Talk:Gender neutrality in English

NPOV

I had been waiting for one of the authors of this page to either respond to the NPOV issue (perhaps defend the article as it is) and/or start editing the article. But since it's been about a week now and nobody's responded, I've begun the proccess of modifying the article so as to make it more NPOV. As of right now, I've started with the intro paragraph. I've replaced "sexist language" with "more traditional language," and I've made "gender neutral language" the first term used, as it is both a more neutral descriptive term (no so much embodied allegation or argument) and, at least judging from the number of Google hits, it appears to be the more common term.

--Blackcats 19:46, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I think that in order to make this article NPOV, its name must be changed. "Gender neutral" language is a much more neutral term do describe what this article is about, as it doesn't contain an embodied accusation in its very name that language which does not meet the criteria is "sexist." Also, "gender neutral language" seems to be the more popular term, as Google has almost twice as many hits for "G.N. language"[1] as it does for "N.S. language."[2]

So I don't see any purpose for using the less common term that has more embodied ideological bias - other than to advance a POV - clearly not in keeping with NPOV policy.

Blackcats 22:30, Feb 7, 2005 (UTC)

In the near future, I will work on adding in a "criticisms" section - to better present the rebuttal argument. If you guys aren't familiar with educated, well thought out, and intelligent arguments against the theories of "sexist" and "non-sexist" language, I strongly encourage you to read this article: http://www.friesian.com/language.htm

But work definitely needs to be done on much of the rest of the article to make it NPOV. In many places, the authors lapse into asserting ideas as indisputable fact, rather than presenting them as opinions.

Just a few examples:

From the History section:

"Awareness of the social effects of language was largely a 20th century phenomenon....."

This assumes that language in general, and allegedly "sexist" language in particular has certain "social effects." But there is no agreement as to what social effects, if any, the use of non-P.C. language has.

"However, a program to rid Norwegian of sexist presuppositions dates from the mid 19th century..."

This states as fact that certain presuppositions are sexist, while that is certainly not a universal opinion

From the Neologising section:

"Nonetheless, the case for the singular they is quite compelling from a linguistic point of view."

This is asserting and arguing for this point of view, not merely presenting it.

From the Serbian section:

"Like the most other Slavic languages, Serbian has more gender problems then English."

Is the Serbian language's gender system a "problem"??! It may well be a problem for you if you're trying to impose certain politically correct standards on it, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of the Serbian people are not particularly bothered by it. (The use of the word "problem" like that - to describe a difficulty in making the language conform to PC standards - is found in the discussions of a number of the other languages as well - I just chose that one as an example.) This raises the question of cultural imperialism as well - when people - presumably native English speakers - label certain aspects of other people's languages as problematic.

Also, the authors sometimes engage in what is essentially name-calling - when they refer to language that does not conform to their standards as "sexist language." That's equivalent to when "pro-life" people refer to "pro-choice" people as "pro-death." So much for sensitivity - LOL!

Feb 3rd, 2005

I've continued the process of editing for NPOV. As of now, I've made it as far as the "Enforcement, persuasion, or evolution?" section. I think that ultimately this page will have to be moved, as one of the biggest NPOV issues is the use of the term "non-sexist language," which implicity states that traditional use of gender in English (or other languages) is sexist. And of course there's no concensus, among scholors or the general public, that this is true. Also, as I pointed out earlier - "gender neutral language" is also the more commonly used term. --Blackcats 08:12, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've now further continued the process, making it through most of the foriegn language stuff. At the rate I've been going, the page should soon be pretty NPOV, with the exception of its title. I'll soon start a talk section about moving the page to "Gender-neutral_language." --Blackcats 03:22, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Summary of my edits

advocates of non-sexist language generally argue that it would be better to state, "Tomorrow I will meet Dr. Smith, whom I hope is friendly." After this part, I added these two sentences:

(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.)

That is really true. In real life, people rarely use non-defining relative clauses (I am referring to the clause whom I hope is friendly).

might deem it inappropriate to ask her, "Who is he?"; rather, one should ask, "Whom are you dating?" After this part, I added this:

"to allow for the possibility that she might be dating a woman."

Just to clarify the intent of the example.

I also added this paragraph under the "Neologizing" section:

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.

--68.123.237.104 19:19, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

More generally, nonsexist styles can include the use of brackets or capital letters to insert feminine endings (étudiantEs) or repeat gendered words

I have never seen any use of capital letters for feminine endings, only brackets (étudiant(e)s) in french from France. Are capital letters used in other french speaking countries ?

