
Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun - gruseom
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/hen_sweden_s_new_gender_neutral_pronoun_causes_controversy_.html
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henrikschroder
Destroying the language indeed... Now if only there were some way of measuring
that. Perhaps if a neighbouring country with a similar social structure, with
a similar government, with a similar school system, with similar core values,
already had a gender-neutral pronoun in their language? Then we could look at
that country, measure the language development and gender confusion among
school children in that country and actually _know_ if this new word would
"destroy" the Swedish language.

A country like... Finland perhaps?

The debate is ridiculous, a few people feel very strongly either way, but most
people don't care at all, don't use the word, but won't get angry if someone
else uses it. Whatever. It's a mountain out of a molehill.

~~~
skrebbel
The great thing is that the word for "he/she" in Finnish is "hän". Pronounced
almost the same as the Swedish proposal.

(for the ignorant: these two are otherwise wildly different languages)

~~~
rmc
_(for the ignorant: these two are otherwise wildly different languages)_

I believe Finnish is wildly different from just about every other language.
Hindi and English are closerly related.

~~~
plq
Finnish, (and Estonian), Hungarian, Japanese and Turkish (which includes the
dialects spoken in Anatolia, Azerbaidjan (whose people speak almost the same
language that the Persian Azeris speak), Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the Urumqi region of China) are sister languages.
To my knowledge, all of them have gender-neutral pronouns. (And actually I'm
pretty sure about Anatolian Turkish :))

~~~
michaelcampbell
> (And actually I'm pretty sure about Anatolian Turkish :))

This is probably a sentence I will hear/see exactly once in my life; at least
in a not-contrived manner. Thank you for that.

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dbaupp
Having a gender-neutral pronoun is really good (I've experimented with a few
in English, but most people don't understand them or care when it is
explained), but some aspects are possibly going to far: I don't see any
reference to the actual physiological differences between the genders.

This quote particularly got to me:

> The Swedish Bowling Association has announced plans to merge male and female
> bowling tournaments in order to make the sport gender-neutral

In any physical contest men are highly likely to be the victors: there is a
reason why the female marathon record is 10 minutes behind the male one, and
it's not lack of training and effort. Maybe this doesn't apply to bowling so
much, I don't know, but at the risk of committing the slippery-slope fallacy,
I hope sports don't just jump on the gender-neutral bandwagon because it's
politically advantageous/correct.

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saulrh

      Morgan Freeman: I don't want a Black History Month. Black
      history is American history.
    
      Mike Wallace: How are we going to get rid of racism...?
    
      Morgan Freeman: Stop talking about it. I'm going to stop
      calling you a white man. And I'm going to ask you to stop
      calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace. You
      know me as Morgan Freeman.

~~~
jholman
Now, suppose you (the reader of this comment) are assigned the task of
promoting Morgan Freeman's proposed strategy, but with respect to sexism. With
that hypothetical in mind, I ask you: is an organized program of introducing
novel gender-neutral pronouns an aide to your task, or a hindrance?

~~~
chrsstrm
Sexism and racism are not equal to sex and race. Ignoring blatant facts does
not make discrimination go away. Identifying someone by their sex or race is
not an issue - Mr. Freeman made his explanation a little too simple. The
persistent stereotypes and baggage that comes along with the race or sex
identification is the real issue.

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jcbrand
I would be in favour of a gender neutral pronoun, but some of the things
mentioned in the article just seem off to me.

> One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys "gender-coded" them
> and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys.

"gender-coded"? Is it because the boys said that only men/boys can drive/play
with cars?

If the adults allowed girls equal access to play with the cars, they could,
either explicitly or via the fact of girls playing with the cars, negate that
notion.

> Another preschool removed "free playtime" from its schedule because, as a
> pedagogue at the school put it, when children play freely "stereotypical
> gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy,
> exclusion, and the seed to bullying.

I wonder how these micro-managed and sheltered children will fare when they
one day have to travel to or live in a different society where there is
chauvinism, bullying, elbowing for hierarchy etc.

~~~
gruseom
_If the adults allowed girls equal access to play with the cars, they could,
either explicitly or via the fact of girls playing with the cars, negate that
notion._

My mother in law tells the story that when her kids were small she was
determined to raise them free of sexist gender norms. One of the things she
did was get some dolls for her son and, for a few hours a day, she would hide
his cars to make sure the dolls got equal time. This lasted until one day she
looked into a room where he was playing with the doll by running it along the
floor yelling "vroom vroom!" She brought out the cars and that was the end of
that.

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pooriaazimi
It's a great move. It might cause a slight confusion when translating to other
languages, but that's not really important.

Some languages (including my native language) had always used gender-neutral
pronouns, and it has never caused me (or anyone else that I know of) any
problems. So I think the fear that it might destroy the language or cause
mass-confusion is pointless.

[edit]

Aside from Persian, it seems[1] that Turkic, Filipino, Nahuatl, Malay,
Indonesian, Georgian, Esperanto (which is not a natural language), Estonian,
Armenian, Bengali, Nepali and probably tons of other languages have gender-
neutral pronouns. None of them are as widely-used as Chinese, Spanish, English
or Arabic though, and that's why many take gender-specific pronouns for
granted...

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun>

~~~
quink
> Chinese

'He', 'she' and 'it' in Chinese are pronounced the same. It's just in writing
and from the context that the distinction is made clear. 她，他 and 它。tā, tā and
tā.

