Personal pronouns, gender, equality, etc.

CyberGene

In Italy also the retirement age is different among genders. In France, Belgium and the Netherlands not AFAIK.

The Italian government (They 😉) still pays penalties to the European Commission on annual basis because of the different treatment.

I believe the reason being that women should be rewarded for the time spent caring for the family. A burden still largely on the female parents unfortunately.

Paradoxically, women are "rewarded" when their children are already grown adult and no longer relying on the parents, but not helped with some other forms of support on their earlier years, when they are actually child caring and often forced to gave up their careers. Go figure…

Johnstaf

Johnstaf Of course a lot of this has to do with incompatibilities in Germanic and French grammatical systems. That's why English has such simple grammar, but a huge vocabulary and all kinds of spellings.

The sociopolitical and linguistic arguments really don't have anything to

That's a very good point. I didn't known about such usage of "They" in classical English.

They can live in the their make pretend world all they want, just don’t expect me to play make pretend world.

Picotin Unfortunately, I've witnessed few occasions when politicians tried to propose gender changes of few "sensitive words" according to the mood of the time. The result sounded so awkward and occasionally hilarious that was quickly forgotten and buried into oblivion.

Unfortunately in Italy, some years ago, a certain political woman managed to FORCE some lexical additions to the italian vocabulary just to accomodate some (very irrelevant in number) feminist currents (of which that political figure was the spokesperson) which were unhappy that some nouns indicating institutional offices were declined only in their masculine versions for centuries. IMHO politicians HAVE NOT THE RIGHT TO FORCE new grammar rules and lexical additions. The language has to change "naturally", not in a forced way by a few "illuminated" politicians. There are many serious problem to talk about in a Parliament. Unnecessary lexical additions to the vocabulary are not among them.

CyberGene I always found it odd that sex has any legal basis at all. Eye colour used to be on passports here, but it was removed in the '80s as an irrelevance. Imagine if you were required to be categorised according to race…

Eye color is still on our ID-s. I believe it helps for additional security besides the picture because it describes a feature you can’t change without wearing colored contact lenses.

People here lived for 45 years in communism (I lived in it only for 10, so my memories are not relevant) and the ideology tried to establish this notion of women being equal to men and working equally in power jobs as miners, in heavy metallurgy, etc. Needless to say women from my mom’s generation hated it and are strongly against feminism. One needs to experience state imposed gender equality to realize how wrong and artificial it is. Communism was so wrong on every possible aspect here, we still suffer from the consequences, 30 years after its fall. It really amazes me that the West is now going in a similar direction. The same West that helped us get rid of communism. Go figure…

magicpiano

That woman happened to be the Italian Parliament President of the time.

Her campaign was nothing more than entrainment in my humble opinion. Although I respect the idea of changing the article according to the gender in question, but please, not the title!

Human languages are not fixed in stone and they evolves as the civilizations using them.

I just can't understand some of the most recent "evolutions" but I guess that is just the evidence that I start belonging to the past. On the other hand, the future belongs to the new generations.

Best of luck to them.

CyberGene Communism was so wrong on every possible aspect here, we still suffer from the consequences, 30 years after its fall. It really amazes me that the West is now going in a similar direction. The same West that helped us get rid of communism. Go figure…

Yeah, tell that to the goofball millennials here. They won't believe you. 🙁
"It's not regular socialism that we want. It's democratic socialism."
OK. So it's not murder. It's suicide. Much better! Uh-huh.

CyberGene I'm all for equal opportunities, but I don't think anyone wants to force people into positions they don't want. I wouldn't want my son or daughter (or whatever they want to call themselves) to have different opportunities in life simply because of what's recorded on their birth cert. Make gender irrelevant (for those that don't want it to be relevant) and let people make their own choices. I don't think anyone wants more than that.

If a woman wants to be a miner she should have that choice.

