I've seen that used, but I think it's awkward and frankly just a bit too posh to catch on. We could benefit from something like the Swedish word, but "hen" already has female connotations so it wouldn't work.Desert Punk said:
Sweden Moves Towards Gender Neutrality [Support Thread]
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I am offended by everyone trying to copy me and my sameness. It feels like they're taking the Mickey.Casual Shinji said:
Don't you see it's the next step in equality for all mankind; Neutral discussion.Pinkamena said:
While I can understand the sentiment, this seems to be taking anti-sexism to an interesting direction...
Mods... I know I haven't always been a good man. I've made mistakes. I'm not proud of some of the things I did to earn the two warnings that tarnish my profile. But please.... Enact this guy's idea... The larf would be of such monumental proportion that the very fabric of reality would bend beneath its wake. You know that would be sweet mods. C'mon.Hagi said:
Well, now you just destroyed any hope for worldpeace with your individual thoughts.Abomination said:
I hope you're happy.
can someone explain to me why gender distinction is a bad thing? i seriously don't get it. i understand the struggle for equal treatment of women of course, but this? why would...what?!
some people seriously get offended by something as basic? oh come on..
some people seriously get offended by something as basic? oh come on..
Here's the thing about the word 'hen' here in Swe that you don't hear if you aren't "within the borders" (Swe is brilliant at creating an awesome international image of itself, but that's bending the truth.)
Outside Stockholm and its protected "little sphere", it's generally laughed and scoffed at. Personally, I see it as an easy word to write instead of "him or her" (so I don't dislike it as such), but its actual purpose remains useless.
It's a simple way for politicians, strawfeminists and other "Politically Correct" people (who are oversaturated in Sweden to begin with) to gain kudos points. The bottomline is that adding a word does absolutely nothing. It's an empty gesture. It contributes nothing, other than turning people on the fence against feminism/equality even further because they find it silly and destructive. People have been called misogynistic and anti-feminist because they don't like the word, which is a common modus operandi with everything here in Swe.
IMO, equality comes from high political levels and through a dialogue with the people, not through adding silly words. Through action, not empty PC talk. Calling a boy "hen" in the belief that calling him "he" triggers negative masculine traits simply serves to create resistance to the whole hijacked movement. (There's a debate storming regarding all this, but most of it is in Swedish.)
And, yea, expecting only positive reinforcement in a forum thread is hilarious.
Outside Stockholm and its protected "little sphere", it's generally laughed and scoffed at. Personally, I see it as an easy word to write instead of "him or her" (so I don't dislike it as such), but its actual purpose remains useless.
It's a simple way for politicians, strawfeminists and other "Politically Correct" people (who are oversaturated in Sweden to begin with) to gain kudos points. The bottomline is that adding a word does absolutely nothing. It's an empty gesture. It contributes nothing, other than turning people on the fence against feminism/equality even further because they find it silly and destructive. People have been called misogynistic and anti-feminist because they don't like the word, which is a common modus operandi with everything here in Swe.
IMO, equality comes from high political levels and through a dialogue with the people, not through adding silly words. Through action, not empty PC talk. Calling a boy "hen" in the belief that calling him "he" triggers negative masculine traits simply serves to create resistance to the whole hijacked movement. (There's a debate storming regarding all this, but most of it is in Swedish.)
And, yea, expecting only positive reinforcement in a forum thread is hilarious.
Gender neutrality and gender equality is not the same thing.
Consciously removing the differences from the language does not remove the difference in biology, psychology and physiology no matter how much one wishes to do that.
Inequality and discrimination will still happen, only now there's an umbrella of "gender neutrality" to hide behind. And if differences and arguments have to be settled by promoting that gender is the cause, then the very nature of gender neutrality have allready failed.
Furthermore, removing difference because one gender wants one or the other, like young boys wanting to play with things that stimulates their natural motor skills or young girls wanting to play with things that stimulates their natural empathic skills, only serves to remove the options from the opposite gender. Boys will no longer be allowed to play with dolls and girls can't play with cars if they want.
That only serves to create some very dysfunctional and motorically and emotionally illequipped young people and not these wonderfull, nondiscriminatory young people that swedish gender experts seems to think will appear.
