Sweden Moves Towards Gender Neutrality [Support Thread]

[Larcenist]

No one in their right mind could ever think it a good reason to monitor which gender uses what products (kids playing with toys etc), where would this result in gender equality?

This whole "hen" thing has become little more than a joke from what I've witnessed as well. Those who use the word in all its splendor are those with little to no understanding at all in the matter at hand, and should you try to hold a civilized argumentation they will all sing the same song much like a broken record. The other only use I ever get is (apart from the obvious feministic politicians) in newer comedy scetches. A good friend of mine enjoys writing poetry and I'd like to quote a brief section of one of her recent creations:

"Den enda anledningen
till att jag vill kallas för "hen"
är att jag hatar kvinnor lika mycket som män."

which translates into:

"The only reason
for me to want to be called "hen"
is because I hate women as much as I hate men."

I'm not in any way against the idea of gender equality, quite the opposite actually. I myself cannot fathom the idea that women should in any way not have the same rights as men. The sudden surfacing of a genderless pronoun will not achieve this though, linguistics will not equal politics. There are so many other things going on in Sweden regarding this topic that could have an actual impact, hell I think it was last Thursday on my way to university I some adverticement on the bus for a university with actual mandatory feminism courses.

But well I'm from Gothenburg and not Stockholm, so I guess I'm just not one of the enlightened few. And as a clarification to OP since I'm not allowed to disagree; I'm not against the practice you have posted about, I'm against certain means (mainly the toy business) and completely indifferent to some others ("hen").

 

[trollnystan]

Swede here, and I don't approve of something as silly as "Hen". Equality and deconstructivism isn't the same thing. We should strive for equality of rights, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make distinctions between the two. Men and women aren't the same, and that's a bloody good thing.

Sorry old friend, gonna disagree with you on "hen".

It is NOT to be used INSTEAD OF "han" or "hon", it's to be used to compliment them. As in:

P1: "The doctor told me I have to stop drinking alcohol =("

P2: "Really? Why did hen say that?" <-- Speaker does not know gender of doctor

P1: "He said something bullshitty about my liver being shot."

P2: "Wow, he sure sounds like a douche!" <-- Speaker now knows gender of doctor

If you start referring to people whose gender you KNOW as "hen", that's a bit weird. Unless of course they themselves consider themselves intersex or something, but that's a whole different can of worms.

There are plenty of languages that have had a gender-neutral pronoun (Finnish for example) and some that have ONLY had gender neutral pronouns (Persian for example) for centuries; none of these cultures deny the existence of male and female and try to blend us all into a homogeneous gloop.

Having said all that, I still don't use hen in my everyday language because I'm not used to it. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the option being there!

There are men, there a women, there are people who consider themselves none of the above. "Hen" does not take this away - except in the hands of crazy people - it simply makes communication a little easier. IMPO that is.

 

[Littaly]

I am a swede myself. It's worth pointing out that the change is far from unanimously agreed on, there's been a so called "hen-debate" going on the last couple of years between the people who oppose the new word and the people who support it. It flared up pretty significantly about half a year ago if I remember correctly.

Personally I am a little split towards it. On one hand I am totally in favor of what it tries to accomplish. Traditionally Swedish has always used masculine pronoun when gender is unknown or irrelevant, which there in today's society is really no good reason for, hence the new word. It's essentially a less cumbersome replacement for him/her, in the hopes that it will get a more widespread use, and that's not an entirely bad idea.

On the other had, I'm enough of a geek to have opinions on people trying to force change into language into either changing or staying the same. Language should evolve naturally, and not be forced one way or the other. Don't ask me why, it's just one of my peeves.

Ultimately though, I'm OK with "hen". It's a little awkward to use at the moment, but if it manages to catch on I think it's a pretty good idea.

 

[Nickolai77]

I initially refrained from commenting on this thread for the sake of the OP...But since this thread has gone exactly how i expected it to go i'll offer my thoughts.

