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> Your reaction seems to prove the point. I don't think it does. Markedness is much more universal in language and not merely affecting grammatical gender in i
by jhgb 9y ago
> Your reaction seems to prove the point.
I don't think it does. Markedness is much more universal in language and not merely affecting grammatical gender in indeterminate contexts. If "the point" in question is some kind of job underrepresentation, it would be more plausible that this pronoun thing is some kind of symptom of it if this indeterminate gender issue were isolated and recent, but the indeterminate gender is ancient (older than any jobs, in fact), and markedness in general is pervasive, so I'm not sure what it could prove about recent job issues.
- uoaei 9y ago>If "the point" in question is some kind of job underrepresentation Still seeing the forest for the trees. The point isn't job underrepresentation in meatspace, the point is that the underlying assumptions about gender roles in employment are expressing and reinforcing themselves whenever the English language is written with a determinate gender as in TFA. And that determined gender seems to be disproportionately male to any perceptive reader. This betrays that the forces that engender (pun intended?) discrimination are operating in the writer and are reinforcing the worldviews of those who still hold such prejudices. The causal relation between using this language and discriminating against women is not a direct one, but it's intellectually dishonest to assume on the flipside that no relation exists in anybody who does habitually use gendered pronouns in their writing.