On gender-neutral forms

Words that hurt like sticks and stones

When Angela Merkel became Germany’s first female Chancellor (der Kanzler), they needed to invent a new word for the language: die Kanzlerin. It wasn’t as radical as the new word they invented for Adolf Hitler (der Führer), but it was new.

German and French, and indeed, if we but knew it, English, words know what we call gender. In German, gender is feminine, masculine or neuter, and that can make a difference: die See is a sea; der See is a lake. Blog (blog) can be neuter (das) or masculine (der), with no change in meaning. Der Bruch is masculine when it means break (since nouns derived from the stem of a verb are masculine in German) but is neuter when it’s a marsh meadow: das Bruch, since, there, it has nothing to do with the verb brechen. In fact, it’s where the place name Brussels and the English word brook come from. The world’s drink Coca-Cola is even neuter in English, feminine in German and masculine in French. (Just so everything’s nice and equal.)

In French, the choice is between masculine and feminine only. But in either language, as can be seen, gender has little to do with sex. A lake can hardly be said to be of the male sex; and a sea of the female. But, when it comes to words for men and women, the gender tends to follow the sex. Except that it doesn’t always.

A girl in German is neuter: das, not die, Mädchen. The reason for that has nothing to do with the sex of the girl. As with der Bruch, it has to do with the form of the word. The old word for a girl (English maid) is, in German, die Magd. Mädchen is the diminutive form of maid (in English, maiden) and, in German, all words, without exception, that take a diminutive form ending in -chen are automatically neuter. Even boys, or knaves, the wee rascals: der Bube, das Bübchen.

That applies also to the applicable pronouns: das Mädchen ist traurig, denn es hat sein gelbes Körbchen verloren—Ella Fitzgerald (ably aided in the clip by Lou Costello) with A-tisket, a-tasket: The girl is sad because she lost her little, yellow basket.

She in German would ordinarily be sie, but, here, she is translated as es (normally: it) because she is neuter if she is a Mädchen. If she were a woman, then she’d be feminine: die Frau. Then, again, if she were a miss, she’d be back as neuter: das Fräulein (-lein, like -chen, also being a diminutive form).

The same goes in French. Les gens (people) are masculine: ils. But a person is une personne, and is therefore feminine. Toute personne qui franchit un passage à niveau dont la barrière est fermée est assujettie à une amende de 100 euros (si elle survit).

Assujettie and the elle are feminine, even if the offender is a man: Any person (or anyone) broaching a level crossing with the barrier down is liable to a fine of 100 euros (if they survive).

It is understood that, because a person can be male or female or whatever form one wishes, the feminine word personne applies to any human being. Assujettie agrees with the gender of the word, even if it doesn’t agree with the gender of the offender.

Emmanuel Macron is against the gender-neutral form of the French language in official documents, such as président.e.s (presidents), sénateur.rice.s (senators) and cher·e·s lecteur·rice·s (dear reader, which even has to lose its grave accent (è) on the first e when put in this form). Mr Macron is right, I think, but doesn’t say what I believe is the right reason to be right.

I have myself come up against difficulties in translation. The common solution to toute personne in English would be to render it in the plural, as all persons or anyone (in fact it is closer to the legalistic all and any persons). By shifting into the plural, the choice of a masculine or feminine pronoun is thereby obviated, and they retains its more intuitive plural function (regardless of what function it may be deemed to have had in the Middle Ages, when thee and they may well have become dialectically confused)).

The prime objection to the move towards gender-neutral forms in official circles is in fact the body of the law itself. Since laws have always been formulated in French to follow the one masculine, all masculine rule (un homme, cent femmes = ils), and have been formulated in German likewise, according to the gender of the word, not of the substantive item, and since, in English, they’ve been formulated with the subject of a law’s mischief as he, unless speaking of unquestionably inanimate items or of women specifically (virtually exclusively, in connection with pregnancy), a certain convention has established itself so that people who read laws, interpret laws and apply laws all know what it is that is being talked about.

But, if we moved to a gender-neutral form of writing and enforced it officially, such as with président.e.s, it is at least feasible that people, whether mala fides or otherwise, could interpret older legal provisions, in contracts, articles of association or statutes, as implicitly excluding females and anyone else who is NOT of the male sex, and that would be especially pernicious. As pernicious as some deemed date as from which the gender-neutral form would be required (meaning that use of the masculine thereafter, whether intended or inadvertent, would then limit a law’s applicability only to males, thus creating further unintended discrimination where use of the male form was not intended as an exclusion of females). It would require all readers of laws to verify the date from which the gender-neutral rule applied, against the date the law they happen to be reading was in fact promulgated, and that is bordering on the iniquitous.

Language’s pitfalls are taught to the student in order to arm them for use of the language in adulthood. To change language as a matter of policy, rather than usage and intuition, is to impose rules that can contain unforeseen pitfalls in and of themselves. Even if confusion is brought about inadvertently, it can yet open up the way to further injustice, in the name of individual recognition. One must not be blind to the fact that many a law has been changed in a manner apparently benign enough to gain parliament’s nod of approval, only for it to be applied in a malevolent fashion, once it’s inscribed in the statute book.

Nobody is individually recognised by a definite article or pronoun. It is your name at worst, and your character at best, that identify you above all else. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words surely will not hurt us? Not, that is, unless we unwittingly invite them to do so.