in 1776, sounded somewhat different, used different spelling, and more. However, the language of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence is easily understood in 2021 by Americans.

On the other hand, word meanings have changed, or not changed. "All men are created equal" is generally understood as meaning "all human beings are created equal." However, in a historical sense, women and men were most definitely not treated equally at the time those words were written. The writers of the Declaration could have written, "All people are created equal," but they did not write it that way. They did not envision equality between men and women. So, we have a misunderstanding of word meanings and historical intentions.

As English developed from being a primarily Germanic language, it lost its inflective nature. Since English absorbed words from French and other languages, the rules of those other languages did not fit into English usage, so the inflections slowly faded away. We still have plurals like "oxen," as remainders of earlier roots. Pigs are animals. Pork is meat. Swine is an animal classification and is both singular and plural.

Usage changes languages. English is a pidgin or creole language, really, It is a loose assemblage of words, grammar, and other factors from many languages that works best as a non-inflected language. People spoke it as they spoke it, and that became what the language is, over time.

Non-gendered pronouns will emerge with usage, but it will take a very long time for them to become universally used by everyone in the same way. Until then, they will sound awkward to our ears and violate the "rules" we have absorbed through learning the language from childhood. A couple of hundred years from now, we will think nothing of that, and the language will have changed through usage.

I can read Chaucer's English. I cannot read the English of Beowulf without struggling. We all can read Shakespeare's English, but many people find that English to be a bit of a slog as well. We understand that "choose" was spelled "chuse" by our nation's founders, but it looks odd to us now. The letter we now know as "f" used to look very different. Once we know that, we can read freely, but it can be confusing until we know that.

Languages change very slowly. It takes generations for them to change universally. It's interesting, but only academically, really.

[Hortensis]

32. American "equalization" is simpler and in most uses is simplifying

on the masculine form for both sexes, as in "Congressman Ocasio-Cortez." While in France the current push is apparently the other direction.

Gender differences are real and wonderful, and I've always thought them mostly charmingly associated with nouns and adjectives. I've forgotten most of my high school French, though , and it's all too easy to imagine not all translate to the modern era inoffensively. Hopefully only those will change.

On the subject, English really needs a gender-neutral singular form of "they" and "them." The dehumanizing "it" just doesn't work, so "they" and "them" make do as "singular" third person pronouns when referring to a person. Wincingly, and yuck! How on earth was this deficiency not made up centuries ago?

[Miguelito Loveless]

2. I was wondering when this particular aspect

of languages was going to become a problem. Personally, I have never understood the need for nouns to have gender. That said, it is going to be a Hell of a battle to change, and to be honest, we have WAY more pressing issues.

[Emrys]

5. "Gender" in linguistic terms is just a semantic/grammatical label.

German, for instance, has three - masculine, feminine and neuter, taking the articles der, die and das and with adjectives and the case system needing to agree according to rules that native speakers internalize and we who learn it as a second language have to consciously and laboriously memorize.

Grammatical gender is not necessarily related to physical gender. A table in French is feminine. Girl - Mädchen - in German is neuter because the diminutive ending -chen (and associated modification of the preceing vowel) always renders a noun neuter.

From reading the aritcle, this doesn't seem to be the issue. If you speak French to a native speaker and mistakenly use "le" (masculine) as the article for a feminine noun (instead of "la" ), they'll probably immediately correct you as it's illiterate/non-standard. I don't think the proposal is to abandon grammatical gender. English, as one example, went through this transition in its development and became effectively a different language, and French without gendered nouns would also be a different language.

It looks like the controversy is more around problems that are not unique to French. "Man" is used to refer to a male in English, but also mankind, and some have objected to this over the years. Some years ago there was a drive in America to replace some gendered job terms with ungendered ones - firefighter instead of fireman, for instance, and this was a matter of law in certain contexts.

English has ungendered plurals, French doesn't, which is one aspect that is being challenged, if you read the article. I remember wandering along a French country lane with my wife a few years ago. We passed a few roadside cottages with women outside, two groups of which greeted us with a cheery "Bonjour, mesdames." I wasn't sure at the time (still haven't been able to find out, in fact) whether I was being misgendered or whether they had a local dialect way of overcoming the lack of an ungendered plural form - formally, it should have been "Bonjour, messieurs," which is one of the issues being disputed in the controversy being reported here.

[MineralMan]

7. Yes, but the gendered nature of languages has an unconscious impact.

English also has three genders, really. So does Spanish, Russian, and many other languages.


