Forced to use (gender) language conventions in university

[Ryika]

I wasn't there (both in space as well as time) to witness the process, but yeah, the things I have read online seemed to say that the occupation of the firefighter was mostly one of the male-dominated jobs that were used in equality campaigns, an example to show that women can do these jobs too, and that from that point on the increased social awareness led to more and more people adopting the new word into their vocabulary. So while the change in people's mind was accelerated by mass media, the word seems to have changed organically to follow the new mindset.

 

[uppi]

I don't get it. How is this new word supposed to be a part of the vocabulary when you can't even say it?

If a student uses this word in an essay and has to read a part of his/her essay to class.. how would that work?

Or if the school wants to announce something about all students in the school over the intercom.. how would they do that if this word cannot be pronounced?

For exactly the reasons you have identified, you have to either avoid using this notation in texts that are meant to be read, or you have to be careful to reformulate it while reading (and if you do that, why not use the alternative formulation in the first place). Which is why I think this notation is stupid. Fortunately, I never had to deal with that during my studies.

 

[warpus]

I wasn't there (both in space as well as time) to witness the process, but yeah, the things I have read online seemed to say that the occupation of the firefighter was mostly one of the male-dominated jobs that were used in equality campaigns, an example to show that women can do these jobs too, and that from that point on the increased social awareness led to more and more people adopting the new word into their vocabulary. So while the change in people's mind was accelerated by mass media, the word seems to have changed organically to follow the new mindset.

Plus FIREFIGHTER sounds kind of awesome if you ask me. If other awesome words were selected to replace other gender-specific words, then I think it would be a lot easier to convince people to adopt them and start using them.

And I'm not a linguist but coming up with words that can't even be pronounced sounds like a pretty stupid plan to me

 

[tuckerkao]

Plus FIREFIGHTER sounds kind of awesome if you ask me. If other awesome words were selected to replace other gender-specific words, then I think it would be a lot easier to convince people to adopt them and start using them.

And I'm not a linguist but coming up with words that can't even be pronounced sounds like a pretty stupid plan to me

Firefighters may have to work on Sundays, not sure whether that's the reason why more males are employed or is it just the courage issues.

 

[metatron]

Yesterday I went to a birthday party. Was fun. But one of my friends told me around ~2 o' clock that he is studying math & french/romanistics. And there, he wrote an essay, where he got bad grades for the sole reason that he didn't use "genderized" language

1. Drop the French
2. While you do, contest the grade to exhaustion of appeals
3. Protocol and archive everything
4. Sue them

He did, of course, confront the lecturer & she didn't deny giving him bad grades because he didn't use the "right" language.

5. Should've done that by email. Because evidence.

Also, can you get, like an avatar?
It's bothersome to scroll for your posts and other people (like uppi) allready own not having one. Feel free to make it a colored square or a picture of sand. I don't care.
Thanks in advance.

The question that I would ask is: is your friend paying the university OR is the university paying your friend?

I speculate, we, the citizens of the Federal Republic, are paying Arent's friend to study, as per their rights, and we are paying this femifashy lecturer person to do their job - badly, apparently.

 

[Akka]

This abomination is also creeping in here. I wish to re-establish death penalty through being sunk into an acid bath just for these idiots slaughtering the language because they need to show how "progressive" they are...

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Firefighters may have to work on Sundays, not sure whether that's the reason why more males are employed or is it just the courage issues.

What does this even mean?

What difference does the day of the week make? Are you suggesting that female firefighters are less courageous than male firefighters?

 

[metatron]

Firefighters may have to work on Sundays, not sure whether that's the reason why more males are employed or is it just the courage issues.

What difference does the day of the week make?

I tend to agree with you on the slightly absurd inaccessability of the quoted post, but i suppose a rational point could be made about women being more religious (in the "developed west" anyway) and more motivated to attend religious services - and potentially doing so on specific days of the week.
Admittedly, we are grasping at straws here, but still.

Are you suggesting that female firefighters are less courageous than male firefighters?

Yes? Duh?
Women, generally, exceptions notwithstanding, are horrible cowards.
Well, maybe women as fire-fighters are different on account of self-selection.
Let's be generous and assume just that.

 

[Yeekim]

*laughs in non-gendered Estonian*

 

[Arent11]

Also, can you get, like an avatar?
It's bothersome to scroll for your posts and other people (like uppi) allready own not having one. Feel free to make it a colored square or a picture of sand. I don't care.
Thanks in advance.

