I do see your point, but the strangeness in English is that I cannot use the singular of "guys" to refer to a woman. "I know this guy who programs great" is definitely masculine, "I know this girl who programs great" is the feminine version. The fact that today, we use a plural to represent a mixed gender group of a singular that is masculine is not a normal English construct. I'm aware that many languages that gender pronouns have to use the masculine if the group contains a man, but English doesn't (it uses they) - so it feels strange.
Languages develop and change, words have multiple meanings, regional variations, etc. "Guys" is even listed in British English dictionaries as being gender neutral in this context. That is what really matters... context and intent. Forcing everyone to interpret and utilise language in the same way belittles the beauty and diversity of the language. Accusing people of using 'exclusionary' language when they have done no such thing according to their particular flavour of the language only serves to create conflict and friction where there never should have been any.
By attempting to police language in this manner, you stifle an element of diversity - something you are commendably trying to promote, and possibly even frighten people away from saying anything for fear of offending someone.
You make it sound like she is asking to assault anyonr using the word "guys" in a gender neutral context. She's just arguing that "default male" is a bad thing...
Which it is. I say that as a french person where we have a heavily gendered language which is "in favor" of males.
In a group of 100 women + 1 man, the group will be gendered masculine. French people think that's just how it is and it is good like this. But what they dont realize is that this grammatical rule was implemented on purpose quite late in the history of the french language (19th century), by a group of old men called l'Académie Française.
They purposely shaped the language to favor men. Now Id say it's time we balance it out a little bit. The balance was voluntarily tilted in favor of men, we can't just accept and leave it like that.
The problem is not default male language, its that everyone is too sensitive now a days and does not actually pay attention to the real issue. Gender equality is not about "male default" words, it's about making sure that everyone has equal footing and opportunity, as well as treated fairly.
I can't imagine what the position is on Spanish or other languages where words have a gender (lo vs la). Would someone get offended when saying los amigos?
Issues like this receiving too much attention distracts from real issues.
We can tackle the language issue at the same time as we tackle other issues. Actually, we should tackle ALL issues.
You're saying the problem is people being too sensitive, but you look quite annoyed by this. Wouldn't you say you're quite sensitive yourself?
Language shape how we think, it is a known fact. As a direct consequence, in a male default world, there can't be real gender equality, and therefore there can´t be equal treatment or opportunity.
Try an exercise at home: visualize a firefighter. Then visualize a videogame enthusiast.
Now, I'd bet your first thought was twice a man.
Now if I want to ask you to visualize a cleaning lady, you will picture a woman, because there is no gendered male equivalent (no "cleaning gentleman").
In japanese, the kanji for "Married woman" is the kanji for "Woman" plus the kanji for "Broom".
When you say firefighter and "videogame enthusiast", you think of what is statistically more likely, not because it is male-default, it is because it is male-dominant. Likelihood of a firefighter being male is way more higher, therefore that is what you initially think about.
Language is a reflection of the society, not the cause of the society. It is a chicken and egg problem, of course, as it is hard to see what would be the actual cause of the other. Hunter-Gatherer society existed before language did, and thus language was influenced by it. Yes it is traditional and outdated, and probably could use some tweaking, but to say language is the problem would be misplacing the blame.
Fix the actions first, then worry about the words later. Banning usage of words will not fix the problem because the problem would exist regardless of the word.
There are words today that are culturally banned from certain peoples because of the offense they cause, yet it does not eliminate the connotation or actions that result from the hatred they express.
This is why I say that people are sensitive about the language and are misplacing their efforts to correct societal fallacies that language just so happens to expose.
If you were bleeding internally, do you stop the bleeding without knowing why it's bleeding, or do you do your due diligence to try to find out why it happened in the first place? This is what it is like when you try to fix the language without addressing the actions that give said words the power that causes the negative reception of them.
"Language is a reflection of the society, not the cause of the society."
It is both.
"If you were bleeding internally, do you stop the bleeding without knowing why it's bleeding, or do you do your due diligence to try to find out why it happened in the first place?"