Johnstaf I'm all for equal opportunities,

Yes. But it doesn't work if you have expectations that are plain stupid. Several months ago i've read an article about a transgender woman which broke several records on the womens division simply because she is still biologically a male. The other contesters felt cheated and tried to get her disqualified because a (real) female athlete couldn't reach these records. I mean, what did they expected will happen? Equal opportunities doesn't mean everyone is equal.

Here in Germany, there are plenty of examples of how "everyone is equal" doesn't work. In 9 out of 10 cases of divorce, the father does not get custody of his children. It doesn't matter how good he is at his job, how much time he has or how badly the mother treats her children.

95% of the kindergarten teachers here are women. This is mainly because men are suspected of being potential pedophiles. Of course there are examples where this is the case, but you can't generalize.

The feminists here denounce the inequality between men and women in working life, but all they ever do is complain that top positions in big companies are mostly held by men. There is no complaint about too few women construction workers, or garbage collectors, sewer workers, or any other job that is physically demanding and does not pay excessively.

Here, this is called a "double standard."

This is one of many facets we are confronted with since the internet is in every pocket. Thanks to smartphones and social media, it has become very easy to enter filter bubbles and develop the most absurd thoughts. You only need enough people who think the same and out comes, for example, the nonsense with the social genders.

That would not have been possible without the Internet.

MacMacMac not correct.

The United States Merriam Webster dictionary makes this very clear:

'used to refer to a single person whose gender is not revealed'

and

'used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is nonbinary'

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/they

Or do you happen to know the gender of every random person you meet?!

If someone introduces themselves as Alex, Sam, Taylor, or Vivian - you can't make any assumptions based off those names.

So unless you've seen everyone naked - or they have all explicitly told you their gender, then using he/she/his/her is prejudicial the same as making assumptions based on skin colour.

I said in an earlier post that the internet gives everyone a worldwide, far-reaching voice.
And all too many of those voices are just noise.

But there's no noise filter. There's only the off switch. So my social media switch is set to off. Permanently.
I stick with face-to-face or phone-to-phone conversation.

There remains the open question: Is Piano Clack yet another social medium?

Tyr

My 1000 words on this:

Tyr This is one of many facets we are confronted with since the internet is in every pocket. Thanks to smartphones and social media, it has become very easy to enter filter bubbles and develop the most absurd thoughts. You only need enough people who think the same and out comes, for example, the nonsense with the social genders.

That would not have been possible without the Internet.

I've found myself often wondering exactly the same

MacMacMac But there's no noise filter. There's only the off switch. So my social media switch is set to off. Permanently.

Likewise.

MacMacMac There remains the open question: Is Piano Clack yet another social medium?

Ops, I guess it starts looking like one. Hmmm…

That contradicts the previous statement. 🤔

MacMacMac

MacMacMac Is Piano Clack yet another social medium?

In the early going, it may fit the fuzzy mold of a hybrid.

Women retiring earlier is not discrimination, as they get the same pension as men. It is a compensation for work time lost raising their children, and only mother's benefit from this, at least here in Greece.

If you ask me, women still are not treated fairly, but this is another matter altogether.

burkey another perfect example is when you talk with someone random on the telephone (calldesk etc) or via a live support chat online.

In those instances you can never be 100% certain of their gender or sex from their name or the sound of their voice alone.

So if someone asks 'What did they tell you?'

Your only option is to say 'They …'

E.g:

They told me they'd cancel our credit card if we don't pay the bill. I wasn't very happy about their condescending tone, and I will be reporting them!

They told me I won a Bechstein piano 🙂 Their excitement was palpable. I can't wait to meet them!

They, Their, and Them are 100% valid to use to refer to a single person. And they has been valid for centuries.

When a reference is made to someone and not relevant, use he. That's how it's been taught for centuries.
The use of "they" in such situations has been incorrect for centuries. 🙂

MacMacMac what!

Are you saying that referring to God as She is somehow illegal?!

Looks like I am going to fry in hell for blasphemy after all! :-p

In all seriousness though, as I mentioned above this 'woke' malarkey has gone too far. If that somehow makes me conservative, then I'm happy to be conservative.

They crossed the line when they banned 'breast feeding' and replaced it with chest feeding!