r/PCOS removes for not being gender neutral. Another example of misogyny within reddit.

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[–]Elysian 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

It's funny you should bring up the word "doctor" because "doctor" in French is always un médecin, masculine, whether it's a woman or a man. So are babies, they're always masculine.

Languages are fascinating. As you point out, female/woman includes male/man, but for other things we do have gendered terms. Cow/bull, dog/bitch, hen/cockerel - although bulls are also cows and bitches are also dogs and no matter the gendered word for chicken, they're all chickens. I take your point on English being confusing.

It is still really strange for me to gender nouns, because what makes a noun sound feminine? In French if a noun ends in "ie" or "ee" it's more likely to be feminine, but why? Why does it have to have a sex, why can't it just be a word? And how did that word form in such a way that made it sound feminine?

English used to capitalise nouns like somewhat like German still does, I think "I" being capitalised is an artefact.

[–]MezozoicGay 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

I imagine it can be confusing, because linguists of the past chose to use "sex" categories for words, while those categories could be anything else, without changing the rules of how words sound and rules of creating sentences. Maybe one day it will be reviewed to use different categories, as it is plain simple change and will not affect at all. However, in our country we have different problems to fight first. For example, here part of name is fathers names, so it is always "Lily of Victor Surnamish", even if father quit, even if it is child born from rape, even if mother divorced and living with another man since forever. It is possible through court or in some situations (if father is unknown) - to use mothers name instead, but it is very hard to do. And it should be done on legislative level, so children can chose (lets say at age of 16 when they are getting passport) to be "Lily of Victor" or "Lily of Hannah", or maybe even "Lily of Jack", if Victor run from family and mom is living with Jack. Same problem with lesbian pairs (which are outlawed, thought), as their children still need to get a male name to be "of". And this part of name is always follows you in your whole life.

[–]Elysian 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That does sound pretty terrible. I wouldn't want to be named after my father's first name, at least our last names are pretty neutral because our aunts and sisters and grandmother on our dad's side share the same name, until they get married of course. I was able to keep my dad's last name when I got married, and I know of families that are sharing the mother's last name, which I think is nice. It is nice to be able to choose. It makes you feel like you have some autonomy.