How are gendered languages like French dealing with the trans agenda

I am a Brit who studied Spanish to quite an advanced level several years ago. I've only recently noticed the trend of using the @ symbol in informal written Spanish to denote a mix of males and females. For example, "hello friends" can be written as "hola amig@s". I appreciate this is slightly off topic, but thought it might be interesting to mention.

Sheila Jeffreys was saying the other day, that trans is essentially a US thing - exported along with the rest of the cultural imperialism (I'm paraphrasing!)

She was saying that in many non-English speaking countries, there isn't even a difference a word for gender - so there's no such thing as a gender identity.

She wasn't talking specifically about European countries though, at the time she was talking about Indonesia.

Here's the video of Sheila Jeffries. www.facebook.com/DRradfem/videos/2157764721109127/

I'm also curious what's going on in the rest of Europe. Does anyone know?

@LinoleumBlownapart yes that's right I think they use puta or bicha. According to the book anyway.

www.bookdepository.com/Travesti-Don-Kulick/9780226461007

moofolk puta is bitch, bicha is an insect or small animal but it's also an offensive term for homossexuals which an English equivalent would be something like poofta or fag.

I prefer the informal 'guys' for a mixed group in English, but that's technically a masculine pronoun. Ya'll or you lot would probably be more gender neutral. I don't know about other languages but in the ones I know, people saying "boys" feels like us saying "guys" so not that odd. In Portuguese though mixed groups are usually refered to as "gente", rather than "os meninos" for example. There's some movement away from gender specific words or when writing to parents for example the school writes seus/suas filhos/as rather than just writing seus filhos.

Im interested to see how the German language is getting on with this. I only did o level and didn’t stick at it, so I have no idea how it works nowadays.

All professions are gendered, like actor and actress in English, but extending to doctor, teacher, engineer etc.

I didn’t realise that about a mixed group in French being masculine. From what i remember, In German plurals are grammatical feminine, even if it’s a group of men.

foreignpolicy.com/2017/11/20/france-is-debating-whether-french-is-sexist/

There has been an on off push for the neutral pronoun ‘hen’ in Swedish. It’s never really caught on. Possibly because gender isn’t such a restricted thing here.

Men seem very comfortable with themselves however they dress or act. Far less overt gender pressure here.

I'm really hoping there is a linguist out there who can contribute as my French is very rusty and I was never very good to begin with.

I'd bern wondering this too - thanks for starting the the thread SPB

Erroll

Leaving any issues around trans aside, do French people really adhere to that nowadays in groups with few men?

It's something I have wondered about for years. About 20 plus years ago there was a feminist drive to stop the masculine he/him/his as the default in the English language. This is because in English it denotes sex (or at least did at the time)

I found it very jarring when I first saw "she" being used and I hate the constructions he/she or (s)he.

I often wondered if the French had the same language development or if the debate didn't happen because masculine/feminine doesn't automatically denote sex.

To me it's a wonderful example on how language shapes discourse and abstract thought.

a group of people are referred to with the masculine even if they're one man and multiple women
Don't know if this would bother me. I prefer the informal 'guys' for a mixed group in English to 'girls' or 'ladies' (I am a woman, not a girl).

I would reasonably assume if a French born female later identifies as male they would use all masculine sentences when referring to themselves, and vice versa.

In the UK there is a drive to use gender neutral so as to be inclusive.

I know several people who state that they are non binary. They get very upset if you fail to instantly overwrite decades of language processing and don't use "they"

In French there's no neutral singular or even a neutral pronoun to be coopted. The masculine is the default, the masculine is used for mixed groups and the feminine is only used for all feminine nouns. Every adjective and verb has a masculine/feminine version and must agree.

It's been a long time since I've had to conjugate in French so I think verbs are often the same written or still sound the same spoken.

Of course it's possible that non-binary people in France are not bothered about being misgendered because the whole flipping language is gendered. For example, dog/cat - I think one is masculine and one is feminine. It doesn't mean that all of one species is male and the other female.

a group of people are referred to with the masculine even if they're one man and multiple women

That annoyed the hell out of me when I was doing O-levels (mid 70s and I was labouring under the naive delusion that equality was a done deal). Leaving any issues around trans aside, do French people really adhere to that nowadays in groups with few men?

In Italian they are trying to insist that gendered words are used in the correct gender they identify in.

But

The ta lobby doesn't have much traction here so they can't enforce it. Self ID is also not recognised by law so there's nothing they can do about it.

We did have a female speaker in the houses of parliament who insisted on changing the word president (masculine in italian) to a non-existent female form. The same with words for mayor, member of parliament etc but was met with disdain. She tried to pass it off as "a feminist fight for equality" but her real intention was to bow to the tas and most of the female members of parliament laughed at her.

I have no problem using correct words, in their correct gender in English or Italian, or French or Spanish. that is why I'm on my last warning here 🤣

I read a really interesting ethnography of a group of Travesti in Brazil. They are transgendered prostitutes. It's an affectionate study of people on the edge, doing some pretty unpleasant things.

In terms of this question though, travesti in Portuguese is a male noun and possibly for this reason, many travesti (although not rejecting the term - this is their identity), refer to each other using insults such as bicha (bitch) which is feminine and so necessitates female pronouns.

I believe there is an effort to undo grammar rules around gendered language in French

Can't remember the specific examples but it's along the lines of, a group of people are referred to with the masculine even if they're one man and multiple women

I believe Macron has said the language should stay as it is

I would reasonably assume if a French born female later identifies as male they would use all masculine sentences when referring to themselves, and vice versa.

This is something I've been thinking about.

My primary and for many years only exposure to the word "gender" was via French. I have no idea why or how words are defined as masculine or femine.