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

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[–]MezozoicGay 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Gendered non-living objects are not really gendered, they are semi-gendered only to follow rules of the language. Table is gendered feminine not because table is feminine, but because it sounds like feminine gendered word, and that is it. And for living objects there often different words for different genders (in old meaning of word) - for example here is word "Dog" which means "any dog", word "male dog" and word 'female dog" - and all those words are absolutely different sounding, and such is for most animals. Plus unlike English, most languages are languages of rules - if you know few rules, you can freely speek the language and you will not make mistakes - everything works the same, always and in every case. While English is language of exceptions of the rules, there some general rules, but half of all words and phrases are exceptions to the rules, so you need to memorize them all. I would say that most languages are like Math or Physics, it works the same way for different numbers.

By "sexist" I meant that many words in English have default "man" variant of the word, and "woman" variant of the word is always "man" variant + something else. Hey, even words man and woman are like that, or male and female. Ah ye, and "I" in most languages "I" is written with small letter "i", while in English it is for some reason is big letter, like name.

However, some gendered words in gendered languages are sexist, that is true. But it is mostly only counts to professions, which names are came from other languages. For example in our language word "Actor" means similar to English, both male and female and "any actor", but still mainly male, and there special word for "Actress", that means specifically women actor. Or Doctor, which is gendered masculine, but it means mainly women doctor or doctor in general, there is no special male doctor word, tho, you need to specify "male doctor". With doctors it is interesting situation, by the way, 100 years ago no one would even go to woman doctor, as it was thought they can't be doctors, and nowadays most good doctors here are actually women (our country is still very sexist and homophobic tho, as it was previously part of very sexist USSR).

[–]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.