I don't approve of gender de-construction. I understand the rationale as to how feminists may regard it as inherently oppressive- but my gender is part of my identity and i don't wish to lose that type of identity. Being a man i'm aware of societies expectations of me, and i accept those expectations better and for worse. I'd rather face the challenges that come with my gender than not have any gender identity at all. Obviously i think people should be free to entirely disregard gender expectations if they wish to- that's up to them. Of course, boys playing with dolls and girls driving race-cars goes against gender expectations and they're going to feel the pressure going against those expectations. But, i'm not willing to remove all those expectations about how genders behave purely for their sake- because my gender identity is important. The point is though that people should be free to go against the grain as it were.

I also think that our sex influences a significant amount of our behaviour anyway- and that gender expectations are reflections of what men and women are genetically pre-disposed to do. Which is why i'm scepical that these kind of initiatives in Sweden will work in the long run.

 

[Kekkonen1]

I'm Swedish and don't really mind the use of hen. I've never heard it used in speech, I think it is mostly meant to be used in situations where the gender of the one who is spoken of is simply irrelevant. Thus I dont think it is meant to be used as a form of gender deconstruction, but mostly just to make certain topics easier. Like if newspapers write about a suspect the gender shouldn't really be important and thus the use of hen might be suitable.

Anyway it hasn't really found broad use yet but some newspapers have started using it sparingly so it will probably gain traction as time goes, and why not? It certainly doesn't hurt anyone nor does it take away from other fights for equality between the sexes.

 

[generals3]

From the point of view of people like me, gender roles are essentially a bad thing because they reinforce inequality. There is no real reason why there are fewer female engineers for example. With the vast majority of jobs these days there is no reason a woman cannot perform equally to a man.

Sure there is: freedom of choice and nature. I read an interesting article in which they interviewed a Professor in Biology who wrote a book approaching social things from an evolutionary point of view. And a lot of things which may appear as baseless from a biological point of view are actually caused by nature. Take for instance the more career-oriented attitude of men and the more family oriented attitude of women. You might think this is caused by gender-role brainwashing, but it has very good biological reasons. First one is the fact women are 100% that they are the parent of their children (ok, nowadays with insemination it's not 100% true anymore) while fathers are not. On top of that women are much more limited to the amount of kids they can have than men. Hence why men are generally less family oriented, from a biological point of view their progeny means less.

And now to the freedom of choice part. I read an other article which actually was about the counter-feminist attitude more and more women take. More and more women in Belgium chose to follow the old "patriarchal" model where they put family before career and they're happy nowadays they can again do so without fearing feminists to lash out on them. And they don't do this because they are told to do it but because they WANT it.

Doing away with genders (But not sex) would help break down sexism because it would make things much more equal. That is the aim of this project.

And is "removing" the already heavily decreasing sexism worth enforcing a concept people from both genders reject?

 

[Sunrider]

Swede here, and I don't approve of something as silly as "Hen". Equality and deconstructivism isn't the same thing. We should strive for equality of rights, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make distinctions between the two. Men and women aren't the same, and that's a bloody good thing.

Sorry old friend, gonna disagree with you on "hen".

It is NOT to be used INSTEAD OF "han" or "hon", it's to be used to compliment them. As in:

P1: "The doctor told me I have to stop drinking alcohol =("

P2: "Really? Why did hen say that?" <-- Speaker does not know gender of doctor

P1: "He said something bullshitty about my liver being shot."

P2: "Wow, he sure sounds like a douche!" <-- Speaker now knows gender of doctor

If you start referring to people whose gender you KNOW as "hen", that's a bit weird. Unless of course they themselves consider themselves intersex or something, but that's a whole different can of worms.

There are plenty of languages that have had a gender-neutral pronoun (Finnish for example) and some that have ONLY had gender neutral pronouns (Persian for example) for centuries; none of these cultures deny the existence of male and female and try to blend us all into a homogeneous gloop.

Having said all that, I still don't use hen in my everyday language because I'm not used to it. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the option being there!