I've not seen the capital E either. -- Tarquin

Quebec, especially in leftist publications. I don't just make this stuff up, you know. - user:Montrealais

I have seen this but not known what it was all about until now. --Daniel C. Boyer 15:36, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

of course you don't. I was just wondering where it was used and how much vulgar it was. So the answers are Canada and out of the ordinary used. user:anthere

And under consideration for removal of sexist implications in the English language:

Human --> Huperson

Manatee --> Personatee

Manhatten --> Personhatten

Emancipation --> Epersoncipation

Manx --> Personx

Elementary --> Elepeopletary

David de Paoli

The majority of these above are of course rather foolish jokes, sometimes mistaken by the naive for real examples of words sometimes considered to be sexist. The element "man" in such words is not related to the English word "man", has no connotation of masculine gender, and such words are not actually targetted as sexist or in need of revision.

Also, "Manhattan" is misspelled. - user:Montrealais

Those sort of puns are tired now. They were kinda funny in the early 80s when we were all getting used to the concept ("Ms Fossington-Gore said they were a tribute to the achievements of personkind" -- Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4, probably misquoted, my lousy semiphotographic memory) -- Tarquin 21:55 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)

Must be that your semiphotographic memory is out of film. BTW, they're not puns, nor is your comparison accurate. Unlike the "personkind" example, and as the poster immediately following me noted, the "man"s replaced in my lampooning examples don't refer to the word "man" in English. Lastly, as far as "being tired", I'm not offended in the least when I realize this criticism comes from someone who thinks "bogeys" (sic) are hillariously funny, especially when annoyingly repeated.David de Paoli

The whole "bogey" thing has been overblown out of all proportion: it was sarcasm on my part after we got a string of new pages on various activities which I didn't consider terribly, erm, encyclopedic. BTW, why the "sic"? That's the correct spealing --

Sorry. I simply thought your examples for criticising my little joke were erroneous. Normally I take criticism very well. As far as the (sic), I see you're form the UK? That might explain the difference. In American usage, the word "bogey" (boe- ghee) distictly refers to either the golf score or the military slang for an unidentified aircraft. I would use "boogey" or "boogie" as the diminutive of the slang "booger", but, hey, I've been wrong before.

Perhaps the reference is to the "boogey-man" (which is not related to boogers, but may be related to the military slang). If so, it derives from "Bugis," a large ethnic group in Indonesia famous for their sea-faring skills, which they have employed as traders and, I guess, as pirates too (or perhaps in resistance to Dutch colonialism?)Slrubenstein

Have we just managed to write a whole article on the etymology of the word "bogey" between us? Hooray! -- Tarquin

"Bogey" and "bogeyman" -- or "boogie-man" -- has nothing to do with Indonesia. They come from the old Welsh word bwg, meaning a monster. Other words from the same root are "bugbear" and, yes, "bug"! --FOo 03:09, 15 Aug 2003 (UTC)

How NPOV is a page full of commands; eg, "Indeed, do not use terms such as..."? It seems to me that it is rather forcefully taking the point of view that "if you don't use this stilted form of the language, you are wrong." --the Epopt

On a brief skim, it doesn't look it's saying "you are wrong", but that you wouldn't be using "non-sexist language" as it is defined in this article. --Brion 23:09 Sep 26, 2002 (UTC)

I think it's a valid article to describe non-sexist language by providing a list of rules therefor. I tried to explain this in the first part of the article. Perhaps it should be italicized or something to set it off from the rest of the article. user:Montrealais

How does this look? Notice the first paragraph. - mtlais

Not exactly the most NPOV article on WIki. Apart from grammatical clangers (like using the word 'goal' twice (which I have axed), it presumes that there is such a thing as 'non-sexist language', which is widely disputed, the argument being that 'non-sexist language' simply involves 're-sexing language' in the other direction on occasions, providing terms that are not gender-neutral but feminised, which by definition is sexist language. Simply writing non-sexist language in that form presupposes the validity of one side of the argument, which by definition is POV. In a correct NPOV article on this topic where a term and its validity is disputed it should be writen as 'non-sexist language', indicating that the author is neither validating not invalidating the term, merely highlighting it is a disputed status. Other disputed terms in a specific context (eg, terrorist, etc) can also be contextualised as an opinion, not a 100% accepted fact, by writing it as 'terrorist', etc.

This article's NPOV could be strengthened by making equal use of published opinions by academics challenging the issue, validity and grammatical accuracy of some 'non-sexist language', something this article barely touches on. Nor, as this article suggests, do all publishing houses and publishing manuals accept the validity of 'non-sexist language'. (My own (woman) editor will not publish anything whose author refuses to use some of the terms listed, saying she is interested in publishing 'english, not a politically correct bastardised version of it to keep feminists happy!') Nor is it just non-feminists who are opposed to 'non-sexist language'. Many feminists too are deeply critical of it, regarding it not as an attempt to change attitudes but to hide the true sexist nature of society by window-dressing language, a common argument made against political correctness in general. Simply not being able to use 'offensive' language, whether sexist, rascist, homophobic or whatever, doesn't mean that behind the 'proper' language, those same attitiudes aren't just as present.