A better analogy would be: If you were bleeding because of a bullet wound, would you stop the bleeding before removing the bullet? Of course not, or problems will still arise. You need to tackle causes and consequences at the same time.
Your reasoning is wrong on so many levels... but at least I'll try to correct you on linguistics.
Equating the gender of a word with the sexual gender fuels your narrative but doesn't have any solid foundation. Here are a couple of counter-examples that makes your point moot:
The Turkish language has no gender. With your reasoning, Turkish society should be much more gender-equal than French society or German society. I hope that you can agree that it's not the case
Butter can have different genders depending on the part of Germany you live in. With your reasoning, it means that people would view butter differently depending on the gender involved. Really?
You mention Kanji to prove your point. You confuse how Kanjis were formed with how people interpret them: it's a holistic process, quite similar to how we read words. You learn to decipher words letter by letter but after a while, you recognize them instantly.
So basically you're turning what I say into an absolute so you can play the absurdist card?
It's quite a dishonest approach. It's like if I said that using your phone while driving is dangerous, but you can find examples where people did it and had no accidents, then you conclude what I say must be completely wrong.
It should be obvious that language doesnt determine gender equality by itself.
Im not confused about kanjis, thank you very much. Language works the same way, we dont consciously think about how we talk. Psychology proved many times that it still affects our way of thinking.
It's quite a dishonest approach. It's like if I said that using your phone while driving is dangerous, but you can find examples where people did it and had no accidents, then you conclude what I say must be completely wrong.
I assumed you had enough scientific education to know that when you form an hypothesis, and there are counter-examples, then the hypothesis doesn't hold anymore.
It's you who make claims, so you're the one to prove them.
It should be obvious that language doesnt determine gender equality by itself.
Only to you. But I didn't expect any good faith thinking on your side. I'm just fed up with strawman arguments... Consider this my latest contribution to this thread.
I happen to have an engineering degree in chemistry and microbiology and worked as an actual research engineer, and your approach to the scientific method is completely wrong.
When there are multiple factors as causes for a given consequence, the lack of a direct linear correlation for one of the factors on some data points doesnt invalidate the correlation. That's statistics 101. Frankly I'm shocked that a developer could do such a basic logic mistake.
You need to learn a bit more about psychology, sociology and apparently mathematics.
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I do see your point, but the strangeness in English is that I cannot use the singular of "guys" to refer to a woman. "I know this guy who programs great" is definitely masculine, "I know this girl who programs great" is the feminine version. The fact that today, we use a plural to represent a mixed gender group of a singular that is masculine is not a normal English construct. I'm aware that many languages that gender pronouns have to use the masculine if the group contains a man, but English doesn't (it uses they) - so it feels strange.
Languages develop and change, words have multiple meanings, regional variations, etc. "Guys" is even listed in British English dictionaries as being gender neutral in this context. That is what really matters... context and intent. Forcing everyone to interpret and utilise language in the same way belittles the beauty and diversity of the language. Accusing people of using 'exclusionary' language when they have done no such thing according to their particular flavour of the language only serves to create conflict and friction where there never should have been any.
By attempting to police language in this manner, you stifle an element of diversity - something you are commendably trying to promote, and possibly even frighten people away from saying anything for fear of offending someone.
You make it sound like she is asking to assault anyonr using the word "guys" in a gender neutral context. She's just arguing that "default male" is a bad thing...
Which it is. I say that as a french person where we have a heavily gendered language which is "in favor" of males.
In a group of 100 women + 1 man, the group will be gendered masculine. French people think that's just how it is and it is good like this. But what they dont realize is that this grammatical rule was implemented on purpose quite late in the history of the french language (19th century), by a group of old men called l'Académie Française.
They purposely shaped the language to favor men. Now Id say it's time we balance it out a little bit. The balance was voluntarily tilted in favor of men, we can't just accept and leave it like that.
The problem is not default male language, its that everyone is too sensitive now a days and does not actually pay attention to the real issue. Gender equality is not about "male default" words, it's about making sure that everyone has equal footing and opportunity, as well as treated fairly.