In English, for example, "he" or "she" can often be replaced with "one." The same applies in French, with "on". On the other hand, using the ungendered pronoun, "it," will generate blowback if you use "it" to refer to a person. While it sounds stilted, to some degree, it is an accurate way to replace those two gendered pronouns.

We are learning to replace gendered nouns, like stewardess, with neutral nouns, like flight attendant. The process, however, is slow. People are slow to change "waitress" or "waiter" to "server" and "mailman" to "carrier." The use of language is a habitual thing. We speak (and write) almost unconsciously, using the language we learned as children. Changing those things comes with great difficulty.

[Emrys]

12. It does, but in modern English, gender isn't embedded in the grammar as it is in French.

In this case highlighted by the OP, it's more a question of what is considered the default usage.

I've even seen some feminists object to the term (or conventional spelling) of "woman/women" , preferring "womyn" in some cases, as culturally implying that woman is a subset of the term "man".

You're a writer, I'm an editor. In our fields we've probably had to pay more attention than most to these issues.

Various resources have addressed this issue, such as Casey and Swift's Handbook of Nonsexist Writing from way back in 1980, which I've used in the past when working with publishers that were particularly sensitive to these issues or gave we copy-editors the leeway to try to address them. As I noted above, it wasn't a matter of premature "wokeness", much as it was resisted by some authors ("they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun is still something we have to approach with care depending on an author's preconceptions and taste), because some of the usages were set by statute in the US and so were important to observe for a modern American audience.

I therefore have sympathy with the French moves to modernize usages, though I don't know what success they'll have. As you've observed above, France is unusual in having the Académie Française as an official arbiter of proper French usage. Its main focus has been opposing the all-pervasive influence of English in loan words, seeking instead novel French words that have Francophone roots, so it's by its very nature conservative.

But in the end, language is about what people actually speak and write as opposed to sometimes arbitrary rules cooked up at various points by various influential individuals or authorities over the years - the prescriptive versus descriptive tension in linguistics.

[MineralMan]

14. Yes. Writers and editors have to pay a lot of attention to usage.

I used to review word processing software for PC World as part of my job as a freelance contributing editor. I was a tough reviewer, and actually tested every aspect of the software, unlike many who just rewrote press releases about new versions. That was what PC World expected, so it was what I delivered.

The second year of reviewing Microsoft Word for Windows 2.0, I took a look at the program's thesaurus feature, new in that version. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but I tested the words "man" and "woman" as part of the review. For "man," Word had dozens of synonyms, all positive. It included words like "boss, manager, hero" etc. For woman, though, it had only a few, including "wife, secretary, nurse, mistress," and several other words with negative connotations.

So, I included screen shots of those entries in the published review of the software, called them out as sexist, and gave the Editor's Choice to a different program. Microsoft was not amused, and shot off nastygrams to the magazine. I got called by the panicky publisher of the magazine. I explained that it was all part of my thorough review, and an accurate representation of the feature. I referred to the list of synonyms for "boy" and "girl" offered by the software, as well, which were just as egregious. Microsoft argued that they had purchased the thesaurus information from a third party. I shrugged and answered with, "It is what it is. Screen shots don't lie."

I kept my job. Microsoft got a new thesaurus supplier for the next release. Such was the power of freelance reviewers back in that time.

[Happy Hoosier]

15. True... did you know that...

English had gendered nouns into the Middle Ages?

Old English was gendered similarly to German, which, indeed, it is descended from.

With the development of "Middle English" in the Middle Ages, many nouns became neutral, but some retained a gendered sense until the Renaissance. If you read Chaucer in Middle English (late 14th c), the grammatical gender is almost entirely gone.

Anyway.... that was a useless fact I know and felt the need to share!

[Emrys]

24. Add it to the pile of more or less useless facts I contributed myself above!

Old English also had a case system, like related languages such as German - nominative (naming), accusative (direct object), genitive (possessive) and dative (indirect object).

Most English users won't be aware of the remnants of cases in modern English unless they've studied formal grammar (or another language which uses them).

One remnant of the case system that's problematic for some is who/whom. Widely read people or those who've been exposed to a lot of Standard English will instinctively use the correct form in a given context, classically:

- who (nominative)
- whom (accusative)
- whom (dative)

Arguments about the "correct" usage abound, and who/who/whom can also be acceptable (and there's little more jarring/failed pretentious than somebody using "whom" inappropriately), to the extent that as English develops further, "whom" is likely to disappear (indeed, authorities like Fowler seem to entertain this possibility).