This is not a matter of nature versus nurture, it's both, males will still have more testoterone from a young age than females, and females will still have more estrogen than males from a young age, both these hormones as well as the neurophysiological differences will still have equal say to the way they are nurtured, and removing gender identity will not have any positive effect on the symbiotical relationship of these two factors.
Some boys want to play with dolls when they are young and some girls wants to play with cars, the solution is to let them and not discriminate or tolerate behaviour that says otherwise, not removing linguistic gender characteristics, because the people looking at them will still know the gender and have expectations based on it since -nothing- is done to sort out the inherent judgemental expectations of society.
Furthermore, most, if not all, the research and general knowledge that asserts how children should act and react when they grow up, is based on females. Kindergarten, preschool, school, high school, all are build upon perceptions on how females react to them. Females are at that age, evolutionary, emotionally and physiologically better tuned for sitting still and listening for long periods of time.
Calling them "hen" won't make males any more capable of doing all this.
Consciously removing the differences from the language does not remove the difference in biology, psychology and physiology no matter how much one wishes to do that.
Inequality and discrimination will still happen, only now there's an umbrella of "gender neutrality" to hide behind. And if differences and arguments have to be settled by promoting that gender is the cause, then the very nature of gender neutrality have allready failed.
Furthermore, removing difference because one gender wants one or the other, like young boys wanting to play with things that stimulates their natural motor skills or young girls wanting to play with things that stimulates their natural empathic skills, only serves to remove the options from the opposite gender. Boys will no longer be allowed to play with dolls and girls can't play with cars if they want.
That only serves to create some very dysfunctional and motorically and emotionally illequipped young people and not these wonderfull, nondiscriminatory young people that swedish gender experts seems to think will appear.
This is not a matter of nature versus nurture, it's both, males will still have more testoterone from a young age than females, and females will still have more estrogen than males from a young age, both these hormones as well as the neurophysiological differences will still have equal say to the way they are nurtured, and removing gender identity will not have any positive effect on the symbiotical relationship of these two factors.
Some boys want to play with dolls when they are young and some girls wants to play with cars, the solution is to let them and not discriminate or tolerate behaviour that says otherwise, not removing linguistic gender characteristics, because the people looking at them will still know the gender and have expectations based on it since -nothing- is done to sort out the inherent judgemental expectations of society.
Furthermore, most, if not all, the research and general knowledge that asserts how children should act and react when they grow up, is based on females. Kindergarten, preschool, school, high school, all are build upon perceptions on how females react to them. Females are at that age, evolutionary, emotionally and physiologically better tuned for sitting still and listening for long periods of time.
Calling them "hen" won't make males any more capable of doing all this.
It's the sledgehammer method of hammering in the bent nail of gender equality.Kathinka said:
All that matters is nobody gets caught on it and damn the collateral.
Rather than the slow and difficult task of allowing gender equality to occur organically now that we have equal legal standing some people want to skip those growing pains.
Swede here and I'm outside the Stockholm 'bubble', that PodPilot mentioned, of complete and utter disregard for the rest of the country's values and needs.
I got to say that this won't serve the movements purpose at all. The two genders are different, that is a fact. On every level. What we have to do is acknowledge those differences and then strive to not let them interfere with our behaviour as individual people and society as a whole. Simply referring to both genders as a singular pronoun will only change the word used when you need a pronoun. If you don't use it you aren't politically correct and thus branded as a caveman.
My aunt moved to Stockholm and two years later came back for a visit, bringing the glory of 'Hen' to the unwashed masses.
We were less than amused.
I got to say that this won't serve the movements purpose at all. The two genders are different, that is a fact. On every level. What we have to do is acknowledge those differences and then strive to not let them interfere with our behaviour as individual people and society as a whole. Simply referring to both genders as a singular pronoun will only change the word used when you need a pronoun. If you don't use it you aren't politically correct and thus branded as a caveman.
My aunt moved to Stockholm and two years later came back for a visit, bringing the glory of 'Hen' to the unwashed masses.
We were less than amused.
I've got a lot of sympathy for this idea, and I'm interested in how it will turn out.
