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?

People who have a problem with singular they are just wrong (in reference to its traditional usage, for referring to a person where sex is unknown or irrelevant). It's perfectly acceptable English and we have been using it for centuries.

motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/singular-they-and-the-many-reasons-why-its-correct/

If plural grammatical forms used for a singular subject annoyed thee so much, thou wouldst not use singular you.

On the topic of the main question, I don't like unnecessarily gendered language and I hate 'male as default' language.

I've noticed I'm more likely to say 'they' now rather than 'he' in general terms - as in 'if someone needs to sit down they're welcome to' . I think Invisible Women has made me more aware of default male language!

I don't think I've ever said 'ladies & gentlemen' so 'everyone' isn't a problem for me.

I understand 'actor' is more usual now rather than 'actress' - not really a problem, as I wouldn't say 'doctress' or 'directoress'.

But if someone asked me to say 'they' instead of 'he' or 'she' I would be doing an eye roll. I even find it more tut worthy than a man insisting on being called 'she' etc.

I prefer gender neutral language rather than the default male where the gender îs irrelevant and prefer (accurate) gender specific language where it is relevant. E.g. She for cervical examinations, he for prostrate examinations

Amongst my friends we would use “guys” as in “what are you guys up to at the weekend?” to apply equally to a male group, mixed group or female group. Maybe that’s unusual?

The history of how the second person singular fell out of usage in most dialects of English is interesting.

You was used not just as the plural but also as the formal singular form towards social superiors. As social positions became more fluid it became more difficult to know who would be offended by the use of thou and to err on the side of safety people ended up dropping it altogether losing the useful distinction between singular and plural in the process.

Some dialects do of course retain thou, and others created new plural forms as the distinction is useful.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

Yes, the same is true of many languages, e.g. French. I believe English is one of the only (the only?) languages to drop the T-V distinction and get rid of the T rather than the V, as it were, for the standard dialect at least.

Linguistics is very interesting. Prescriptivists are boring.

People who have a problem with singular they are just wrong (in reference to its traditional usage, for referring to a person where sex is unknown or irrelevant). It's perfectly acceptable English and we have been using it for centuries.

Only for generics though. "When the customer arrives tell them they'll have to wait" is standard English usage but "When Sue arrives tell them they'll have to wait" is not.

Only for generics though. "When the customer arrives tell them they'll have to wait" is standard English usage but "When Sue arrives tell them they'll have to wait" is not.

Absolutely. With a named subject, singular they is definitely a modern usage rather than the traditional usage.

Of course this is hard to get used to, especially if you know Sue. Personally I'd never use singular they in this context, unless I'd been specifically asked to and I was actually in the company of the person who asked me (merely to avoid making a scene).

Amongst my friends we would use “guys” as in “what are you guys up to at the weekend?” to apply equally to a male group, mixed group or female group. Maybe that’s unusual?

No, I think it's very common. Anywhere I've been, guys can refer to mixed groups or even groups of women or girls.

I remember at a certain point though, people started to think it was sexist and would correct themselves. My guess is because "guy" does refer to a male, people felt that "guys" must as well, and they didn't really consider that for whatever reason it was commonly used for both and so effectively was neutral.
But it's the same pattern as man or men used to refer to both sexes. I was in the military around the same time and leaders were told they had to stop adressing groups of us as men and call us troops instead.

I mean, the 'guys' thing is an interesting reflection of the 'male as default' dynamic, wherein it is considered completely neutral to use explicitly masculine terms to refer to women, but nobody would consider it neutral to refer to a group of men as 'gals'. Feminine words never ever become 'default' (or if anyone has an example I'd be really interested to hear it), but masculine words frequently do.

To me, it is quite clearly a reflection of sexism in society. I try not to use the word like that, although I won't claim I'm 100% successful as it is hard to avoid common usage, and I don't like being referred to as a guy. But I don't think that people who happily call everyone guys are sexist and I'd never make a big issue of it. It's just one of those little things that show us how women are seen in our culture.

But I don't think that people who happily call everyone guys are sexist and I'd never make a big issue of it. It's just one of those little things that show us how women are seen in our culture.