[Happy Hoosier]

13. As someone learning German.... it's a pain in the ass! NT

[Emrys]

25. Recite after me:

FUDGEBOW

DUGFOBE

*twitch*

[WhiskeyGrinder]

27. Interestingly, it's not "just" a semantic/grammatical label.

In gendered languages, the gender influences how a person thinks about the noun, even if it's inanimate. A study found that when asked how to describe a bridge -- I can't remember if it was just the concept of a bridge, or if they were shown a photo of a bridge -- native French speakers tended to use adjectives that were considered more masculine, such as strong, solid, forceful. In French, the word for bridge, le pont, is masculine. Native German speakers were more likely to use more feminine descriptors -- such as graceful or pretty -- and die Brücke is considered feminine.

[Emrys]

30. Yes, there are nuances there.

I was trying above to avoid the possibility of the thread getting bogged down by confusion over grammatical versus physical gender, which seemed a possibility at the start.

This Psychology Today article discusses some of the issues you raise: "Masculine or Feminine? (And Why It Matters) Gender in language affects cognitive processing" (it's German versus Spanish in the experiment cited).

Whether and how much it matters touches on issues of whether being either masculine or feminine is in itself a good/bad thing, and that's a wider (and potentially thornier) cultural question. Being aware of these aspects can hardly be a bad thing, though.

What you've described has similarities to other unconscious effects of language, like the "bouba-kiki" effect.

[treestar]

51. Interesting. In Spanish it depends often on

whether a word ends in a or o. So the table is La mesa and the coat is el abrigo. So which comes first? Is the table feminine because mesa ends in a? Or is the table feminine, so that's why it is la mesa rather than el meso. And why is a table feminine?

War is la guerra, which goes against the grain if the noun has some inherent relationship to the gender.

[Silent3]

16. Speaking of language issues, the phrase "tabled a bill" needs to die

It means the exact opposite in British English as it does in American English: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_(parliamentary_procedure)

...confusion that arose between American and British military leaders during the Second World War:

...A long and even acrimonious argument ensued before both parties realized that they were agreed on the merits and wanted the same thing.

[tritsofme]

41. Funny, I did not realize this until the last year or so, with debates over Brexit legislation.

I was confused AF for the longest time while following what was happening in Parliament.

[Sympthsical]

17. This is like the LatinX thing

It was pushed by a very small group of activists, then people trying to prove how "woke" they were started shuffling it into the mainstream.

I have yet to meet a single Latino in my friends and family group who likes or uses that term. They hate it and abjectly refuse to bother about it. You know who I see use it most? White people. It's ironic, really. White people need to "help" Latinos by messing with a language they are perfectly content with.

Spanish is a highly gendered language, but no one really cares. Seriously. No. One. Cares. Except a cohort of very loud people on Twitter and in certain segments of academia.

English is gendered, but only in fairly minor ways when you're talking about nouns and adjectives. And even then, we've started just switching to masculine nouns for everyone as time goes on. For example, the word "actress" has been getting faded out more and more. If you read or watch interviews these days, you'll notice women are simply referred to as "actors" now. Which is fine. It's not a fundamental change in language, and it makes everyone non-gendered and equal.

But the attacks on language are suspect. It has a strong authoritarian bend to it. Meh, no thanks. People can express themselves as they will without the language cops descending upon them. Again, almost no one actually cares about this shit.

[leftstreet]

22. It's always that way

White people drowning out activists to the point no one hears or remembers what the activists were even saying. Just another form of classist, racist nonsense. "Let's get out in front of this so it doesn't look like we hate poor and brown people"

[Sympthsical]

33. I love when people get offended *for* me

As a gay man, I could not care in the slightest about what the latest trendy Twitter outrage is about. I have my lines where I'll speak up and say that's not ok, but they're fairly obvious and clear cut. But more and more, I encounter straight people who are super offended and labeling something homophobic that I didn't give even the slightest bit of thought to. "This is outrageous! How could you be so insensitive to LGBTers in this commercial!" or whatever it is. Meanwhile, I'm over here laughing my ass off at a funny commercial.

I really, really feel for transgender people nowadays. Twitter activism is full of the craziest stuff. Things like people who have a penis but identify as female and get offended when lesbians don't want to have sex with them. "They're being transphobic!" Like, the hell? What happened to orientation not being a choice? Now people are obligated to have sex with you?

I see shit like that all the time now. I ask the transgender people in my life about that stuff now and then, and they always roll their eyes and almost apologetically say, "Yeah, we're not like that. That's just crazy Twitter people." But cis people will read it and take it totally seriously and think that's how most transgender people think.