However, the genderedness of language doesn't seem to have much to do with how gendered the culture is. Compare the ungendered Chinese language with the heavily gendered French language.
I don't really agree with stopping kids playing with what they want though. Everyone should be free to play with dolls or cars or whatever else.
However, the genderedness of language doesn't seem to have much to do with how gendered the culture is. Compare the ungendered Chinese language with the heavily gendered French language.
I don't really agree with stopping kids playing with what they want though. Everyone should be free to play with dolls or cars or whatever else.
It seems like everyone has missed the point.
Hen is not a replacement for Han & Hon (He and She), it is there as an alternative when you're not talking abour specific genders. It's more like replacing the pronoun 'it' or 'that', when refering to a human being whose gender you don't know, instead of having to say it or him/her.
Here's an example of how it would be used:
"I'm pretty sure a transgendered person would be offended if people called him/her 'hen'."
You could say "called it him/her", but that would be rude as hell.
So stop whining about PCness and stuff. You're missing the point.
With that said, I'd like to say that I find that hen to be stupid. Stupid and grammatically incorrect.
Hen is not a replacement for Han & Hon (He and She), it is there as an alternative when you're not talking abour specific genders. It's more like replacing the pronoun 'it' or 'that', when refering to a human being whose gender you don't know, instead of having to say it or him/her.
Here's an example of how it would be used:
"I'm pretty sure a transgendered person would be offended if people called him/her 'hen'."
You could say "called it him/her", but that would be rude as hell.
So stop whining about PCness and stuff. You're missing the point.
With that said, I'd like to say that I find that hen to be stupid. Stupid and grammatically incorrect.
People have forgotten that humans are animals and instinctive by nature, and the differences in hormones and the like in each gender do make a lot of differences between the two. Sure, there's exceptions but there are a lot of differences in the way a man and a woman thinks because of thousands of years of evolution. Simply ignoring this is not the way to make people happy. I do agree that you need to have a gender-neutral pronoun in a language, but only because of practicality instead of gender equality because sometimes you just don't know what sex the person you're speaking to has, or you have to speak to a large group of people.
Gender deconstruction is a terrible idea, both the genders are equal in worth but they have very big differences and roles. Hypothetically if you let a little boy identify as a girl, have fantasies of being a mother and carrying a baby in a womb that can lead to some issues in later life. There are physical differences, if you claim that race and gender are social constructions you have to go up against years of confirmed genetic science.
"Race is a construction, not a reality" Please elaborate? The Marxist view of race, gender and class is a flawed idea because it says that everyone is a victim of a broken system and everyone is both oppressed and oppressor. It's a theory composed of a victim complex ideology that insists in poking holes in a system. It's cool to look at things differently with a different mind set but fucking with things practically like the raising of children (putting them in a gender neutral environment) without prior controlled experiments is highly unethical.Mr F. said:
I'm a Swede, and even though I'd usually respect the OP's request to keep this thread positive by simply moving along, I refuse to since this 'hen' business is completely stupid.
First of all, men and women are different. That's just a fact. We think differently, act differently, and that's not bad. We should celebrate the fact that we are different instead of trying to force everyone into being the same grey sludge with no identity.
Secondly, these gender-neutral words are already a complete and utter failure since they aren't neutral. 'Hen' is the feminine term, 'hum' is the masculine term. If there are feminine and masculine terms of a gender-neutral word then how the fuck can it be neutral?
Let boys be boys and girls be girls. And if the boys want to play with GI Joe's and the girls want to play with My Little Pony's they should be able to do that without some whackjob telling them that it's wrong because they aren't acting gender-neutral.
First of all, men and women are different. That's just a fact. We think differently, act differently, and that's not bad. We should celebrate the fact that we are different instead of trying to force everyone into being the same grey sludge with no identity.
Secondly, these gender-neutral words are already a complete and utter failure since they aren't neutral. 'Hen' is the feminine term, 'hum' is the masculine term. If there are feminine and masculine terms of a gender-neutral word then how the fuck can it be neutral?
Let boys be boys and girls be girls. And if the boys want to play with GI Joe's and the girls want to play with My Little Pony's they should be able to do that without some whackjob telling them that it's wrong because they aren't acting gender-neutral.