I am not taking sides on the debate, merely pointing out that this article, perhaps unintentionally, does so, which means it isn't NPOV, but in tone, language, content and structure implicitly endorses 'non sexist language'. JTD 04:05 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

I'd have to agree on a lack of NPOV as noted above; and also from a somewhat different angle. The article as it stands also has a bit of a schizo quality to it. In those paragraphs which criticized by JTD, there was a "pro-" bias; in alternating paragraphs; there also is a tendency to imply that the topic is practically a secret form of evil mind control by tyhe forces of "political correctness". As a result, neither side really makes a complete argument - they don't even seem to be addressing each other.

For example, lines like: Such usage, and indeed any expression that either explicitly or implicitly marginalises women should be banned seem a teeny bit over-the-top; at least in how the topic is generally interpreted amongst laymen (or should I say, "amongst the laity"? :)) Surely, there is a range of opinion on this topic?

At one point, it might have been considered "politically incorrect" (or the equivalent perjorative of the day) to insist on not calling a black man "boy" (the term could have been argued to seem neutral, e.g. "good ol' boys"). Today, we don't typically use the term "boy" in that way (in most of the US, at any rate) because social changes have rendered its use to be seen as rather offensive (as opposed to "politically incorrect"). (Unsuprisingly, racism continues to exist).

Considering the above, to someone like me standing outside the argument, it seems like some new usages have become generally (not universally) socially accepted as certain concepts became part of general cultural currency, and in other areas, it just seems to fade out because the related ideas don't become common currency ("womyn", "herstory", etc.). Sort of a chicken-and-the-egg thing; shades of gray and all. And these changes don't appear to be controlled solely by either the forces of "political correctness", or the decryers of "the 'bastardisation' of language for political purposes". The line Others argue that a change in language should evolve organically from changing public attitudes towards gender issues, rather than be enforced by Political Correctness ahead of such a change" is close to this idea, but it implies that the organic change doesn't include the voices of those who call for the type of changes that the proponents of 'non-sexist' usage call for.

I'm sure the original promulgators of the article topic had certain socio-linguistic theories which they used to justify coining and insisting on the use of these terms; and as noted by JTD, we can then present both sides (pro- and con-) of those theories in that light - and I might even learn something! :)

A possible suggestion on form would be to have separate sections relating to

reporting on (not endorsing or condemning) what appears to have become "standards" (such as NYTimes, etc.), as a sort of social barometer of the general acceptance of newer usages like "firefighter" and "news anchor".
a history of who first started pushing the specific idea of "non-sexist" language academically, in what context, and with what reasons;
criticisms of these arguments from a linguistic and political viewpoint.

Makes me wonder - do we have a "gender-neutral" policy at Wikipedia? Chas zzz brown 07:46 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

I disagree with your questioning of the line Such usage, and indeed any expression that either explicitly or implicitly marginalises women should be banned. That is word for word the description of 'non-sexist language' given at a 'non-sexist language' university debate I attended, by a Professor of Women's Studies. (The debate involved six women, three for and three against.) As to the issues, the paragraphs cover the different arguments, and there are differing arguments. For the article to come down for or against the issue of non-sexist language would be by definition a POV and thus breaking Wiki rules. If the article's coverage of both sides' views is confusing and conflicting, it is because the arguments and perspectives are confusing and conflicting.

The issue of using 'boy' in a rascist sense is completely irrelevant and bares little parallel. The vast majority of people agreed that such terms and their contexts were rascist. Such overwhelming unity of opinion does not exist on 'non-sexist language', which pits some feminists who champion enforced 'non-sexist language' from others who disagree. It divides linguistic experts, publishing houses, newspaper house styles, men from other men, women from other women, etc.

Among the issues in 'non-sexist language' are

Is language inherently 'sexist'?
are words interpreted by the vast majority of their users as 'sexist', irrespective of what campaigners say?
Who defines what is 'sexist'?
If a term is 'sexist', should it be changed by decision or by evolution?
If by decision, who makes the decision?
How should it be enforced?
Should grammatical rules be followed or ignored in constructing 'gender-neutral' terms?

Your mention of the New York Times is interesting but it is by no means the standard. A proper evaluation should compare many newspapers, both broadsheet and tabloid in the US, Canada, Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, etc.The scale of that work would produce a fascinating article but it must be careful not to be centred purely on the United States. For all too many articles on Wiki take US standards as the right standard, an alternative to the British-focused styles elsewhere, but equally unacceptance in an encyclopedia that is not just the property of the US but of the world wide web. But the scale of the work involved in producing such an article would be immense, and I don't know who is going to do this.

