In the French language, for example, nouns are either masculine or feminine. How does this sit with feminists in France? It seems like American feminists would be insulted if we started saying that certain things were inherently male or female oriented. (My high school French is fading…I can’t think of any examples at the moment.)
On NPR David Sederas(sp?) did a hilarious bit on trying to figure out the gender of French words. I don’t speak French at all but if I remember the NPR piece correctly there is no rhyme or reason to why a certain word is masculine or feminine. Given that it’s all over the place I’d guess that feminists have a hard time complaining since they can’t point to an obviously male centric conspiracy in the language.
I think {b]Jeff_42** could be right. Words are masculine or feminine in French for reasons unrelated to the concept of gender – except, of course, where specific words about human beings are concerned – so it’s hard to imagine how a “male-centric” conspiracy could be perceived.
On the other hand, the third-person impersonal pronoun in French, “on”, is masculine. Just as we often use “he” to mean “anyone”. This could be perceived as a gender-bias, same as it is in English.
On the other-other hand, I think all French adverbs are constructed from the feminine form of the corresponding adjective. For instance, happy = heureux/heureuse (m/f); happily = heureusement, not heureuxment – presumably because the former is easier to say.
MJH2 wrote:
The word “gender” traditionally has meant not one’s sex, but a grammatical classification of nouns. Romance languages have gendered nouns that follow a male-female split, but gender in other languages is used to specify whether something is plant, animal, or mineral, or that something is moving or still, or just about any other way you could think of to classify nouns into groups. That’s what “gender” means.
“Sex” has traditionally meant the state of being male or female. If you’re talking about doing the nasty, then that’s not “sex,” but “sexual intercourse.”
So I would say that words are masculine or feminine in French not because of their sex, but because it’s just their gender.
CurtC: Well, yes, I understand what “gender” is as a linguistic concept. The word itself comes from the Latin genus, generis, meaning “kind, type”. But you’re right; to be clear in this context I should have said, “words are masculine or feminine for reasons unrelated to any concept of sexual identity”. Unfortunately, in English we use the words “sex” and “gender” interchangeably to mean the same thing – I suspect because we don’t use “gender” in the linguistic sense.
What we need to answer the OP is a someone knowledgeable in French sociology and/or feminism…
I don’t have an answer to the question, but I’d just like to be pedantic and point out that many languages have gendered (as in masculine/feminine) nouns. Not just Romance languages.
This has bothered me for many years, so I’ll rephrase the OP in a manner that you’ll understand:
In many languages (the Romance languages, for example) different words are used for groups of men vs groups of women. If I remember my Spanish, “you men” is “ellos”, and “you women” is “ellas”. Regardless of whether I got that right or wrong, you now understand the concept that I am trying to get across. And it applies not only to pronouns like “you”, but also to verb forms, such as “those men are eating” vs “those women are eating”.
Now here’s the question — In most or all of such languages, a mixed group gets the words relevant to men, even if there is only a small number of men with a large number of women. Among women who speak such languages, how do the women in general, or the feminists in particular, feel about this bias?
This has already been discussed in another thread before. I would say only foreigners who learn the language as adults will go into this type of analysis. Every language, including English, is full of things that do not make any sense if you just try to analyze them rationally. When you learn the language as a kid you just learn the usage and don’t care about the illogic parts.
Just to repeat what i said in another thread. In Spanish, Persona is feminine even when it refers to a man. So you can be talking about a man in the feminine. Do feminists object? No. Do men object? No. Do foreigners assume a lot of silly things? Yes.
Try explaining to foreigners the logig of the expression “to clean up”. Why “up”? Every language is full of those things.
I do not speak german but I understand that the diminutive form is always neutral gender so an object mey be masculine but the same small object will be neutral.
By the way, in Spanish I was taught the five genders are: masculino, femenino, neutro, epiceno, ambiguo. I have no idea what they mean or how to use them.
restating an OP? such hubris! 
Anyway, the answer to my question seems to be that word gender is not associated with human gender.
thanks, all
For what it’s worth, I remember reading a book many years ago that tried to make an issue of gender in romance languages. It was one of these “godess” books that argued that in the past, society was female dominated, everyone was happy, etc. Anyway, among the evidence cited for this claim was that certain words in romance languages representing noble concepts were “feminine.” I forget the examples she used, but it was stuff like charity, hope, etc.
Interestingly, I took a linguistics class in college and was told that at one point, English had “gender” for inanimate objects. According to the prof, fixed objects were male, and movable objects were female. A vestige of this distinction is that ships are often referred to as “she.”
Anyway, I should mention that I am skeptical of both the above theories, especially the “goddess” theory.