There are men, there a women, there are people who consider themselves none of the above. "Hen" does not take this away - except in the hands of crazy people - it simply makes communication a little easier. IMPO that is.

I realize what the point of it is. Why I'm opposed to it is because of situations like this.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/wendela/article12531124.ab

I realize it could be summarized as the "slippery slope", and I hate using that sort of argument, but at least you'll understand where I'm coming from with this. Taking the whole crossroad sign debacle we had a while back into consideration, I'd say Sweden is generally crazy enough to follow through with such abhorrent ideas. Were it not for that, I'd probably support it same as you.

EDIT: By the way, where have you been lately? We haven't spoken in ages. =(

 

[joshuaayt]

Oh, so I can have an alternative to calling a single person "them" if I don't know the gender? Great, I support this.

It's only meant to complement him/her, what's the issue? It's like a temporary value for when you don't know what the actual value is. If my sister says "My friend gave me a rad deal on this old car", now I can say "Oh, that was nice of hen." instead of "Oh, that was nice of them."

I guess we could use it for gender-neutral folks as well, nothing beats efficiency.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

I think it'll be a generation or two before we see any real effect out of this idea. But I am curious as to what happens. I'll get around to reading the articles later. I disagree with this idea of a support thread. Where's the discussion value if you aren't allowed to raise dissenting opinions?

Oh, so I can have an alternative to calling a single person "them" if I don't know the gender? Great, I support this.

It's only meant to complement him/her, what's the issue? It's like a temporary value for when you don't know what the actual value is. If my sister says "My friend gave me a rad deal on this old car", now I can say "Oh, that was nice of hen." instead of "Oh, that was nice of them."

I guess we could use it for gender-neutral folks as well, nothing beats efficiency.

I think you might have misunderstood. 'Hen' is a swedish word. We already have 'them', 'they', 'one' and 'that-person-over-there-yeah-that-one'./

 

[Jordi]

I'm a firm supporter of removing gender from anything where it isn't relevant. That is what gender-neutrality means to me, and I think it's a much more laudable goal than gender-equality (which basically cuts society down the middle and makes the often unfounded assumption that the groups should be equal on all accounts). Having a word to use when gender is indeterminate instead of the proscribed masculine "he" or the awkward "he or she" seems like a good idea to me.

I guess it's good news that the government adopted the practice, but of course language doesn't evolve by government mandate and I wonder whether Sweden is really going to use this much. We have gender-neutral words in English and multiple people in this thread have commented on how clunky and awkward they are, which is why they're not used much (also, I'm not seeing a wave of gender-neutrality in the English speaking world because we have these words). I'm sure inventing new words that nobody has ever heard or reappropriating words that already have other meanings will be even more awkward. I wonder if Sweden will be any different (and it very well might be).

I'm also not really opposed to "hen" completely replacing "han" and "hon", but I think that will just be even more awkward.

I'm in favor of a lot of the efforts occurring in Sweden on the subject of gender-neutrality, but I think sometimes they take it way too far. For instance, eliminating free playtime because then people naturally fall back into gender roles is one of the stupidest things I ever heard. We should strive to give people the freedom to choose who they want to be without imposing gender roles on them. But eliminating their freedom and imposing your own made-up roles on them is no better.

Gender neutrality shouldn't be about ignoring natural differences between the genders. It should be about recognizing where they don't matter and then not imposing differences anyway. A true gender neutral person wouldn't see (most) boys preferring cars to Barbies while (most) girls are the other way around. They would see different people who have different preferences (without gender even being a consideration).

 

[HannesPascal]

I read the thread title and thought "We do, then why do I see more and more bickering on the chronicle sections of pretty much every magazine claiming the opposite".
Regarding the word hen I love it, not because you don't have to point out the gender of the person you're talking about but because it's one of those things that annoys people.

* Other advances towards gender neutrality include a reformation of pedagogy, the education system, children toys and children books.

Thing is my mother is a preschool teacher and she claims that this has taken the form of half-arsed, unclear lecture just like when it was decided that the education (including preschool) was going to be more entrepreneurial.

