Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/hen_sweden_s_new_gender_neutral_pronoun_causes_controversy_.html

by gruseom • 14 years ago

19 36 14 years ago

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.

skrebbel2• 14 years ago

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)

rmc2• 14 years ago

(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.

white_devil3• 14 years ago

Finn here.

As someone pointed out, we have the gender-neutral pronoun "hän" in our language. I often wish English had an equivalent. It's very convenient sometimes.

Hän is fine, but most of the time we use the Finnish word for "it" instead. The word is "se" in Finnish, and it normally behaves exactly like the English equivalent - it's basically meant to be used for animals and objects.

Se is used because saying hän is too much work, or it would sound too formal when you're just talking with your friends etc.

Basically, we only use hän when we want to take care to sound respectful in some specific situation or when writing something that's not supposed to be casual.

At any rate, worrying about a gender-neutral pronoun making people confused about their sexual identities is just silly.

dbaupp• 14 years ago

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.

thomasfrossman• 14 years ago

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)

zeroonetwothree• 14 years ago

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

tomp3• 14 years ago

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).

jinushaun• 14 years ago

What are you talking about? The use of the third person singular gender-neutral "they" is very specific. It's just convenient. In fact, I wish English had a different word instead of recycling "they", which is technically a third person plural pronoun. I don't stop using he or she.

gruseom3• 14 years ago

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.

saulrh• 14 years ago

  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• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

bergie• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

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.

pooriaazimi• 14 years ago

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• 14 years ago

> 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.

ttttannebaum2• 14 years ago

>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"

ttttannebaum2• 14 years ago

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??

rmc2• 14 years ago

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

jcbrand2• 14 years ago

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.

christkv• 14 years ago

Being norwegian I can tell you the scandinavian model tends to encourage a certain special ignorance of the human condition. You come out with a naive utopian view of the world and how it should behave, then have to have reality hammered into you by the real world.

I think it's just a different kind of ignorance and it always reminds me of the saying "the road to hell is paved with good intentions"

white_devil3• 14 years ago

> live in a different society where there is chauvinism, bullying, elbowing for hierarchy

Oh there's plenty of that in the Nordic Countries too. After all, we're not a different species over here.

thalur• 14 years ago

The last paragraph really bothered me, but I'm not entirely sure why; it felt authoritarian, thought police etc.

That aside, the idea of a gender neutral pronoun sounds good to me. I'd also like a specifically plural "you", for example when you're talking to a representative of a company and want to refer to the company rather than the representative.

gruseom3• 14 years ago

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.

mattiask• 14 years ago

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

goggles99• 14 years ago

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...

Sweden’s New Gender-Neutral Pronoun

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