What do we think of gender neutral / gendered language?

[BolloxtoGender]

they instead of he/she (I'm not keen on this unless the sex is unknown, or is someone's preferred pronoun)
distinguished guests instead of ladies and gentlemen (not keen either)
Everyone, People/person (glossing over, bland)
Actor vs Actor/Actress (not keen , as pretending that 'Actor' is gender neutral when it is not)
Manhour, mankind to mean generically - I don't mind, and what's the alternative anyway?

Does gender neutral language effectively make females even more invisible? When means that women's achievements and presence, for example, are not recognised.

Thoughts?

which means not when means

It all depends on the context.

Gender neutrals for a person or people of unknown sex is way better than defaulting to male, which is what tended to be the norm in the past (or defaulting to female for eg nurses, parents).

I don't see anything wrong at all with ditching unnecessarily gendered variations on a default term (actress, manageress etc).

I feel far less invisible receiving a mail starting, "hi everyone," rather than "hello gents".

I'd rather use "they" than "he" as default. I feel quite strongly about not defaulting to male forms, which tends to happen - I'm the only woman in the department.

Mankind - the alternative is humankind. It only sounds a bit odd due to unfamiliarity of usage.

Yes I object to 'Gents' as a form of address on an email. I'm also the only female in the department....doesn't take much to say lady and gents.

Ok, so Humankind.

What about Manhours?

It's scary.

I'm not convinced that a lot of these kinds of language changes make any real difference to how people think about women. I'd say something like gents does clearly refer to men so would be best to avoid in a mixed group, but I don't have a problem with something like manhours as I think man in that context means all people.

As far as things like actress or fisherman or postmistress, I think people can do what they like and if someone else uses it differently it really is ok, not something to get upset about. If I like actress and you call me an actor, it really doesn't matter. (Except maybe for fisher for fisherman which sounds dumb unless you are talking about the weasel family or singing children's religious songs.)

I used to prefer the gender neutral terms until I read Invisible Women. The evidence is that when you use the gender neutral term the person hearing you imagines a man. If you want to influence the idea that both men and women are included you need to mention both explicitly. It feels illogical and uncomfortable but that is unconscious bias for you.
See
www.edutopia.org/article/50-years-children-drawing-scientists

I have started to think that keeping the sexed terms for things is a good thing. There is such a push to make the word woman itself meaningless, I feel we should cling to our sex descriptors because sex matters. And yes, “Actor” drives me mad.

Oh and agree with sillydoggy i had cross posted so not read that until after posting,

Gender neutral language is fine for groups and individuals you don’t know the sex of... I’m not sure the point otherwise..

1984

Some people get super offended by gendered profession names... I don’t really understand, if I’m a woman and a doctor, I wouldn’t mind being called a female doctor. However I know others think it’s diminishing somehow. So I tend to avoid it in case this particular person is offended.

Interesting about 'female doctor'.

I think it is only thought of as diminishing because some people think female doctor, means lesser doctor, and their sexist attitude comes through.

I had a similar thing at work with 'Poster Girl' on a news article headline, some people thought it was condescending and patronising, because of the word 'Girl' (being associated with pink, pretty, cute, value for looks etc..), and had the headline reworded. But surely we should reclaim the word Girl so that we recognise girls' achievements and highlight that girls can be anything they want (doctor, engineer, scientist etc.), rather than perpetuate the negative stereotype of 'Girl'. This reminded me of the #Likeagirl Always ad campaign.

I used to prefer the gender neutral terms until I read Invisible Women.

I've more and more come to the conclusion that an anti-gender approach may in some way be feeding into the toxic gender ideology. It's something I started to notice with people who were very into gender neutral clothing and toys for kids, that many also were very into gender ideology. But I'm consistently seeing now this fairly quiet, but I think real link.

I don't feel very clear about what's behind it, but I think its something that needs to be thought about, or more systematically observed. Tricky I find though when I don't know what I'm liking for.

"Actor" is masculine in origin. The feminine equivalent would be actrix. A good neutral English term would be acter, like singer or dancer, where such a distinction is not made.

See also sculpter and auther, like painter and composer.

Reading the ‘they’ makes my eyes twitch, from a syntax perspective.

But also, I love how language evolves. As it always has. I also believe that new language can also be invented to describe these new facets of identity. Y’know, coz written language is essentially invented too and all that.

Stupid question I know! from someone who doesn't understand what is gender neutral? We are born male or female what is neutral about gender? Example a woman who has a baby =mum
Male who has a baby= dad. Where is this going I just don't get it! Can anyone help me understand? I know as genders we are not equal as women get treated harshly.

They raped them.

They are visiting their family, and this evening they are going into town.

Those two sentences are why I object to they/them. They obscure much.

I don't mind actor/actress, waiter/waitress. Prefer firefighter and police officer to police woman etc

How do languages which are gendered work with this sort of thing? I'm sure someone will have done comparative studies.

I dislike the removal of man as the neutral as well as masculine personally. I appreciate a lot of posters here will disagree though.

I take mankind to include all humans.

I prefer madam chairman to chairperson.

I'm not inclined to get into huge arguments about these things, it isn't life or death, but seeing as you asked that's my feeling on the matter.

'Gender neutral' suggests that the language is neutral. The context of use dictates if it is a neutral use of language. It is not a neutral use of language if the context is inherentally to replace a known quantity with a euphemism to disguise something.

EXAMPLES

If you don't know a person and their sex the use of they or them to avoid stereotyping is legitimately neutral.

Talking about women and things that only affect women (or a significantly higher percentage of women than men) in a way that disguises the fact its about women by using euphemisms is not neutral. It's a conscious political decision to disguise or distort an issue relating to women. It erases important information or issues that if observed might affect the views or perceptions of others. In this way it either reinforces gender stereotypes or inherentally sexist in nature making it far from 'gender neutral'.

The whole point of neutral language is to state based on observation rather than state based on belief.

The current use of certain 'gender neutral' terms is a bastardisation of this concept.

Manholes? Womanholes sounds pornographic. All this stuff doesn't really bother me. It's helpful to know if someone is talking about an actor or actress.