[ExI] language question

[Giulio Prisco]

I think the only convention that make sense and is totally fair to
everyone is that everyone uses his own gender for generic pronouns,
plurals etc. (I am using this convention here). A man says "the reader
can form his opinion" and a woman says "the reader can form her
opinion." In Spanish a man says "todos los aficionados" and a woman
says "todas las aficionadas" for "all fans." Of course by "his own
gender" I mean "the gender he identifies with."

This is the convention I follow, so that I use he, his, him, el, los
to talk about persons of unspecified gender and groups of mixed
gender. A woman who follows this convention uses she, her, la, las.
The convention is fair and symmetric (I think it's the only convention
that is guaranteed to be fair and symmetric) and I recommend it.

I react very strongly to the politically correct bigots who want me to
change my choice. Follow your choice, and let me follow mine.

On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 5:35 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Americans are struggling to de-gender our language to make it more
> inclusive.  I am all in favor of it; have been doing that for years in
> various ways, such as using she and her as the gender-nonspecific form
> rather than the more traditional he and his.  This works even if we actually
> do know the gender of the person, even if it introduces awkwardness (…the
> rapist left a semen-stained undergarment when she fled the scene…)
>
>
>
> We are hearing another awkward compromise where we use the traditionally
> genderless term “they” in place of the clumsy “he or she” and “their” in
> place of “his or her.”  We pretend that “they” and “their” can be singular
> as well as plural, even while recognizing we are throwing away the
> specificity between singular vs plural in order to be gender-neutral.  OK,
> fair deal.  I can embrace that with all our heart.
>
>
>
> My question please is for hipster Spanish speakers, with the gender-specific
> articles la and el.  If the English-speaking counterparts are doing this,
> how does a Latin-based language de-gender-ify itself?  We might end up in a
> situation where objects can still keep genders but people cannot.  How weird
> is that?  I like weird.
>
>
>
> OK then, if we agree objects can keep their gender but humans cannot, what
> about beasts, which wear their gender right out in the open?  If Spain
> figures out a way around la and el for humans, such as making every human
> title al or le for instance, what about el toro?  In that deplorable “sport”
> (don’t eeeeven get me going on that) everyone knows the gender of al tor….
> Tor what?  Tore?  Tori?  Toru?
>
>
>
> And since I am on that topic, let us think about people.  Surely the Spanish
> have some things that just always have been and likely always will be male,
> such as al matador.  Has there ever been a woman doing that?  Wait, don’t
> tell us, we retract the question, we don’t even want to know.  Leave us to
> assume not.
>
>
>
> Since plenty of us here anticipate some kind of VR existence where we can
> change genders with a line of code (how cool will that be?  And so useful
> for so many situations!) we can give credence to the currently popular
> notion that a person is whatever gender they say they is.
>
>
>
> OK if that is true now, can we make it retroactively true?  If so, what
> about our current references to people in the past for whom we have always
> assumed a gender, such as the virgin Mary?  Do we know she identified as a
> woman?  Didn’t think so.  What do we do with any historical figure, for whom
> we now do not know what their gender is?
>
>
>
> Spanish speakers among us, what are you doing with your language?
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
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