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Gods, are people in this thread actually supporting the concept of gender roles?

I don't support "gender roles". I do support genders though

Oh no, I wasn't referring to you. But when it seems like a significant number of people in the thread actually believe that separate can be equal, I get worried.

Well here's the funny thing. They can be. "Gender Deconstruction" is inherantly sexist. You view genders as inequal so you intend to destroy them. If you viewed genders as equal then the pronoun wouldn't matter because they would already be equal right? I believe in individuality (regardless of the ensuing paradox) and gender is a part of what defines who we are. Does that mean that either gender is locked into "roles" or whatever? Of course not. I grew up looking to my mom as the breadwinner. She went to college, got a job, ripped stereotypes in half like fucking phonebooks, and she still prefers to be called a she. She didn't need to hide behide neutral gender rhetoric to be awesome, she did it while being a goddamn woman. That is my opinion, feel free to disagree. But I have too much respect for women (and men, fuck the police) to disenfranchise them with defensive labels they don't need.

Good Day to you sir

 

[Casual Shinji]

Gods, are people in this thread actually supporting the concept of gender roles?

I don't support "gender roles". I do support genders though

Oh no, I wasn't referring to you. But when it seems like a significant number of people in the thread actually believe that separate can be equal, I get worried.

No I think we believe different can be equal. Getting along despite our differences, and coming to an understanding. Not getting rid of differences or words that discribe differences all together.

 

[MBergman]

Swede here as well and to be honest I find the whole thing rather silly. The introduction of a gender neutral pronoun is not what I'm opposed to, if people want to use it all the power to them. I also know at least one person who's had inner conflicts about which gender to identify with and would rather be refered to as 'hen'. Again, this I'm perfectly fine with.

What did follow the whole debacle was a mob of uptight, self-righteous and self-appointed guardians of equality that treated the word as holy and would downright harass you or accuse you of being sexist if you neglected to use it. As if general useage of it will solve all sexist problems. With that said there's been ridicolous over reactions from the other side as well, people have thrown major fits just because their kids were being taught the word. (though some daycares apparently forced the kids to use it, which I don't agree with)

The whole thing just blew waaaaay out of proportion, but that's Sweden in a nut shell. Find an issue that's actually really trivial and then just devote all your energy to that instead of focusing on real problems, in an effort to seem like you really care about some issue (sexism in this case). Because if there's something a Swede is really scared of it's seeming like he or she is not politically correct.

As someone mentioned, there's several other languages that already have gender neutral pronouns, if they would have just said something like "Here's this nifty new word, use it if you want to!" and not tried stuffing it down peoples' throats, things would have just gone smoother. And less annoying. Just to emphasize though: I'm not opposed to this word, I think people just treat it as something it's not.

 

[NortherWolf]

Yeah, I prefer to use it over the old equivalent. "Han/Hon/Det" (He/She/It).
I like hen because it's a short, simple way to sum up three words in three letters. Also, it bothers the shit out of my Right-wing Christian teacher who hates the homo/feminazi lobby for ruining his Churches.

 

[Loonyyy]

[HEADING=3]If you vehemently disagree with gender deconstructivism and its goals, please hit the back button or close the tab. You are completely free to start your own thread on the matter to bemoan these terrible news.[/HEADING]

[HEADING=2]This thread is intended as a positive take on the matter. It is not intended to condemn or derogate these practices, but to show our support. This is a positive thread. If you oppose these practices, please create your own thread for that. Thank you.[/HEADING]

OP decides to politely inform people that they're not interested in an argument about gender equality, and the usual retreading of feminist, anti-feminist and nonsense, and the usual flamewar quagmire, and are only interested in positive discussion.

