Gender-inclusive language

Gender-inclusive language is writing and speaking about people in a manner that does not use gender-based words.

Inclusive language has been a major platform of the feminist movement. Those who oppose it claim that the masculine form can be used to incorporate both genders; some believe that this should change, and some believe it's already starting to.

It has had a significant impact on Christian denominations, as the language of the Bible is almost exclusively male-focused. Versions of the Bible that use inclusive language have been produced, with varying levels of acceptance amongst the Christian community.

In more recent decades, some transgender and nonbinary people have also pushed for more gender-neutral language.

Singular they
A very common example of inclusive language in English is the use of the singular they (or generic they). This is applying the words they or them, which are conventionally plural pronouns, as singular pronouns where him or her would otherwise be used, when talking about somebody whose gender is unknown or a generic "somebody."

For example, "if anybody asks me about it, I'll tell them they can try it for themself (or themselves)."

The singular they has been used in English literature for hundreds of years, but is still a disputed point among some uptight prescriptivists, who see singular use of a plural pronoun, and especially variants such as themself instead of themselves, as a corruption of English grammar (though singular use of "themselves" seems to be more common than "themself"). Another issue is that while the "singular they" has a large degree of acceptance when referring to a generic person, it tends to look strange when referring to a named, specific person. For example, take the sentence: "When I found out who stole my phone, they're gonna wish they were never born!" vs. "Leslie called their friend yesterday to voice their concerns." The first sentence would not look out of place in typical speech, but the second one looks awkward to some people, and given the normal use of the singular they, one may have a hard time discerning the meaning. The second case is not usually an issue, as the gender of a specific person will be known in the vast majority of cases, but it presents a problem when being used as a gender-neutral pronoun to refer to non-binary-gendered individuals. Furthermore, in the trans community there tends to be a divide as to whether the "singular they" used in this manner is a gender-neutral pronoun that can be used for anyone or if it is specific to non-binary individuals and others who explicitly use they/them pronouns and use on a binary trans person is misgendering. For more information on alternatives to "singular they" when referring to these individuals, see the section "Neologisms" below.

In the context of the Bible translation issue that Hebrew and many other languages have historically used their equivalent of "he" as their generic pronoun rather than a neutral pronoun, such that a translation of these languages into English would have to choose between literally translating the male pronoun into "he" or translating the gender-neutral intent of the pronoun into "they".

When speaking in the third person, "one" is often used in this way, though it usually comes off as formal or overdone. ("One can starve to death if one refuses to eat".)

He/she
Another popular form is to use "he/she", "he or she", "him/her", "him or her", "(s)he", or "s/he", when gender is unknown. This usually extends to using "Dear Sir/Madam" as a form of address in letters where "Dear Sir" would otherwise have been the default historically, and other similar practices.

A flaw of the "he/she" formation is the assumption that a person must be either one or the other, and hence this language excludes those who do not conform to the traditional gender binary (such as those who choose not to identify with a gender). It's also awkward and somewhat limiting in its prosaic formality; as such, it is becoming increasingly phased out in many different contexts.

Neopronouns
Many neologisms have been created to fill the gap in English's set of third-person pronouns, or even possibly replace gendered pronouns altogether. These have been called neopronouns. Although most of them gained not much acceptance at present, some are more widely used:


 * , which were formed by chopping off the th of the third person pronouns (they, them, their, theirs, theirself). They are ey or e, em, eir, eirs, and eirself. Unlike they/them, these are typically conjugated as singular pronouns (e.g. "ey is doing well").
 * Ze or zie, hir or zir, hir or zir, hirs or zirs, and hirself or zirself, a set popular in the genderqueer community.
 * Xe, Xem, Xyr, Xyrs, Xyrself, a derivative set of the ones above.

While there is a significant group of people who use and advocate for gender-neutral pronouns, there is still some debate on which ones to use, creating an apparent lack of consistency likely harmful to getting any set or standard adopted by the greater populace. The respectful thing to ask is "what are your pronouns?" and then use them.

