5 ms·

All this huff and puff just for someone using a gender neutral term? I can't understand why people get upset by something so unimportant. Or to get upset for no

by jahaja 6y ago

All this huff and puff just for someone using a gender neutral term? I can't understand why people get upset by something so unimportant. Or to get upset for not using it for that matter.

xyzzyz 6y ago
Imagine if a US presidential candidate were insisting on using the term “Americanxs” every time they referred to their voters.
- jahaja 6y ago
  What would be the point of that? "Americans" is already gender neutral?
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    And what do you think is the “gender neutral” term that Spanish speakers use when they refer to group of people of Latin American origin? It surely is not “latinxs”. “What would be point of that?”, yes, that’s exactly the issue. It would seem weird, forced and foreign, just like “latinxs” does to people it is purported to refer to.
    - jahaja 6y ago
      It seems to be a bit strange to complain about how widespread the use is of a newly coined term. I assume that much of this "outrage" is some kind of a "culture war" thing. Instead of focusing on important stuff people get all distracted with "old man angry at minor change" and bike shed things like this ad infinitum. > yes, that’s exactly the issue What? it's not needed with "Americans" so there's no need. In some languages gender neutral terms can be legitimately used as a shortcut for using both after each other or similar.
      - xyzzyz 6y ago
        > What? it's not needed with "Americans" so there's no need But that’s the point: it’s not needed in Spanish either. Spanish speakers are totally fine without new inventions like “latinx”. They see those strange American people, who usually don’t even speak Spanish, try to impose their own new norms on what the Latinos should be called, and they don’t like this kind of cultural imperialism. The whole problem stems to a large degree from lack of understanding the English speakers have for gendered languages. English is, with few exceptions, not gendered. The exceptions are rare enough that people who care can try to lobby for using gender neutral terms, like they are used for almost everything else. This is often against established language patterns, but since English is, in general, not gendered, it doesn’t seem all that out of place. That’s not how gendered languages works. In gendered languages, everything had a gender. In Spanish, chair is female, and desk is male. When you use an adjective, you need to use it in an appropriate gendered form to match the gender of the noun. Spanish speakers are completely used to it, and don’t see this as anything special or in need of rectification: that’s just how their language works. External efforts to make some specific words gender neutral are just strange and foreign to them.
        jahaja 6y ago
        You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. In German for example every job ad title need to be suffixed with (m/w). It would be handy if it was gender neutral. I don't understand how the grammatical gender of a random noun e.g. wine, that happens to be masculine in German, is comparable to something that's referring to actual persons. In Swedish for example there are the pronouns "han" (he) and "hon" (she), and now there's a gender neutral "hen". The latter being very handy when you don't know the gender of the person that's being talked about. But of course this addition has made culture warring people (a.k.a right-wing folks) very upset in Sweden too.
        xyzzyz 6y ago
        > You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. No, because when you refer to actual people, you still need to use a gendered noun. The issue is which gendered nouns to use, and different language have different rules about it. In German, for example, one just like in Spanish needs to match the gender of the adjective to the gender of the noun. However, unlike in Spanish, German doesn't really have gender distinction in plural, and you generally use the same form to refer to group of people regardless of whether it comprises of only males, only females, or whether it's mixed. Spanish, however, has gendered plural, and it also has a rule that whenever one refers to a group of people, one uses female gender noun only if the group comprises of only females. Whenever the group is fully male or mixed, one uses masculine form of the noun. So, a group of Latino men is "latinos", a group of Latino women is "latinas", but the mixed group of Latino men and women is actually "latinos" again. To add to that, the masculine plural version of the word "latinoamericano" is "latinoamericani", but the feminine version is "latinoamericanas", and not "latinaamericanas" (this is a compound word, and not an adjective-noun pair, hence the "latino" doesn't get declensed to "latina") In short, any time you refer to group of Latin Americans in Spanish that doesn't happen to be all female, you'll always be saying "latino", and never "latina". Hence, the word "latinx" is solving a nonexistent problem, same as the word "Americanxs" would in English.