Regarding 'political correctness', this is one of many issues that divides much of the rest of the world from the US. Whereas many in the US see political correctness as a positive force, in much of the rest of the world, to call something political correctness is to give it the kiss of death, because political correctness is seen, rightly or wrongly, as agenda-led manipulation. If 'non-sexist language' was seen as political correctness in much of Europe, for example, it would kill it stone dead, with many people 'deliberately' going out of their way to break its rules to give the proverbial two-fingers to what is perceived as attempts to bully them into following rules made by cliques. That may indeed be unfair, but that is how it is perceived. In Ireland, for example, The Irish Times newspaper, which by its own admission is the most PC of Irish newspapers, has had columnists, notably John Waters, who have described some feminists as 'feminazis', arguing that in issues such as 'non-sexist language' a small minority of fanatics are trying to manipulate everyone else into obeying their agenda, whether they like it or not. In mentioning hostility to 'non-sexist language' and political correctness, I deliberately toned down much of the language critics use. Mind control would be a polite term used. Feminazis a stronger one. There are others far stronger.

I'm not taking sides in the debate, and I'm certainly not expressing any opinion. I'm simply pointing out that there are differing views. The article does need work, but it is less one sided than before, which is by definition, NPOV instead of the previous POV by implication. JTD 02:46 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)

Moved discussion of non-sexist usage in French to User:Montrealais/Non-sexist usage in French. - Montrealais 14:20 Oct 5, 2002 (UTC)

There have been studies on how sentences like "When a doctor sees his patient, he should first put her at ease." are interpreted. I heard of one which estimated that, for some texts, 60% of readers took a gender-specific interpretation, and 40% took a gender-neutral interpretation. However, that was from a comparatively biased source, so I want to try and find better.

I've also heard of studies purporting to show that changing language use by coercion and enforcement is essentially futile, and language change really only occurs when the user makes a positive decision on how sie wants to speak. Again, need a definite source. Martin

I've now found quite a few sources on studies done on the first point. As far as I can make out at this stage, it's pretty much a settled point that use of generic "man", "he", etc does have a gender-distorting effect on the reader/listener. To look for such sources I've looked through some of the various style guides, most of which quote their sources and these kinds of studies. I'm tempted to include this as a statement of scientific fact, unless I can find any studies which didn't show a result. Martin

Originally it was gender-neutral; I forget the original qualifing term, I think was something like 'vir', or maybe 'wir', with wirman being male, woman being female, but the male qualification died out. In the modern sense, if it was an absolute scientific fact that it is generally perceived as gender specific, then it is hard to fathom why so many women opt to use it is words like chairman, as I found to my cost when I was chair of a branch of a political party and a civil war broke out between the new woman chair, who took offence at chairperson and thought chairwoman loony, and insisted on 'Madam chairman'. The (woman) secretary wouldn't agree, but the (woman) treasurer agreed, as did about two thirds of the women in the meeting (ranging in age from 19 to 71). A forty minute row erupted. Similarly, as I know from the horsebreeding world, many women take high offence at 'horsewoman' or 'horseperson', demanding to be called 'Horseman'. As someone who invariably used terms like chairperson, horseperson, etc I was flabbergasted at finding that it was women more than men who wanted to keep using the version with 'man'. (I saw a woman in a restaurant - mid 20s - fly into a rage when an American tourist called her a 'waitron', telling her manager the tourist had 'insulted' her. When the 'tourist' called her 'waiter' she lashed back 'do I look like I have a pair of balls?' She demanded to be called a waitress, to my surprise.)

Outside language, too, attitudes towards sex seem confusing. I remember when in my local constituency two of the three party candidates were women, middle aged women made an issue of it, how women were finally getting equality. Yet my generation (20s at that stage) never noticed. I realised, as did my friends, that we were indifferent to gender in elections, to the extent that it made no difference to us whether the chair of the Irish senate was male or female, whether the deputy prime minister was male or female, or the fact that in the 1997 presidential election four of the five candidates were female. (It has only dawned on me as I write this hat my local constituency organisation chair, secretary and half the officer board are women. I've never thought in terms of male or female in that context!) Most people I know under the age of 40 have become gender-blind, voting for the best candidate without noticing what gender they are. In language too, most people I know of my generation don't attach gender-specific meanings to words. So you'd need to clarify how scientific were the studies, have representative was the pool, what was the age structure, were there differing meanings attached by differing age priofiles, etc. JTD 19:46 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)

All the studies I've heard/seen are investigating use to describe hypothetical people, rather than specific people. Obviously if you're speaking to a woman you're not going to suddenly think she's male just because she wants to be known as Madame chairman, or whatever. Incidentally, in those situations, I would just go along with the choice of the woman in question, just as I would go along with Ms, Miss or Mrs.