Oh, didn't think about that. There. Hope that is better

 

[luiz]

Re: OP
Ha, you think that's bad? In Brazil the former president, besides causing the greatest economic depression in the country's history, ordered all official documents and press releases to refer to her as "presidenta", to highlight her feminist stature. And butt-kissers in the press complied too. Only problem is, the Portuguese for president (presidente) is gender neutral. There is no "presidento". It's like estudante, or paciente, or other such words that derive from verbal infinitives. They're already neutral, they're not masculine default! That alone justifies the impeachment she suffered.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I've never seen anything like Schülex in German. Haven't been in an university in five years, but I refuse to believe it's become that crazy. Maybe there are some isolated incidents that are mostly only known to people who deliberately seek such nonsense out so they can bark about Political Correctness Gone Mad.

I do remember reading about a case where a then recent female PhD graduate sued because she wanted to use the (non-existent) title Doctora because Doctor is male and she thought the proper female form -Doctrix- sounded too silly, like something out of an Asterix comic.
Of course, the case got thrown out. The judge's reasoning was that the German government has neither the right nor the duty to change the Latin language.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

You wouldn't want to see what these people do to the German language. Stuff become unreadable for anybody not educated in social justice.

@topic: He should probably keep his head down and do what they ask of him while he still needs the goodwill of the people on that university. Realistically, there is not much he can achieve I think other than ruining his own education, it's just too minor of an issue to really make headlines.

No offense, but have you actually ever studied at a university? I assure you the German language is being cherished and that there are plenty of reactionaries eager to slam down on any perceived "change" that might or might not be happening.

Me, having studied in humanities / social sciences for 6 Semesters now I still never had to genderize a single one of my 30+ papers. Furthermore, if a text is to be genderized it has to be made clear in advance, otherwise grading someone worse would certainly be unfair and could definitely be taken to a higher legal instance. If you're too stupid to put in the 30 minute work to genderize your paper after having been specifically notified you might just not belong into a university after all

This abomination is also creeping in here. I wish to re-establish death penalty through being sunk into an acid bath just for these idiots slaughtering the language because they need to show how "progressive" they are...

Languages are ever-changing macro-organisms that do not care for your reactionary nostalgia. In the hand of both speakers and poets language is simply a tool and will always be used as such. Aspects of a language can never be lost, unless people stop engaging with them. In your case, why not just keep doing your thing instead of whining about a perceived decay of a once beautiful language due to political intrusion. If it is that important to you, surely you can save that specific language you are mourning right now yourself by keeping it present on the CFC forum.

 

[Pokurcz]

The whole situation is insane, in my opinion. Its like at the end of 1984 when the protagonist is reeducated and forced to believe that 2+2=5.
How can these people believe that changing the language in this manner will have any effect on real life gender equality, it does not work in countries with languages that have no words for he and she. One of those languages is Persian (Farsi)., an other one is Finnish.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Hm I have been out of (German) university since two years and before that attended in a wide range of places and courses for seven years.
While I have seen gendered wording in some places, I only encountered it on a personal level in one instance. I was working on a presentation for a class on quantitative research in social sciences with two other girls and one of them asked weather we would use gendered nouns in our presentation. I succinctly proclaimed, that I did not approve of gendering and rejected using it (but they could, if they wished).
That was the beginning and end of my experience with that stuff. The (female) doctor teaching us did not seem to care in the least.

I join my fellow Germans in being skeptical about horror stories like the one in the OP.
Not least because I suspect the case of the OP to violate the students basic rights as a student.(though I am not sure about)
If such a thing happened, after a talk to the teacher, I would advice to go to the faculty student council. A case like that is in their job description.

The whole situation is insane, in my opinion. Its like at the end of 1984 when the protagonist is reeducated and forced to believe that 2+2=5.
How can these people believe that changing the language in this manner will have any effect on real life gender equality, it does not work in countries with languages that have no words for he and she. One of those languages is Persian (Farsi)., an other one is Finnish.

Well the simple act of making this effort does raise a lot of awareness and asserts a lot of cultural dominance and, I speculate, does actually more for the cause than the change of language itself. So even if the language itself is not that problematic, actually, it is still a nice target to "fight the good fight", which comes with its very own value.
In principle.
In practice, I not only highly dislike gendering for aesthetic reasons (though as has been noted there may be exceptions where it is convenient and sensible), I also distrust such a blunt-force attempt to change culture in such a.personal zone (the zone of how to express yourself). And oh wonder, this kind of strategy is accompanied with tendencies of narrow-mindedness and lack of necessary nuance and perspective in the feminist movement.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

If such a thing happened, after a talk to the teacher, I would advice to go to the faculty student council. A case like that is in their job description.

Precisely this. There are trained professionals at every university who are paid a middling salary to deal with this kind of asinine bagatelle so that you don't have to cry about it on the internet.

