(no subject)

[chasingtides]

Folks:

Do you have thoughts on gender neutral language? Nomenclature? Other gender neutral items I cannot currently remember? Are you opposed? For? Mixed? Share your thoughts!

Comments

[earis.livejournal.com]

I don't know if there is such a thing as gender neutral language. Not that everything has to be gendered, but at least in European-American societies which are categorized by this male/female split (we're obsessed with this, and the rest of the world is like 'Whut?'), most uses of gender neutral language I have encountered are attempts to mollify, placate, or further normalize the effect of the male/female hierarchy. Of course, I have often been wrong, so I could be missing something obvious.

This is not to ignore that there is third gender nomenclature or bi or trans gendered nomenclature, or even binary oppositions which don't fit the normative categories in European-American culture.
Here's one we don't usually use - wife provider (male) and wife receiver (female).
In Eastern Indonesia, households are gendered according an ideology not of biological aspects but of roles in kinship alliances. Houses are usually androgynous, but undergo sexual dimorphism when forging alliances to facilitate a productive union. Now, male wife providers are considered hierarchically superior to female wife receivers, but not because of maleness vs. femaleness, but because the wife providers control the blood of life, the feminine attribute of the house. They are male because they are externalizing their feminine attribute.
And it gets really complicated because we just don't have the language to explain, whereas in these house based societies in Eastern Indonesia they are like 'what?'

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

In your opinion, how does gender neutral language normalise the male-female dichotomy in the Euro-American language practice/mindset?

[earis.livejournal.com]

As far as I understand, gender neutrality is present in the identity creation process of an individual, group, or other entity. The descriptive language of gender neutrality, however, is part of the performance/embodiement practice, which then become the text which is read and responded to by other individuals/groups/entities/ideologies/etc. This isn't inherently normalising in essence, but in practice I have found that gender neutral language is actually more exclusive than gender explicit language.
In most usages that I have encountered, and with a few rare exceptions I operate within a European-American mindset, many times gender neutral language (the use of 'they', for example, to refer to a single entity), whatever it is intended in creation and performance, is read as male. Even supposedly gender-neutral labels such as professions or places are read with specific genders, and these implicit genders feed into the male-normal/ female-other binary system.
Regarding specific gender neutral pronouns, which is probably what you were asking about, I try and take my cues from the people who are performing as gender neutral. But, at least for me, I run into the problem of inadequate language - what is said is rarely, if ever, what is read.
Again, this is all from my own experience.