Anyway, I can see you're skeptical about these studies. They have appeared in scientific journals, so it's not a case of random undergrads faking statistics. But I'll investigate further. Martin

However many publishing houses, dictionaries and stylebooks decline to accept these guidelines, believing them to amount to the 'bastardisation' of language for political purposes.

I'd like some proof of this, in the shape of links to such style guides. I've not found any, and I have looked...

Partly personal experience, but because they involve private dealings with my own publishers I cannot name names. My own attempt to use non-sexist language in a book led to a bollocking from a British-based company who said bluntly to "cut the PC crap and turn it into 'proper' english. This isn't fucking California -PC land. Just because yanks want to bastardise their language to keep feminists happy doesn't mean we do it here." Vicious or what? (That was in an email I got from my agent, who thought it so funny she sent it to me!) And sexism, homophobia, etc is almost a requirement for some tabloids. (I have had great fun writing for papers that are hyper PC, then writing for editors who are the opposite (one called it 'that PC crap'. You have to remind yourself whether the article you are writing is for a PC or non PC paper. Woe betide you if you send a non-PC piece to a PC paper, or a PC piece to a paper that detests PC!)

I've made a couple of minor changes. Notably wrote non-sexist language as 'non sexist language'. The reason is that, as I have found editing documents, simply using the terms can be read by readers as POV or endorsing something. Putting ' ' around a term is interpreted as neither validating or rejecting the term, merely clarifying that you are taking no position, explicit or implicit, as to its validity. Saying non-sexist language in a sentence can be seen as accepting there is such a thing. (I believe there is, but it isn't my job to express that POV. Qualifying it by writing 'non-sexist language' implies a recognition that some people use and accept this term, others don't and you aren't taking sides. JtdIrL 23:06 Mar 6, 2003 (UTC)

I guess the problem is that tabloids and other reprobates don't have style guides... or indeed any style! ;-)

Personally I think putting the phrase in scare quotes throughout is unnecessary - we mention the issue explicitly at the start, using scare quotes, is this not enough? Martin

I only wish it was. One of the joy of editing a student magazine years ago was to discover how you could neutralise every single reference to something and leave one undone and next thing the door would burst open and someone would rush in accusing you of pushing an agenda in that one unneutralised word! One of the things I learned in the job is that, if a term is disputed, the safest thing is to neutralise or qualify a controversial term everywhere, because somewhere out there there is always someone waiting to be offended by something, or read into a non-neutralised term a POV even when you have striven to make it clear you are not taking a POV. It is better to have them all consistent than have someone next week or month read a disputed term that has not been neutralised, take offence and start an edit war, accusing the previous version of bias. And the issue of non-sexist language, sorry 'non-sexist language', is one of those 'red flag to a bull' topics, like Israel/Palestine, genocide, abortion, Northern Ireland, historical monarchical names, etc that some people feel very strongly about, strong enough to go to war on (edit war. at least!). JtdIrL 00:38 Mar 7, 2003 (UTC)

I have reverted the article. Someone changed the line that they 'do not accept these arguments as valid' to they 'do not agree with these arguments'. These two lines do not automatically mean the same thing and the change completely misrepresented the point the line was making. It is perfectly possible to accept the validity of an argument but disagree with its conclusion. The point the line in the article was making was different, not that they don't agree with the conclusions reached from the argument, but that they don't believe the arguments themselves are valid. In terms of mathematics, for example, one can agree to add 2 + 2 but disagree that they reach 4. That does not mean the same as disagreeing with the validity of the sum, namely you don't accept that 2 should be in the equation or that you don't accept that they should be added. One means simply disagreeing with the conclusion, the other means disagreeing fundamentally with the issue which produced the equation in the first place. In this article, the disagreement is with the theories that produce the argument, not simply with the conclusion drawn from the argument. Do not accept these arguments can be interpreted to mean either they do not accept these arguments' validity or they do not accept the conclusions drawn from the arguments. Saying they 'do not accept these arguments as valid' is 100% unambiguous, hence its use here. ÉÍREman 03:55 May 8, 2003 (UTC)

This article seems to be lacking in an important respect: it should have a set of examples of English "non-sexist" word-replacements that have been proposed! (A couple are mentioned in the article, but only in passing.) The current article is almost entirely devoted to arguments pro- and con-, without saying what people are arguing about. User:Stevenj

It does give some examples, and I'm not sure whether there'd be a real benefit from including more. Perhaps you could edit it appropriately to show us what you mean? Martin 00:33 31 May 2003 (UTC)

What about the sexist use of profanity and derision, at least in English? Do certain words carry a connotation? Are they used specifically against one sex or the other? (e.g. calling a woman a bitch, calling a man a dick, etc.) If we're discussing language, especially such use of language as is felt to be offensive by some, should we also discuss these? Any thoughts? Paige 15:46, 5 Aug 2003 (UTC)