It's just really toxic when a loud minority within a group somehow convinces broader society that they're the predominant voice of the community.

They're just so not.

[Skittles]

43. interesting analyisis

[Sympthsical]

44. Just my personal experience

It's complicated. The weirder Twitter activism gets, the more conservative I feel about things. And the thing is, I'm really not conservative at all. I'm crazy progressive. I don't preach mere tolerance. Acceptance has to be a thing for everyone's physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

But some of this stuff. I just look at it and blink. I can't tell what is serious and what is parody anymore. I've become a kind of anti-woke progressive. And when I say anti-woke, I don't mean let racism, sexism, homophobia, or transphobia slide wherever it is encountered. Just that we've started entering a kind of . . . silly season in online activism. "If you thought this made no sense, well how about this shit!"

It's really hard to articulate my thoughts on this issue, because it's a little confusing. Not confusing. It just works against the grain of my logic, rationale, and common sense. A lot of Twitter activism rubs wrong against how I've spent the first half of my adulthood fighting for equality and self-determination. Self-determination was always ever my goal. And we're kind of entering an area where people are told that they can't self-determine or else they're a kind of -ist or phobic in some way.

Like I said, it's hard to articulate. But the direction of the last few years in some quarters of woke activism aren't sitting quite right with me.

[Skittles]

45. I do understand

for example, I grew up with five brothers and served in the military - I am not nearly as offended as many women are at what I see as relatively tame risque behavior / talk by men. I know when they're just joshing or if their actual intent is to demean women / make them uncomfortable. I imagine gay folk experience a lot of the same kind of thing.

[Sympthsical]

46. Yeah, we're on the same page

I was reading on Reddit earlier a whole sub-thread about why straight men will say something about having sex with other men and follow it up with "No homo."

To me, it signals that the straight guy is totally chill with gay people and making light/a joke in signalling it. No one's making a breezy, funny comment about blowing his best friend if he's homophobic.

So, "No homo!" doesn't offend me at all. I always crack a smile at those subthreads were straight guys out-gay each other in the comments. It's deeply amusing.

And then the Super Serious decided to chime in about how homophobic it all is.

It's like, you're defeating the purpose in complaining. This is straight people adjusting and accepting us. It's part of the process. It's not meant offensively. Why get offended and go into lecture mode?

So frustrating.

[apnu]

48. Really interesting, we outsiders struggle to see the toxicity

I’ve learned to be quiet on these subjects the hard way. I’ve tried to be an ally many times and made matters worse due to being a clueless outsider. Being quiet is one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn. There is no guidance for being an ally. It took me decades to figure out I should be policing in my community, not being a clueless woke bro.

Where I find any form of bigotry, in my CIS straight white male world, I call it out. I keep it simple because I’m an outsider. I can’t articulate the nuances, plus whomever I’m calling out won’t get the nuances either.

Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest things to do.

[Sympthsical]

49. But the thing is, I don't want you to be quiet

Just speak to your own experience. As long as I know you're trying to understand and listening, then you and I are chill. No one is 100% correct on anything in this world. I'm not going to jump down your throat because you didn't articulate your thinking clearly enough for my personal satisfaction.

And that's what drives me crazy. I can immediately tell when someone's trying to be empathetic and sensitive, even if what they're saying isn't exactly right. It's not a motto or an oath that must be recited exactly word for word. If you and I had a conversation over a beer, I'd catch within three minutes your attitude and intention.

So it's so frustrating when I see these linguistic martinets berating straight people who are already on our side. "You didn't say this exactly the way I wanted you to! Straight privilege!" Get out of my face with that nonsense. It's alienating and intimidating to people who are already disposed towards our cause.

Even if you don't put the words in the exact order that is "correct," I still want to hear from you. It's important for you to be participant. Then we can have a conversation and understand each other.

Silence is not preferable. You do you. And if you mean well, people of good faith will catch it and recognize you as an ally. If someone berates you because you didn't articulate the way they prefer, I promise, 99% of the time they're taking out their own personal bullshit on you.

And it's not fair. Not to you, not to us, not to anyone.

[apnu]

50. You are fucking amazing

Not a joke. Thanks. Hands down the most real and honest response I've heard on the subject of allies in a long time.

When I'm quiet, I mean trying to speak of/for other people. You're right its best to show empathy and follow social queues when interacting. That's universal. I don't want to be the woke explainer bro, that's no good for anybody.