Other languages
In English, gendered language is confined to pronouns and to a few nouns generally referring to occupations (actor/actress, barman/barmaid, etc), family members (aunt/uncle, father/mother), aristocratic ranks (baron/baroness, duke/duchess, etc), and a handful of animals (cow/bull, mallard/duck, reynard/vixen, boar/sow, etc). The general trend has been to move away from gendered terms (when was the last time you heard comedian/comedienne?), and the masculine version of many is considered entirely appropriate for anyone (waiter/waitress, but referring to a woman as a waiter isn't going to raise any eyebrows). In some languages, almost every word is gendered, with all nouns and adjectives varying according to gender, and sometimes even verbs, although grammatical gender is not always related to biological sex or social gender, and some languages distinguish between animate and inanimate objects (sometimes the term "noun class" is used instead of "gender" where divisions do not approximate to sex). In some languages, there is no concept of gender: examples include Finnish and Estonian, Malay and related languages, and Georgian. Persian has two genders, common (for people of whatever sex) and neuter (broadly, for inanimate objects). But even in languages with no gender it is still possible to be sexist, and the relationship between degree of gendering in language and degree of sexism in speakers is unclear (it is hard to extract language from other cultural factors).

German is strongly gendered by European standards, although it includes a neuter gender as well as masculine and feminine (famously, Mädchen="girl" is neuter). Hence one solution to gender-inclusive language is to use the neuter. An increasingly widespread replacement to gendered terms like Studenten=male students or students of unspecified gender/Studentinnen=female students is to use hybrids like Student(inn)en or StudentInnen - which works okay in official documents, but pronunciation is less clear. Some dialects of German have seen a reduction in genderedness, with Niederdeutsch using de=the for both male and female, in contrast to standard German der and die. The German language is no stranger to successful language reform; see the for an example.

French divides all nouns into masculine and feminine, indicated by articles, adjectives, and some verb endings (in participles and the perfect tense); it also has male and female forms of many nouns. French has historically used the masculine as all-inclusive gender but there has been a more widespread movement to use "male and female" instead of "(default) male" such as "les Français et les Françaises" (male French and female French) not "les Français" (male French considered as all-inclusive). As with German, typographical tricks such as a centre dot can be used to create gender-neutral nouns like musicien·ne·s="musicians", instead of musicien (m) and musicienne (f); however this is controversial. An unusual exception to this is the third-person direct pronoun son/sa/ses, which in English is his/her/its. This is because it changes not on the gender on the person, but the gender of the object in question. For example, "sa tablette" for his tablet and "son livre" for her book. This seems to be similar in other languages with strong Latin roots.

In Italian, to make gender neutral nouns and adjectives two main solutions are spreading among the supporters of inclusive language: the asterisk (*) and the schwa (ə). Both of these ways changes the end of a word, which most of the times carries the information about the gender of a person. E.G. "Bambino" (ending in -o) is a kid, "Bambina" (ending in -a) is a girl. Also, for the plural, Italian uses the masculine form to indicate a group of both males and females. E.G. "Bambini" (ending in -i) may signify both a group of kids, or a group of both kids and girls (it depends on the context). Thus, the asterisk and the schwa helps when you don't want to indicate the gender of the person. E.G. "Bambin*" or "Bambinə" may signifies a child, or a group of children regardless of their gender (it depends on the context). It's like the pronoun they in English: it can be singular or plural. Asterisk is easier to understand, but the schwa has the advantage of having a sound, so no solution prevails on the other. As in France, these two signs have met the opposition of the linguists and other intellectuals, who saw in them a degeneration of the language.

Sweden had a similar situation in the 1960s with English on gender-neutral language due to the strength of the feminist movement. So in Swedish to create a version of he/she (han/hon), which is hen. However, its popularity didn't grow until in the later 2000s, which even then it still debatable among linguists.

Mandarin Chinese is gender neutral in spoken form, tā. When written, there is a gendered third-person singular pronoun 它, with different forms for he 他 and she 她. However, this was only an early 20th-century innovation, probably in imitation of Western languages such as English, and previously a gender-neutral pronoun 他 was used. At the same time, equivalent moves to promote gendered spoken pronouns were never successful. There is now a movement to return to older, gender-neutral written forms as well. 它 is typically used for non-humans and inanimate objects. In many apps and websites, the word they is simply written as "TA" (i.e. the pinyin for both 他 and 她).

Japanese does not have many gendered features in its grammar, and because pronouns are seldom used, what gendered pronouns exist are not often encountered. However Japanese has a wide range of linguistic differences in vocabulary and style of speech that are traditionally gendered: men and women are supposed to speak in different ways, with men more abrupt and direct and women using more polite forms and honorifics, amongst other differences. More recently, these gender differences have become less common and people do not always speak in the way expected of their gender.