This. The discussions about these things from a feminist perspective are meant to illustrate a prevailing culture, and perhaps encourage reflection on gendered assumptions, such as the already mentioned 'default male'. It's often grasped by those who want to undermine the feminist POV to say that we are trying to impose something, but is asking people to consider what they might have unthinkingly accepted an unreasonable thing to do? This difference between this and the TRA approach is that we aren't calling it literal violence or genocide if you call a group of women a default male term. We reserve the naming of violence to all the actual violence perpetrated against women.

they didn't really consider that for whatever reason it was commonly used for both and so effectively was neutral.

This is quite rude, though, because of course 'they' considered this. It was the problem in a nutshell. For whatever reason? It's not some inexplicable coincidence.

Guys isn't much used round here but I have heard Americans be irritated by suggestions they shouldn't use what they consider to be a local dialect equivalent of y'all. According to this map it is the most common form in the US but there are quite a few other variations.

www.languagesoftheworld.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/you-all.jpg

As an off topic tangent I was particularly struck by the use of yins, as to me yins has a different meaning to youse being the plural of yin (one) rather than ye/you/ya.

I suppose whether you are bothered by the use depends rather on whether you are more concerned with de-gendering language or preventing homogenisation of it.

This is quite rude, though, because of course 'they' considered this. It was the problem in a nutshell. For whatever reason? It's not some inexplicable coincidence.

I don't really think they went that far in their thinking.

As it happens, I disagree with your principle, but generally I don't think people were thinking that deeply about it one way or the other.

If someone insisted on being referred to as they/them, I might ask how many are you? Is it like the Borg?

It doesn't require too much deep thinking - the whole nature of the argument against using 'guys' to refer to female or mixed-sex groups is that using masculine terms as gender neutral is sexist because it perpetuates/reflects the idea that men = people but women are a special subcategory of people, that women can be lumped in with men but men could never be lumped in with women. "Ah, you must not have realised that here it is being used as gender neutral" is not a good point, because that IS the issue.

Must admit it's a bit strange to see something reminiscent of the 'PC gone mad' argument against feminist critiques of language use here on the FWR board. I infer that you are a woman who is happy to be referred to in a group as 'men', which is of course your prerogative, but surely it's not difficult to see why a woman might not like to be called one of a group of men? And it's not because she's an idiot who hadn't realised that masculine words are sometimes used as if they were gender neutral, since that is the entire summary of her complaint.

Why do you think women can be guys but men can't be gals (unless somebody is teasing them)? Do you honestly think it is a coincidence, a 'for whatever reason' issue, that this phenomenon only ever goes in one direction?

I have heard a male manager talk to his all-male team starting, "come on, girls," but it only confirmed my opinion he was a sexist dickhead.

The origins of 'guys' is worthy of critique, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not now an acceptable generic group term, especially among Americans or a multinational team.

We could ponder the fact that the etymology of 'man' is that it was originally neutral, alongside the sexed wifman and werman - in that case the neutral became the male version which is maybe worse - but long enough ago that it doesn't bother us.

FWIW, I do use 'guys' when I am talking to my whole family, most of which are female and I'm usually including a very barky dog in that statement because it's usual 'Guys! Guys! I can't hear myself think!!'

Since bumping up against this topic, I have made conscious and deliberate language choices based on an increasing awareness of sex, race and disability issues. The language around disability is probably the one I have been aware of the longest, having smacked someone in the chops when I was 9 because they called my sibling a 'spacker' which is thankfully now a term I don't think I've heard for a very long time, and I only hit someone the once over it (not my finest moment by a long chalk) and obviously wouldn't again.

Sometimes these things are ingrained and unlearning them is difficult but absolutely the right thing to do. Eeny meeny miny mo was a very different rhyme in my childhood, and I will have said it parrot fashion so many times. Changing the offensive word to Tiger had to be done, as a conscious act, because it was a grossly offensive slur.

Consciously shifting more generic default male terms and phrases is still something I am trying to do, but a)it's a really big job because default male is everywhere and b) it doesn't feel as pressing because it's much more under the radar than an obvious slur, it's more of a culture-wide bias.