This absolutely must be discussed in the article. --Daniel C. Boyer 17:56, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Is "try to enforce it on everyone else" NPOV? Maybe it should be, "try to encourage everyone else to... or enforce it on them..." I don't know exactly but this should be changed. --Daniel C. Boyer 15:36, 2 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I have a problem with the phrase "Gender-Neutral". To me, the phrase suggests that using non-sexual language tries to erase *any* forms of gender. IMHO, non-sexist language does not do this. Instead, non-sexist language attempts to show that our language is not male only. It is for everyone. I suggest "gender-sensitive" language instead. See http://www.tniv.info/qanda.php#9 for more on this.

hoshie 10:25, 4 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This is Wikipedia in English, but not specifically on English, right? The predominant part of this article describes issues and phenomena more or less specific to the English language. Shouldn't it be therefore more profoundly noted and labeled as such? --Marcvs 04:43, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I find the "list of positions on NSL" to be rather broad and stereotypical, and rather pejorative, if it comes to that. It also uses a bad example: I don't think I've ever heard someone argue that "postman" is sexist language when it refers to a man, as opposed to a position or an unknown person. - Montrealais

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.

Say what? Not only is this distinctly un-NPOV (well, the first sentence is NPOV although weaselly; the third and fourth are definitely not NPOV), but it's also patently false. I use "he or she" all the time in everyday speech, and I'm no reformer - I just learnt English that way. And this in India, in the early 90s. In addition, I've heard a substantial (10%?) number of people I come across use the phrase without sounding pretentious. I simply wanted to find out if I'm moving around in the wrong crowd :-) Ambarish | Talk 09:44, 28 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

rewritten. Ambarish | Talk 00:19, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)

True or false??

True or false: there are still a great many Americans who don't think it is important to use non-sexist language, including many who are aware that they are using sexist language. 66.32.244.119 19:03, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Turkish

The Turkish bit seems wrong to me, since it talks about using morphemes "Adam" and "KadIn", yet uses -adam- in the complete word in both cases.

I don't know enough Turkish to know whether the second example in each case should use -kadIn- or whether that morpheme is modified in the compound word. -- pne 07:10, 23 Jun 2004 (UTC)

singular they

I added a paragraph under "Neologising" explaining how the singular they has been used since the Middle Ages and Shakespeare and Chaucer both used it.

Sexist language continues to be in common use

Why does sexist language appear to continue to be in common use?? Please explain using whatever detail you can. 66.245.7.254 21:21, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Spitting Image

Is there a point in referring to the name of a satirical show (such as Spitting Image) without including the satire itself? Bobblewik (talk) 15:39, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Poll on Wikipedia's adopted gender-neutral pronoun

I can easily tell that there have recently been a few Wikipedians who want Wikipedia to use sexist language (Vapier and Smrits) by saying "The correct gender-neutral form is he". Somewhere at Wikipedia, perhaps at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, we need a poll on what pronoun Wikipedia should adopt the use of as a gender-neutral pronoun. Please try to include at least 4 choices. 66.245.100.121 19:27, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Before that happens see Wikipedia:Survey guidelines. Hyacinth 21:15, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

See also: Talk:Non-sexist_language#Poll_on_Wikipedia.27s_adopted_gender-neutral_pronoun. Hyacinth 01:25, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Your link seems to be broken... what are you referring to? Axlrosen 02:28, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Intro

I'm thinking over what to do with the intro. If non-non-sexist language is to be identified as sexist in the intro, I think it should be pointed out, also in the intro, that this is a term almost exclusively used by advocates of non-sexist language, not an uncontroversial fact. Also, although I think it is accurate to say non-sexist language attempts to use gender-neutral words, because it is done in a nonstandard and sometimes awkward way, so-called sexist language does use male-specific words, it does not attempt to do so. And is so-called sexist language universally male-oriented? If not, that should be changed as well. Even if it is, maybe something like "which has historically favored male-specific words" would be appropriate. [[User:CyborgTosser|CyborgTosser (Only half the battle)]] 23:47, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree with much of CyborgTosser's critique of the intro. Reffering to non "non-sexist" language as "sexist language" is about as NPOV as when anti-abortion people refer to pro-choice people (people who support legal access to abortion) as "pro-death."

