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> Since my schooldays I have been listening patiently to claims that Latin and the Romance languages are inherently sexist because if you have a group of men an
by kkoncevicius 5y ago
> Since my schooldays I have been listening patiently to claims that Latin and the Romance languages are inherently sexist because if you have a group of men and women, the adjectives will be masculine.
This can be just as easily reversed. Imagine if instead we would use feminine gender for a mixed group and masculine gender only when the group is composed of men. Someone then might complain that this is sexist because men have special treatment - a group consisting of only men has a separate word to highlight the fact that no women are present.
Same with claims that the word "woman" in English is sexist because it is derived from a word "man". If it were reverse (men were called "women") the same people would complain about sexism because the female version of the word is shorter - as if something was subtracted from the masculine version of the word, suggesting that women are lesser than men.
So in summary - my impression is that the complains have nothing to do with the material, but are just the product of current cultural zeitgeist.
- masswerk 5y agoThere are two aspects to this: On the one hand, you could say that the feminine designation has higher specificity, since there's always also the generic masculinum. On the other hand, the latter also expresses or implies a general expectation. (So what aspect you focus on is probably some marker for the current discourse.)
- animal_spirits 5y agoI don't think it is fair to think up hypothetical situations like these and use that as a basis for an ideology about sexism
- kkoncevicius 5y agoIt's just a simple test - if all permutations of some situation lead to the same outcome, then the outcome cannot be said to be caused by the situation.
- animal_spirits 5y agoYeah but, how would you even test this realistically? its just a hypothetical situation. You can't change the etymology of a word and test the outcome
- kkoncevicius 5y agoAll I am saying is that it's just a matter of perspective. If we have a separate word for a group of women that can be seen in both ways: either as a special treatment for women (the group of women stands out when no men are present) or as a special treatment for men (the mixed groups is referred to in masculine terms). Personally, I am not sure how these linguistic details evolved, but I wouldn't be surprised that the original intention was to place a special emphasis on women. Because the word for a mixed group should have been "invented" first, and then a separate word for women added on top. But don't quote me on that. But there is an interesting precedent about dual-words (in the languages that have them), where you use a special form of a word to denote groups of two people. And according to research I've seen those words were added after a word for a group of any size was available - to place a special emphasis on a group of two.
- alexfrydl 5y agoIf these “permutations” only exist inside of your own brain, that only proves something about you, not reality. Really, none of the permutations exist. Very few women unironically care that the word “woman” has the word “man” inside it. You're making up things to be mad about.
- jedi_stannis 5y agoWhat if there was a word for a group of men, a word for a group of woman and a non-gendered word for a mixed group?
- culi 5y ago> If it were reverse (men were called "women") the same people would complain about sexism because the female version of the word is shorter You're just making up hypothetical reactions by a group of people you clearly have some preconceived notions about... The fact that the word "woman" is etymologically derived from the root word "man" can be, and has been, scientifically validated.
- kkoncevicius 5y ago> The fact that the word "woman" is etymologically derived from the root word "man" can be, and has been, scientifically validated. But this doesn't disagree with anything I've said.
- culi 5y agoIt provides a basis to argue about the sexism of the words we use for the two genders. What's the basis for arguing that "word is short. that's sexist". There is none and I don't think feminist scholars are stupid so I doubt they'd try to make such a baseless argument. And I'm really struggling to see why you would just assume they would...