------
thomasfrossman
I'm from Sweden. I haven't used "hen" many times but I like it and it might
integrate well with our society. (haven't read the article yet, sorry)

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zeroonetwothree
Usage of 'they' in English seems to be fairly common and it has only made the
language better.

~~~
tomp
I'm not a native English spreaker, so I'm not really qualified to judge a
language that is not mine, but anyways... this is not the English I've learnt.
Now, I have nothing against new words or new meanings for old words, but I
hate it when previously OK words suddenly get a negative status... It's
natural for the (old) English language to use _he_ for people in a general
context, just as _men_ can mean the same as _people_ (at least that's how I've
been taught). I don't find it very sensible to replace one ambiguity ("he" =
_he_ and _person_ ) with another ("they" = _people_ or _person_ ), but I guess
if you like speaking in that way, that's ok. Just don't force me do it,
especially since "they" is objectively a worse word (longer, harder to say for
foreigners).

In general, I think that people are focusing too much on words (actions
matter), and that equallity is ok, but freedom shouldn't suffer because of
that. Also, some people take _equality_ too far - I have a penis, and if you
have a _vagina_ , we are different, phisically much more than any other human
with a penis. There are some things we do different (I'm probably stronger and
need to urinate less often. You can give birth and can better feed infants.).
We might have different interests, and there's nothing wrong with that. We
also get different roles in life; when you give birth, you're phisically
damaged and the child _needs_ you, so it's better if I go to work and earn
money (if financially necesaary) (at least that's what a gentelman would do).

~~~
gruseom
Singular "they" _is_ the old English language. Generic "he" was codified by
grammarians in the 18th century who wanted to make English more like Latin.
But singular "they" never went away, and now it's making a move for the top
spot. The interesting thing is that all the best writers, from Chaucer thru
Shakespeare thru basically everyone you'd care to name, used singular "they"
liberally in their writing. The idea that it's an improper or incorrect usage
is nonsense and always was.

~~~
tomp
Really? I didn't know that. By "old", I meant 15 years ago, when I first
learned english.

What exactly did the singular "they" mean? Same as "it", just for people?

~~~
gruseom
Yep. There are some examples in a previous comment I wrote
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3688820>), though I overstated the case
about generic _he_ there. Wikipedia has pre-18th century examples of that too,
so it seems that both forms coexisted (in what proportion, I don't know). In
any case, it's a mistake to imagine that singular _they_ is an archaic form
being revived now for political correctness. It has been in widespread use all
along.

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bergie
The gender-specific pronouns are one of the usual things to trip up native
Finnish speakers in Germanic languages. In Finnish we've never had them, which
may explain some of the early gender neutrality in the country. From
Wikipedia:

 _The first European country to introduce women's suffrage was the Grand Duchy
of Finland—then a part of the Russian Empire with autonomous powers—which also
produced the world's first female members of parliament as a result of the
1907 parliamentary elections._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage>

~~~
stevoski
The theory that a people's language affects their cultural values?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity>

My country was the first in the world to introduce universal suffrage, in
1893. We speak English with its gender-specific pronouns.

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mattiask
Personally I prefer the more hackerish: "h*n", harder to prounciate though :)

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rmc
Fun fact, until 2000, Sweden had a offical state religion
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Sweden>

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ttttannebaum
>Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun: Hen

>A country tries to banish gender.

And then I stopped reading. At least with printed news media you have the
weight of the fact that what you write will be printed permanently on physical
materials to perhaps keep you from producing taglines as embarrassingly
juvenile as "A country tries to BANISH GENDER"

~~~
ttttannebaum
Just to make sure Sweden wasn't actually trying to banish gender, I kept
reading:

"The idea is that names should not be at all tied to gender, so it would be
acceptable for parents to, say, name a girl Jack or a boy Lisa."

The funny thing is that this is the opposite of the idea; at the very least
it's stated in a pretty uninformed way. This should read "The idea is that any
name within reason would be acceptable for any human being that is born." The
way the article puts it is subtly incredulous that a BOY would be named LISA??

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goggles99
LOL, a bunch of hippies in the late 60s tried doing that for a while here in
the USA. Failed miserably. it's nature folks - given a choice between them,
you cannot make most boys prefer pink flowers and most girls prefer tractors
and dirt. Maybe that is the next step - they won't be given the choice (seems
to be happening already according to the article). What is next? are they
going to do hormone therapy or genetic alterations so everyone is "hen" and
start cloning humans for reproduction.

How annoying, male and female clothing not being labeled? Uhh the proportions
are different folks, are they going to ban bras? or make men start wearing
them just to be fair? Are they going to stop offering dresses and slacks and
replace them with some hybrid piece of clothing? How about letting men in
women's locker rooms and men participate in women's pro sports. How about
forcing men to take sedatives so the women can compete on a level playing
field athletically.

Some science fiction books/movies come to mind when I thing of where Sweden is
headed in the next 5-10 years (Demolition man in neuter/hen land).

I'll bet some band of 1000 Al Queda militants goes in there, obliterates the
hen military and takes over the entire country within a 24 hour period. They
won't even object because they are so PC and will be so distracted with "being
astonished".

The men over there aren't even men anymore (at least not inside) and the women
some hybrid of man and women.

That's progress I guess...