I'm not even a proponent of gendering in general, it's just intellectually dishonest to act like it is a big problem in German universities.

 

[Ryika]

No offense, but have you actually ever studied at a university?

No, I haven't even finished Gymnasium! Why are you asking though?

I assure you the German language is being cherished and that there are plenty of reactionaries eager to slam down on any perceived "change" that might or might not be happening.

Me, having studied in humanities / social sciences for 6 Semesters now I still never had to genderize a single one of my 30+ papers. Furthermore, if a text is to be genderized it has to be made clear in advance, otherwise grading someone worse would certainly be unfair and could definitely be taken to a higher legal instance. If you're too stupid to put in the 30 minute work to genderize your paper after having been specifically notified you might just not belong into a university after all

That's great of course, but that does not change that these people exist and that they're making things really hard to read with their nonsense.

Here's an example of a blog of a student-run activist group that makes extensive use of such language:
https://akuniwatch.wordpress.com/

Exerts from an article found on that blog that has been circulating the internet:

Um das Verbot des kritischen Hinterfragens von Texten abzuwenden, hatte die damalige wissen_schaft_liche Mitarbeiterin des Professors, einen „runden Tisch“ zur Klärung zwischen dixs Studierxs und ihm vorgeschlagen. Dixs Studierxs haben dem zugestimmt. Nach mehreren Gesprächen zwischen der wissen_schaft_lichen Mitarbeiterin und dem Professor hat jedoch dieser den runden Tisch abgesagt, ihr Vorhaben blieb also erfolglos. Auch hier behauptete der Professor im Nachhinein, das Gegenteil sei der Fall gewesen, es seien dixs Studierxs gewesen, dixs angeblich kein klärendes Gespräch gewollt hätten.

Der Professor teilte dixs Besuchxs bereits zu Beginn des Semesters mit, dass Rassismus_Genderismus_Ableismus mit den Erziehungwissen_schaften nichts zu tun hätte. Eine für uns* haltlose Behauptung. Nicht nur im Hinblick auf die bisher dort gelesenen AutorInnen ist es wichtig, sich damit auseinanderzusetzen, sondern auch weil alle Teilnehmxs in unterschiedlicher Weise privilegiert und diskriminiert sind und es unumgänglich ist, sich mit eigenen Privilegien auseinanderzusetzen, um ein gewaltarmes Miteinander auch in der Universität zu gewährleisten.

Auch wollen wir* darauf hinweisen, dass „gender“ nicht ein Thema ist! Alle Diskriminierungen hängen miteinander zusammen, sie sind interdependent. Des Weiteren lässt sich die Kritik nicht auf eine einzige Meinung_Person und nicht auf einen einzigen Stand_Sitz_Liege_punkt beschränken.

https://akuniwatch.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/februar-2014/

And that's not the final stage of that abomination of a language yet, I've been linked to worse texts in the past where people literally did the same to all nouns, not just those that refer to people.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Why is that alarming to you? As long as this is not required at any university, how does this even tangentially impact you? People have been doing stupid things like these for millenia, let them do it in peace.

Incidentally, you should probably never touch ANY German philosophy if you have a problem with proper German autism (excuse my french, pls no ban). Try reading Heidegger, Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit, or Kant, their language is almost equally as bad (it only serves a different purpose in their case)..

 

[Ryika]

Why is that alarming to you? As long as this is not required at any university, how does this even tangentially impact you? People have been doing stupid things like these for millenia, let them do it in peace.

My post was made of two parts, the first one in which I said that there are people who maim the German language with their focus entirely on "inclusive language".
In the second one, I gave my opinion on what is best to do in the situation as it was described.
I really don't know how you came to the conclusion that this is "alarming" to me.

 

[warpus]

The judge's reasoning was that the German government has neither the right nor the duty to change the Latin language.

Nor the means.

Why is that alarming to you? As long as this is not required at any university, how does this even tangentially impact you? People have been doing stupid things like these for millenia, let them do it in peace.

It is a bit alarming that it's happening at universities, places of higher learning where students are supposed to be being prepared for adult life, an institution most young people are funnelled through as they grow up. If it was happening at the insane asylum's cafeteria then I don't think anybody would care.

And if it was just some students doing it, it wouldn't really matter. Some students release weekly magazines in Klingon - let them. But in this case it seems that some of the administration is starting to follow in their footsteps. And yeah, it's just one school today, but if a handful of administrators and professors have been convinced that this is a good idea, it's not implausible that it could spread to other Universities. I see no problem with people rising up and putting a stop to it before it spreads.