Re: Gender (was: Homosexuality and gender identity)

En réponse à Christophe Grandsire :


>It would be completely incorrect. If you refer to a group only of women
>with "ils", you would likely be at least verbally corrected (and you should
>expect to be subject of the wrath of said group of women ;)))) ). There's
>just no way one can refer to one woman with "il", so you can't refer to
>only women with "ils".
Note that this interdiction of using masculine forms to refer to women goes
so far that while feminists in the English speaking world have fought for
the neutralisation of occupation names (chairman becoming chairperson,
etc...), French feminists fight for the *feminisation* of occupation names,
i.e. the construction, if such word didn't exist already, of feminine
counterparts to all occupation names which existed only in masculine form.

My partner, who witnessed the disappearance of such doublets in Dutch
(disappearance demanded by the Dutch feminists) finds it strange that
feminists would fight *in favour of* the introduction of such doublets. I
always reply to him that it's the result of the absence of a neuter gender
in the language, which make people consider the masculine/feminine polarity
as essential and unalterable, and that equality is reached by the
equalisation of both genders (IIRC fighting against the masculine default)
rather than the disappearance of the distinction.

I often take that as an example that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, in a weak
form, does have some ground :) .

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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