My father calls his parents folks (from Kentucky Appalachians) always has thus my understanding of that word has always meant 'your parents' or 'someone else's parents' not people in general or groups of people - my mother's side and DH's families don't use the word. I find it grating and annoying when I hear someone use that word for a group of people other than parents.

Ya'll is a word I was directed to not use as a child in school so I haven't used it in common speech since probably first grade. There are many words that have basically become stricken from my vocabulary (and DH's) since I was a child. As a result I sound like a generic American with no discernible accent whatsoever and DH is the same. Because we were taught that the dialects and accents of our people were embarrassing and stupid.

As far as 'guys' go I think I've always used it for groups of people regardless of the mix of the sexes. I got it from a show called The Electric Company when I was a toddler in the late '70s. I imagine a lot of Americans use it as a result of The Electric Company which was an educational show for children (a link below for reference).

I've stopped using my first name in my signature block for work as people tend to assume you are male in my profession (unless alerted otherwise) so my obviously female name is a beacon for abuse. Since a great deal of what I do involves negotiations I use the sex bias of assumption to my advantage. I'm usually assumed to be someone's assistant or secretary so people say things in front of me they would never if they knew I was the person they would be negotiating with. I am able to disarm them by being a 'surpise!' female rather than them being able to form their strategy (-ies) based on the fact that I'm a female prior to meeting me.

I would prefer that the assumption would be that we are all formidable negotiators rather than me being dismissed due to my sex. But that's not how it is right now and I think a major step in shifting perspectives lies in our language. If children are taught that nothing is default male and that an activity or title is unsexed until referring to individuals we would be in better shape IMO.

As I've said in other threads, colloquial usage does not void the inherent sexism of the default male position in language.

Why do you think women can be guys but men can't be gals (unless somebody is teasing them)? Do you honestly think it is a coincidence, a 'for whatever reason' issue, that this phenomenon only ever goes in one direction?

I don't think it's very clear at all what the impetus behind changes in language like this that happen over time are. I also don't think it's particularly clear that this sort of language has the effect you are suggesting on people's thinking about sex.

I understand the argument that it does, but I don't find it especially convincing. I don't see it reflected particularly in people's behaviours or thinking, and I don't think that there really is good evidence of a clear connection if you don't simply accept the premise as true.

However my comment was getting at the fact that many people don't really sit and think through the reasons for general social trend and changes like that, they just do what seems to be the popular or done thing and accept the reasoning at a surface level.

From just an observational perspective I would say that as we've attempted to become more gender neutral in many areas, there have been some weird cultural changes that I don't see as positive, and I can't say that I see a correlation between healthy attitudes about women or sex generally and more gender-neutral languages.

People's changing attitudes will sometimes change language but often instead change the meaning of language, which comes to the same thing. In most cases deliberately trying to change the attitudes through manipulation of language is ass backwards, doesn't work all that well, and even tends toward authoritarianism and thought control.

Ah, I see Errol got there first in bringing up werman/wifman. Pisses me right off, that we're supposed to accept "Man" as referring to both men and women, when the sods straight up nicked the 'gender-neutral' word for person and made it all theirs. In fairness I am probably excessively irritated because I've been having a thirty year long argument with my dad over the default male in language - but it's surely not up to him or any other man to dictate whether women should instinctively feel included by the word 'Man'?

Arnold what happened to your plan to revive Yorkshire pronouns? Is it still ongoing?

Wow ^Tyro* I'm really impressed (and flattered) that you remember!

Still ongoing, not many takers, I think it might be the verb endings that are putting people off what is clearly the only sensible approach

Men won't allow themselves to be included in 'gals'.That's another indication of the power imbalance.

Non-sexist manholes are usually ‘utility covers,’ I think.

I’m in favour of rejecting any words where ‘man’ is standing in for ‘person’. Though yes, it can get a bit silly - it’s not a green man on the emergency exit signs where I work, it’s a ‘person in motion’.

On a purely pragmatic level - fireman, policeman, lifeboatman, rifleman, all create the barrier that these are not roles for women.