What I'm not quiet about is when I'm hearing bullshit from my own tribe: straight white men. I hear them talking racist shit, or sexist shit, or anti-gay shit, I call it out loud for everyone to hear. Fuck all that, not on my watch.

I know I have magical privilege powers. Straight white men will more likely listen to me than everybody else. So that's my role as ally -- telling other's in my tribe that shit isn't allowed anymore.

[Skittles]

58. I agree with this assessment

very refreshing to read someone who can explain it really well

[LeftInTX]

38. I know a few who use it, they are all under 30 and skinny

I think they eat nothing but avocado toast....

[Sympthsical]

39. Hey now, I love avocado toast

But I also make it at home, because there is no power on earth that will drag me to a hipster cafe to pay $10 for it. Avocados go on sale for $1 apiece often enough. That's, like, three slices of toast.

Adding avocados and apple slices in the Asian salad kit from Costco is also flippin amazing. I never got into avocados until I moved to California. Now, if they're on sale, I nab em. And they're healthy.

[Midwestern Democrat]

42. Acting might be the one profession where having masculine and feminine nouns actually makes sense.

I know that the trend now is to simply call them all "actors" but the fact is most roles are specifically written as a man or a woman - a male actor couldn't show up for a casting call to audition for a female role or vice versa. I certainly don't think the Academy Awards is ever going to get rid of separate Best Actor/Actress and Best Supporting Actor/Actress categories - I think that's a pretty high profile indicator that the profession itself has always recognized that it is not a gender-neutral profession in the same way that almost every other profession is - such as law, medicine, journalism, engineering, etc.

[Sympthsical]

47. Completely agreed

It seems like there's a segment of activism that thinks they can just erase gender.

Yeah. Not in this lifetime or the next. Biology works far too strongly against it. As long as there are males and females, there's built in resistance to the attempt. You can try to change language - and authoritarian regimes know this in their soul. Change the language and punish those who don't go along. Language can create a reality. But history teaches us that artificial enforced construct always comes crashing down because human nature and biology will resist it.

Acceptance and authoritarian enforcement are two incredibly different things, and some parts of activism - very radical parts - either forgot that or never figured it out in the first place. And they're going to learn a very, very hard lesson when society and human nature snap back.

It doesn't have to be that way. But trends are more readily followed than the obvious these days, it seems.

[treestar]

53. It's coming though!

There was a period piece from Regency England with black people playing some characters, upper class aristocrats like Dukes. People got called racists if they didn't like any aspect of the production. Some millennial even did a video saying if you called out any inaccuracy in the costumes, you were "gatekeeping" that is, trying to keep black people out of the fandom.

So I'm sure woman who wants to play MacBeth will show up and somebody will do a production that way. And it will be sexist to not like every aspect of it!

Also look for a known trans actor to play a person who is not trans but just the sex they chose. Has that ever happened? It would blow right wing minds if they didn't realize it.

[Sympthsical]

54. You've touched on something I loathe

There are productions - good productions! - that pull off the gender neutral thing. Great actors who tap into the cathartic, tragic mess of a good play.

And then there are those productions who rest solely on the publicity of it all. And they are almost always universally terrible. The direction, the acting, the interpretation. It's all, "Look at us! We're breaking boundaries!" Are you though? Because it was actually done ten years ago in a 90 person theater in Chicago my boyfriend at the time made me go see because his best girlfriend was playing Rosencratz. They just didn't get a New York Times article about the whole thing.

Art can and should stand on its own. Politics do not make good art by default. But art can make good politics if you put the thought and effort into it.

But, no. Here's this shitty production "breaking boundaries" and we all have to pretend we like it or else we're some kind of -ist.

There's this segment of people who stand on their identity - and their identity alone - as a substitute for talent, creativity, relevance, and contribution.

Drives me wild.

[Staph]

55. I agree with the notion that acting is not gender neutral, but ...

Hollywood (i.e., television and film production) needs to have more of a gender neutral eye to casting. Imagine that your production needs to cast a business owner or doctor or military officer, not as a villain or as a main character, just a small role. How often is that role automatically cast as a white male? Television is getting better at diversity, but there's still a long way to go.

To see a practical view of this male-centric view in entertainment, read up on the Bechdel test -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

[Dr. Strange]

56. I'm reminded of a story from Dark Shadows...

which I'll relate here because, well, I really like the show. Also, the story may be apocryphal, but it goes far in explaining a character change, so let's go...