I can't imagine what the position is on Spanish or other languages where words have a gender (lo vs la). Would someone get offended when saying los amigos?
Issues like this receiving too much attention distracts from real issues.
We can tackle the language issue at the same time as we tackle other issues. Actually, we should tackle ALL issues.
You're saying the problem is people being too sensitive, but you look quite annoyed by this. Wouldn't you say you're quite sensitive yourself?
Language shape how we think, it is a known fact. As a direct consequence, in a male default world, there can't be real gender equality, and therefore there can´t be equal treatment or opportunity.
Try an exercise at home: visualize a firefighter. Then visualize a videogame enthusiast.
Now, I'd bet your first thought was twice a man.
Now if I want to ask you to visualize a cleaning lady, you will picture a woman, because there is no gendered male equivalent (no "cleaning gentleman").
In japanese, the kanji for "Married woman" is the kanji for "Woman" plus the kanji for "Broom".
Don't you think this heavily influence society?
It is correlation, not causation.
When you say firefighter and "videogame enthusiast", you think of what is statistically more likely, not because it is male-default, it is because it is male-dominant. Likelihood of a firefighter being male is way more higher, therefore that is what you initially think about.
Language is a reflection of the society, not the cause of the society. It is a chicken and egg problem, of course, as it is hard to see what would be the actual cause of the other. Hunter-Gatherer society existed before language did, and thus language was influenced by it. Yes it is traditional and outdated, and probably could use some tweaking, but to say language is the problem would be misplacing the blame.
Fix the actions first, then worry about the words later. Banning usage of words will not fix the problem because the problem would exist regardless of the word.
There are words today that are culturally banned from certain peoples because of the offense they cause, yet it does not eliminate the connotation or actions that result from the hatred they express.
This is why I say that people are sensitive about the language and are misplacing their efforts to correct societal fallacies that language just so happens to expose.
If you were bleeding internally, do you stop the bleeding without knowing why it's bleeding, or do you do your due diligence to try to find out why it happened in the first place? This is what it is like when you try to fix the language without addressing the actions that give said words the power that causes the negative reception of them.
"Language is a reflection of the society, not the cause of the society."
It is both.
"If you were bleeding internally, do you stop the bleeding without knowing why it's bleeding, or do you do your due diligence to try to find out why it happened in the first place?"
A better analogy would be: If you were bleeding because of a bullet wound, would you stop the bleeding before removing the bullet? Of course not, or problems will still arise. You need to tackle causes and consequences at the same time.
Your reasoning is wrong on so many levels... but at least I'll try to correct you on linguistics.
Equating the gender of a word with the sexual gender fuels your narrative but doesn't have any solid foundation. Here are a couple of counter-examples that makes your point moot:
So basically you're turning what I say into an absolute so you can play the absurdist card?
It's quite a dishonest approach. It's like if I said that using your phone while driving is dangerous, but you can find examples where people did it and had no accidents, then you conclude what I say must be completely wrong.
It should be obvious that language doesnt determine gender equality by itself.
Im not confused about kanjis, thank you very much. Language works the same way, we dont consciously think about how we talk. Psychology proved many times that it still affects our way of thinking.
Etc.
I assumed you had enough scientific education to know that when you form an hypothesis, and there are counter-examples, then the hypothesis doesn't hold anymore.
It's you who make claims, so you're the one to prove them.
Only to you. But I didn't expect any good faith thinking on your side. I'm just fed up with strawman arguments... Consider this my latest contribution to this thread.
I happen to have an engineering degree in chemistry and microbiology and worked as an actual research engineer, and your approach to the scientific method is completely wrong.
When there are multiple factors as causes for a given consequence, the lack of a direct linear correlation for one of the factors on some data points doesnt invalidate the correlation. That's statistics 101. Frankly I'm shocked that a developer could do such a basic logic mistake.
You need to learn a bit more about psychology, sociology and apparently mathematics.