by jahaja 6y ago

All this huff and puff just for someone using a gender neutral term? I can't understand why people get upset by something so unimportant. Or to get upset for not using it for that matter.

xyzzyz 6y ago

Imagine if a US presidential candidate were insisting on using the term “Americanxs” every time they referred to their voters.

jahaja 6y ago
What would be the point of that? "Americans" is already gender neutral?
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  And what do you think is the “gender neutral” term that Spanish speakers use when they refer to group of people of Latin American origin? It surely is not “latinxs”. “What would be point of that?”, yes, that’s exactly the issue. It would seem weird, forced and foreign, just like “latinxs” does to people it is purported to refer to.
  - jahaja 6y ago
    It seems to be a bit strange to complain about how widespread the use is of a newly coined term. I assume that much of this "outrage" is some kind of a "culture war" thing. Instead of focusing on important stuff people get all distracted with "old man angry at minor change" and bike shed things like this ad infinitum. > yes, that’s exactly the issue What? it's not needed with "Americans" so there's no need. In some languages gender neutral terms can be legitimately used as a shortcut for using both after each other or similar.
    - xyzzyz 6y ago
      > What? it's not needed with "Americans" so there's no need But that’s the point: it’s not needed in Spanish either. Spanish speakers are totally fine without new inventions like “latinx”. They see those strange American people, who usually don’t even speak Spanish, try to impose their own new norms on what the Latinos should be called, and they don’t like this kind of cultural imperialism. The whole problem stems to a large degree from lack of understanding the English speakers have for gendered languages. English is, with few exceptions, not gendered. The exceptions are rare enough that people who care can try to lobby for using gender neutral terms, like they are used for almost everything else. This is often against established language patterns, but since English is, in general, not gendered, it doesn’t seem all that out of place. That’s not how gendered languages works. In gendered languages, everything had a gender. In Spanish, chair is female, and desk is male. When you use an adjective, you need to use it in an appropriate gendered form to match the gender of the noun. Spanish speakers are completely used to it, and don’t see this as anything special or in need of rectification: that’s just how their language works. External efforts to make some specific words gender neutral are just strange and foreign to them.
      - jahaja 6y ago
        You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. In German for example every job ad title need to be suffixed with (m/w). It would be handy if it was gender neutral. I don't understand how the grammatical gender of a random noun e.g. wine, that happens to be masculine in German, is comparable to something that's referring to actual persons. In Swedish for example there are the pronouns "han" (he) and "hon" (she), and now there's a gender neutral "hen". The latter being very handy when you don't know the gender of the person that's being talked about. But of course this addition has made culture warring people (a.k.a right-wing folks) very upset in Sweden too.
        xyzzyz 6y ago
        > You seem to be mixing gendered nouns with something that's actually referring to actual people. Two different things. No, because when you refer to actual people, you still need to use a gendered noun. The issue is which gendered nouns to use, and different language have different rules about it. In German, for example, one just like in Spanish needs to match the gender of the adjective to the gender of the noun. However, unlike in Spanish, German doesn't really have gender distinction in plural, and you generally use the same form to refer to group of people regardless of whether it comprises of only males, only females, or whether it's mixed. Spanish, however, has gendered plural, and it also has a rule that whenever one refers to a group of people, one uses female gender noun only if the group comprises of only females. Whenever the group is fully male or mixed, one uses masculine form of the noun. So, a group of Latino men is "latinos", a group of Latino women is "latinas", but the mixed group of Latino men and women is actually "latinos" again. To add to that, the masculine plural version of the word "latinoamericano" is "latinoamericani", but the feminine version is "latinoamericanas", and not "latinaamericanas" (this is a compound word, and not an adjective-noun pair, hence the "latino" doesn't get declensed to "latina") In short, any time you refer to group of Latin Americans in Spanish that doesn't happen to be all female, you'll always be saying "latino", and never "latina". Hence, the word "latinx" is solving a nonexistent problem, same as the word "Americanxs" would in English.