The first mention of Dr. Hoffman in the show Dark Shadows was a mention by Dr. Woodard. But in the script, it talks about his colleague Dr. Julian Hoffman. The doctor is referred to as "he". So, the set up is a male doctor, which will be cast eventually by a male actor.

According to some sources, when a casting sheet was made, there was a typo that changed the name to Dr. Julia Hoffman. Rather than fix it, the producers thought, "You know, why not?" And boom! We end up with Grayson Hall as Dr. Hoffman.

[Staph]

57. In the new version of The Stand (2020)

several characters have been changed from male to female, Judge Harris and Ralph, now Ray, Brentner. Brentner was changed from a white male to Inupiaq/Yup'ik/Cree actress Irene Bedard.

The world has changed since the novel was published in 1978 and the first mini-series came out in 1994.

[treestar]

52. There is a lot of that

white people trying to prove how cool they are - much stricter standards, and much quicker to use accusations of racism than most people of color.

[jalan48]

18. Good luck with that.

[hunter]

20. English is promiscuous. It accepts new words and grammars without much friction...

... and there is no central authority regulating the language, grammar school teachers be damned.

Gender neutral writing and speaking in English will evolve quickly.

If I choose to use "her" as a universal pronoun nobody is stopping me.

ey / em / eir / eirs / emself, maybe preceded by a very mild th-, d-, or t- consonant, seems a likely future.

Ey loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved eir that ey did pity them.

[MineralMan]

23. Those who write as a profession have style sheets to follow.

Those style sheets vary from publisher to publisher. They change over time, but very slowly.

Violating the style sheet rules gets you in trouble with the copy editors, and who needs that? On the other hand, I once had a favorite copy editor at one publication I wrote for. We had a flirtatious long-distance relationship, all based on discussions about the nuances of usage. I finally met her at a staff meeting, which was rare, since I was a freelancer. Big hugs were exchanged.

[Hortensis]

34. :) No editors, but a typist for my reports always changed

"because" to "as" because, as she explained to me (!), "because" sounded babyish to her. Irritating because it changed the nuance surprisingly often from what I intended, but since I wasn't in a position to threaten to fire her, and feared, god forbid, to offend her!, I adjusted word choice to the situation.

[hunter]

37. I'm seeing a lot of experimentation in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Most of it is awkward as hell, but some writers do it gracefully.

They'll be the ones who influence future style sheets.

[Sympthsical]

40. I love reading Murakami translations due to similar

Obviously Japanese to English isn't perfect, but whoever is doing the translations of his work does so beautifully. It uses English in just the perfectly different way so that it hits the ear with this great resonance.

Bad experimental writers are the worst. But good experimental writers are a treasure.

[DFW]

28. Then one would have to go after most European languages EXCEPT English, Dutch and Scandinavian

Since Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are basically the same language with local quirks, they often refer to the local language as "Skandinavisk," although Danish pronunciation will always be referred to by its neighbors as a disease of the throat. They have "en" words and "ett" words, and have the particular quirk that the definite article is always attached to the end of the word.

Finnish, Hungarian, and Basque are located in Europe, but are not European in origin.

But the Latin-based languages all have the "gender" issue, not just French. Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Romansch and Romanian all have the same issue, as do German and the Slavic languages. These languages and their spoken versions are living, evolving things. I guess one can mount a movement to steer their development in a certain direction, but it seems like genetic engineering on a linguistic basis. It will rarely (if ever) seem natural to a native speaker.

[Klaralven]

35. The Scandinavian situation seems complicated

Danish (Danish has four gendered pronouns, but only two grammatical genders in the sense of noun classes.)

Norwegian - the three-gender system is widely used throughout the country, except in the Bergen dialect (some sociolects in Oslo lack it as well), where the dialect allows feminine nouns to be given the corresponding masculine inflections or do not use the feminine gender at all.

Swedish - as in Dutch, the masculine and the feminine have merged into a common gender in standard Swedish. But many dialects, mainly in Dalecarlia, Ostrobothnia (Finland) and northern Sweden, have preserved three genders in spoken language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_type_of_grammatical_genders

While one might regard them as three dialects of the same language, they also seem to have some definite regional differences within at least Norway and Sweden. These are probably more evident in the spoken language than in the "standard" language of government and media.

However, Norway seems to have two written variants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nynorsk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokm%C3%A5l

One of my great grandfathers was Swedish. Several years ago I inherited his Bible, which turned out to be in Danish!

[burrowowl]

29. Kick

[NNadir]

36. Well, in German, one can call a little girl "it" and a potato "she."

I stole the joke from Mark Twain.