Feb 3rd, 2005

Actually if something is non-sexist that means it is not sexist. If something is not non-sexist, then it is sexist. This is not POV, its just the way the meanings of those words work. The only people who would use the term "non-non-sexist language" are opponents of the concept of non-sexist language. What is POV is the original assertion that non-sexist language is not sexist. Hyacinth 00:36, 8 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It is POV because how the term "non-sexist language" is used, and the topic of this article, is something more specific than "language that is not sexist". If non-sexist language truly meant "language that is not sexist", then yes, non-non-sexist language would be sexist. But non-non-sexist language encompasses a lot more than overtly (or even covertly) sexist language. It is everything that is not accepted as non-sexist language by it proponents. And perhaps there is some credibility to the claim that all such language is sexist, but this is a point of view, not a fact. In particular, it is not at all uncontroversial that there actually is or even can be such a thing as "sexist language". Taking for a second the point of view that there is not (and can not be) sexist language, all language is "language that is not sexist", but that does not make it non-sexist language as the term is commonly used.

Wow, my head is spinning. I don't think the intro needs to get into the issue this much, but I think it is important not to put a single point of view in the intro. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 08:15, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

...and by the way, although I am an opponent of non-sexist language, I would use the term non-non-sexist language regardless of my opinion, out of necessity for precision. Calling it "sexist language" is imprecise and loaded. CyborgTosser (Only half the battle) 08:18, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Proposal to move this article

Ok, so by now I've finished all major editing of this article to the point where I feel that all major NPOV issues have been resolved - all except one that is. The article's name. "Non-sexist language," in my opinion is a very loaded term. It prejudices the reader by implicitly arguing, before any evidence is even considered, that to use non gender-neutral language is to engage in sexism. Now I know that a lot of people feel that way, and they're certainly entitled to their opinion, but Wikipedia is supposed to be NPOV and not argue for any such position. And as I've pointed out previously in the discussion here, opponents of this sort of language modification do not feel that there's anything sexist about using the male gramatical gender for both males and as a more generic gender for mixed male/female groups or when the gender is unknown. Of course there might still be a case for using "non-sexist language" as the title if it were the mostly commonly used term. But it's not. A Google search brings back about twice as many hits for "gender-neutral language" as it does for "non-sexist language."[3] [4] So in light of this, I feel that any reason there might be to continue using "non-sexist language" as the title is far outweighed by the fact that it is both a very POV name and the less popular name.

My proposal is to move the contents of this article to "Gender-neutral language" and for this page to redirect there. Over the past couple months, there has been little or no response to my comments here or edits. I waited some time to hear from people here before I started editing a couple sections, and then waited a while longer to finish editing the rest of the article. I've taken that lack of response to mean that folks here either agree with me or don't care. But as moving such a large article is a fairly major step, I'm gonna go ahead and wait for discussion one more time before taking that final step. If after seven days there is still no response then I will go ahead with the move. --Blackcats 23:55, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Use common names of persons and things: "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things." See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). Hyacinth 00:30, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So since "gender-neutral language" is the most common name and does not conflict with the name of anything else, I'm assuming that you're stating your agreement that the article should be moved? (Please correct me if I'm mistaken) --Blackcats 00:39, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I disagree that "gender-neutral language" is the most common name. Do you have any sources to back up that assertion? Hyacinth 00:59, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes I do have a source - as I cited earlier - A Google search brings back about twice as many hits for "gender-neutral language" as it does for "non-sexist language."[5]

[6]

Those guide-books you refer to are generally written by people who advocate gender-neutral language modification, so they would be inclined to use a term which implicitly argues their case. I'm pretty sure the standard Wikipedia uses is the term which people generally refer to something as (better reflected by the

number of Google hits and such) - not the term which specialists/advocates prefer to use.

Also, even if you were right about "non-sexist language" being the more common term (which I'm quite sure that you're not), that same guide that you cited also says "some terms are in common usage but are commonly regarded as offensive to large groups of people" and that we should avoid using such terms, which goes along with the NPOV problem with this title. [7]

--Blackcats 23:00, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A quick look indicates "non-sexist" is most commmon:

Guidelines for non-sexist writing, by Manju Sah, ASIN: B0007B2J6U.
Fields Reference Book of Non Sexist Words and Phrases by Fields Enterprises Inc Staff, ISBN 0944719023
Ronald Searle's Non-Sexist Dictionary, by Ronald Searle, ISBN 0898153220
Guidelines for non-sexist use of language, by Virginia L Warren, ASIN B0006QBL0G
The A-Z of Non-Sexist Language, by Margaret Doyle, ISBN 0704344300

Hyacinth 01:19, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A quick look at what, exactly? Here are the number of results I get from searching Amazon.com:

"non-sexist language": 1
"gender-neutral language": 4
"non-sexist" language: 9
"gender-neutral" language: 33

This is a completely objective data point which indicates that "gender-neutral" is the more common term. (As does Blackcat's Google search, above). I support the renaming.

