I prefer more gender-neutral terms like “bovines” or “bock-bocks”
I do not know if I can completely get behind this Anglo-centric point of view. Maybe we need more genders and noun classes. Swahili has, what, at least 9? And they are “useful”.
Sure, having pronouns and occupation names and other words convey gender does reduce ambiguity and increase information content.
It would also reduce ambiguity and increase information content to have different pronouns for people of different races, and for people of different social classes, and all sorts of other characteristics. Just imagining that shows how offensive and obnoxious it is.
I think to the extent that we accept gendered language we only do so because it’s been that way so long.
They’re most certainly not the only tool we have. We also have the tools that are already routinely used when both people are the same gender – which is quite common, not in any way an unusual case.
John told Mary that Mary needed to leave.
John told Mary that John needed to leave.
John said that Mary needed to leave.
John said “I need to leave”.
Calling humans other than infants “it” has a very long history of being considered deliberately dehumanizing and is very likely to be taken as an insult; because it often is meant as an insult.
Singular they/them is already about 90% of the way through that evolution; or arguably re-evolution. It has happened relatively quickly and it is happening now.
If we’re talking about grammatical gender in those languages which gender everything: a massive simplification of the language without losing any genuinely relevant meaning.
If we’re talking only about pronouns: removing the miscommunications inherent in using gendered terms when they’re not relevant. “When you go to see the doctor, he will . . .” is not the same sentence as “When you go to see the doctor, she will . . .”; it carries large societal implications which are indeed part of what’s being communicated.
Point one: they both are.
Point two: they’re not neatly separable like that. Exclusiveness communicates something; and what it communicates is not clarity, but error. And is the purpose of communication not to connect with others? Excluding some people from the conversation hurts communication.
I don’t think anybody’s suggesting that. It’s what we write from now on that’s at issue.
That certainly makes sense when discussing breeding animals, or the raising and/or sale of animals for breeding, or in some cases other uses such as what race to enter a horse into. That’s a form of technical language which will continue to be useful to people in relevant lines of work or hobby.
But I’ve long since accepted that in standard laymen’s usage “cow” includes “bull” and “steer”; “dog” includes both dog and bitch; “goose” includes “gander”; and while some people do say “tomcat” almost nobody uses “queen.” Plus which “chicken” and “cat” are perfectly good words on their own.
That’s an issue. But I think it may be an issue specifically because we’re used to using gendered pronouns, and may go away if/when we mostly stop doing so. It’s presumably not an issue in languages which don’t have gendered pronouns to start with – though I’m cis, and maybe I just don’t know enough about that.
Sometimes those cases are dealt with by emphasis (at least in spoken conversation).
John told Jack thət(weak form) he needed to leave (John is leaving
John told Jack that HE needed to leave (John thinks Jack should leave)
Something is lost in terms of fluency and beauty but this is not the subject of the thread.
In most cases nothing important is lost. Inclusivity and sensitivity can be gained. This is a good thing. But only up to a certain point.
The majority of people who become pregnant identify as women. I have no problem with being more specific in the few cases where this is not true. But I have no problems, in cases where it doesn’t specifically matter, with using the word “pregnancy” in traditional ways. Some object to this, of course. In general use I don’t think anyone is confused.
Maybe referring to big boats as female is silly. But there is merit in some traditions, arguably. Whether this is “information” is arguable, but probably it isn’t.
Irrelevant information is not useful, it is a detrimental distraction. If you are stuck on a narrow ledge, and I’m about to throw you a rope to save your life, should I first clarify whether you prefer a blue rope or a red one?
Well said, this is the crux of the matter.
It may be useful information to know someone’s skin complexion if I’m buying them a sweater. I’d certainly like to know someone’s gender at a point when I want to ask them on a date or proposition them for sex. But I generally don’t want or need any of this information so urgently that it needs to be elucidated in the first sentence I hear about a person. And if someone insists that they do need to know it, perhaps they should examine carefully why they think that.
I’m not trying to be morally superior and exempt myself from this examination. It is deeply ingrained in me to feel slightly uncomfortable if I’m interacting with someone and I don’t know their gender.
Yeah, English does a lot of things that could in theory be optimised out, if simplification really is optimal, and I’m genuinely not sure that it is, in this case.
It’s often said that redundancy in English is a feature not a bug. If that’s true, then paring stuff away because we don’t see the immediate utility, is potentially losing something useful - it just might not be directly obvious what that is.
As someone said already, this thread seems to me to be very Anglo-centric. People are not talking here about de-gendering language in general, but only about de-gendering English. Otherwise we’d have to have a larger discussion about the many forms gender can take in languages. I’m sure people are well aware: Many languages have a gender for all nouns. Many have more than two genders. Many languages do not use sex as a gender marker. Many languages have no gender at all.
I mean, de-gendering English seems to be a completely different task than de-gendering French or German.
I think that just reflects the demographics of the venue.
I speak a little French, German and Spanish, but I’ve no idea how to discuss de-gendering a language that has grammatical gender. Its an interesting topic, certainly.
Well, then, let us turn this around: the OP is asking “is there anything useful achieved by dividing nouns and pronouns into gendered groups”, so why does English have gender in the first place, and what does it do?
E.g. this article
mentions “nominal classification and cross-reference of constituents through agreement”.
As for where English et al. genders came from, the author explains that
The ancient Indo-European languages attest to a sex-based three-gender system, which includes masculine, feminine and neuter. As early as Brugmann (1891), it became clear that this system was a late development from an earlier two-gender system, commonly held to be animacy-based, which morphologically consisted of (following the terminology of the three-gender system) the masculine and the neuter, while the feminine gender was later formed through the addition of a special suffix…
And of course English used to refer to all young children as “girls,” only specifying which gender they were when they were older. Restore English to its roots!
OK thank you. This is what I want to know. How are they useful? What do they convey that is functional?
It was not intended to be. But then most Dopers are English-speakers, so I appreciate all the answers they have given.
Precisely. But what actual information is conveyed by all this faffing about? Is there anything actually useful about it all? I wanted to assert that we could just drop the whole thing, but then I realized I don’t really know enough to have an opinion on the subject. So this is what I want to know - what is the purpose of all this gendering? Does it have one?
Gendering is sort of important to humans, maybe it should be reflected in our language. Maybe when we are all genderless beings of pure energy we can get rid of it. I don’t think non-binary people are claiming they are actually genderless. So everyone is gendered in some way.
Thank you for playing, but please start your own thread.
You don’t own this place.
Thread closed as disconnect between title and OP is causing issues. It will either be reopened later or a new more clearly focused thread will be started.
Multiple flags about posters ignoring the intent of the OP have come in.