[ExI] language question

[Dylan Distasio]

I also utilize this approach, and strongly agree with  your comments on the
PC angle.

On Oct 29, 2016 12:23 PM, "Giulio Prisco" <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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> >
>
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