Axlrosen 02:23, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The last number meaning there are more books which mention something "gender-neutral" and "language". How many books about the topic actually use that terminology would be a much more appropriate measure. I know of five books which use "non-sexist". Hyacinth 04:45, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well since you specifically asked for it Hyacinth ;-) I went ahead and ran an Amazon.com search to your specifications and it came back with one book for "non-sexist language" [8]

and three books for "gender-neutral language." [9]

But like I said above, the number of books written isn't the most important factor, but that Amazon search tab on my Firefox sure is fun :-) --Blackcats 23:47, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I propose we move the page to non-sexist writing or gender-neutral writing, as that appears to be more common. Hyacinth 22:25, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Compromise proposal

I have a proposal that I not only think everyone can agree on, but it's actually more accurate too. Let's look at the list of supposedly sexist language constructs:

Use of what they consider to be exclusively gender-specific pronouns like "he".
Use of "man" to refer to all people.
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

Only the first 3 of these have to do with "gender-specific language". The last 3 do not. Therefore, "gender-neutral language" and "non-sexist language" cannot be synonyms, and one should not redirect to the other. Instead, I think that most of this article should go under "gender-neutral language". The "non-sexist language" article should remain, and it should: (1) list these 6 constructs that some people object to (2) link to all of them, as well as "gender-neutral language" and (3) make clear that not everyone agrees that such language is sexist. How about that?

Axlrosen 22:42, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Prime numbers

They feel that the male gender in traditional English is simply more general, analagous to "numbers" as compared to "prime numbers".

This is a poor analogy, I'll try to replace it with a better one. The problem is that "he" can refer either to all of humankind, or to one subset of it. "Numbers" does not have this property. The analogy would only hold if you could use the term "numbers" to mean only the non-prime numbers, as well as to mean all numbers.

Axlrosen 03:06, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The prime number analogy is quite appropriate, and here's why (besides the fact that it's the analogy that the author I cited used), Numbers can refer to either all numbers or to only numbers which aren't prime. Mathemeticians don't see non-prime numbers as so much of a special case, so they typically just call them "numbers." Where as prime numbers, like females in most Indo-European laguages are (for better or for worse) more "marked." For example let's say I have three sets of numbers the first (4, 9, 15, 16, 22) (all non-primes) is usually refered to as "numbers," the second set (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) (mixed primes and non-primes - in this case only one non-prime) would also be generally refered to as simply "numbers," not "prime and non-prime numbers," and finally the third set (1,2,3,5,7) (all primes) would be refered to as "prime numbers." The author argues that this set up, does not inherently imply that non-primes (analogous to males) are any more valued or "more numerical." They're simply the more general category, which could well mean that they're seen as less special. He cites speculation about prime-eval matriarchies, which he says could well be the original origin of this sort of gender system. You should check out the article - it's a really thought provoking piece (IMO) - whether you end up agreeing with it or not.

Mathemeticians don't see non-prime numbers as so much of a special case, so they typically just call them "numbers." I have to say that I totally disagree with this sentence. A group of numbers which happen to be all non-primes would be called "numbers", true. But so would a group of numbers that happened to be prime. But if that group of numbers is defined to be prime non-prime, then you'd refer to them as prime or non-prime.

By your logic, nobody should object to the sentence "Every number has other factors besides 1 and itself." But of course that's only true if you use the term "non-prime numbers" instead of "numbers".

But at any rate - since that's the analogy that the author uses and he's one of the most well known critics of gn-language modification, it should remain in the article. --Blackcats 23:28, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I agree, unless we think it's a really bad analogy. I think it's a really bad analogy, let's see if I can convince you :)

Axlrosen 17:04, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Percentage

As of 2005, what percentage of Americans are opponents of non-sexist language?? Georgia guy 23:36, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think that question is a perfect example of how loaded a term "non-sexist language" is. I oppose sexist language, I simply don't feel that there's anything sexist about using the male gramatical gender as a common gender in cases where the gender is unknown. If you did a survey and phrased the question like that - you'd probably get a lot of people saying they support "non-sexist language," (though I think a significant percentage would still say they didn't). But among the group which said yes, I think a majority would soon get pissed off if someone started correcting them every time they didn't rephrase their speech or writing with something akward like "he/she," the "singular they" in a case where it clearly doesn't sound right, or change their sentence to the plural when it was easier and more natural for them to have it in the singular. I think the better question would be what percentage of English speakers use "he," "him," "himself," "his," etc. in cases where the gender is unknown and would be upset if they were forced to quit doing so.--Blackcats 23:59, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Gender vs. Sex

Although gender is used colloquially as a synonym for sex, such usage renders a page like this nearly incomprehensible. Better to say sex when you mean sex ! Ailanto 05:30, 2005 Apr 2 (UTC)

I agree. Chamaeleon 10:59, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

What about language vs writing vs communication vs discourse? Hyacinth 11:05, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)