>Gets people whinging about this decision, rather than doing what was suggested and making their own thread. (Which says more about how much they care about the discussion of the topic than the soapbox to flame from).
>Gets people giving accusations of "No dissenting opinions allowed" (Which is worthy of ridicule. They can have them. They could even make their own thread and express them, as was suggested, and even say that they're only interested in negative views)
>Gets implications that there's no discussion value (Because the theory behind language's impact on society is not at all a large topic with much room for discussion and enlightenment *facepalm*)

Good work guys. You've managed to turn a request to avoid the moaning and flaming into your motivation to moan and flame.

OT: It's interesting. I guess it's kind of like using the word "They" in english to describe a group or individual. It reminds me of when I was doing French in high school, and we ended up on a discussion about the lack of an adequate second person plural. Which was kind of funny since the closest term was probably the slang "Youse", which is kind of scummy. The last article has an interesting point about how it's linguistically similar to the English usage of singular "They".

I like the idea of the toy stores mixing things up indiscriminately, not so sure about the schools removing items because they feel the children act in gendered ways with them, and I thought that the children's novel was rather silly, until I read the interview excerpts, which were much more enlightening.

If the English language originally borrowed the term "They" from Danish, and the "Scandinavian Language family", as it says in the economist piece, why isn't there a longer history of a term like this, or is it just that these languages are quite distinct?

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

Swede here, and I don't approve of something as silly as "Hen". Equality and deconstructivism isn't the same thing. We should strive for equality of rights, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't make distinctions between the two. Men and women aren't the same, and that's a bloody good thing.

Sorry old friend, gonna disagree with you on "hen".

It is NOT to be used INSTEAD OF "han" or "hon", it's to be used to compliment them. As in:

P1: "The doctor told me I have to stop drinking alcohol =("

P2: "Really? Why did hen say that?" <-- Speaker does not know gender of doctor

P1: "He said something bullshitty about my liver being shot."

P2: "Wow, he sure sounds like a douche!" <-- Speaker now knows gender of doctor

If you start referring to people whose gender you KNOW as "hen", that's a bit weird. Unless of course they themselves consider themselves intersex or something, but that's a whole different can of worms.

There are plenty of languages that have had a gender-neutral pronoun (Finnish for example) and some that have ONLY had gender neutral pronouns (Persian for example) for centuries; none of these cultures deny the existence of male and female and try to blend us all into a homogeneous gloop.

Having said all that, I still don't use hen in my everyday language because I'm not used to it. That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the option being there!

There are men, there a women, there are people who consider themselves none of the above. "Hen" does not take this away - except in the hands of crazy people - it simply makes communication a little easier. IMPO that is.

Oh thank goodness someone's speaking sense. We've had the argument of how you refer to someone who's gender you don't know for ages, and then a country comes up with a word that solves that problem? Well, clearly they believe males and females are physically identical then!

But hey, go ahead and claim that a gender neutral word clamps down on your individuality, despite the fact you've probably used the word "they" for that exact same purpose dozens of times before. I don't know how I feel about the other moves they're trying to make towards gender neutrality, and I do have my doubts about how successful it's likely to be when a government tries to institute a new word, but... Acting like it's going to cause harm is just silly.

 

[Atrocious Joystick]

Eh, "Hen" isn't really used in Sweden.

Some people have taken to using it. Mostly media people and upper class people with too much time on their hands. The only time I've ever heard it used is on the radio or written in an article and it's just really distracting both because it is really obvious it is being used as a political point. Not as the potential word to use for a person whose gender is unknown or supposedly hidden. And also because it will without a doubt lead to any comments (in the case of an article) leading to a bunch of people hatin'.

Truth is we have a very vocal minority that likes to pull stunts like this and like to do so that everybody can see and hear. Because they are special little flowers and everybody needs to know that this next social project is like super important you guys. I guess you could compare them to the Christian right in some countries.

 

[repeating integers]

Gods, are people in this thread actually supporting the concept of gender roles?

I don't support "gender roles". I do support genders though

Oh no, I wasn't referring to you. But when it seems like a significant number of people in the thread actually believe that separate can be equal, I get worried.

Well here's the funny thing. They can be. "Gender Deconstruction" is inherantly sexist. You view genders as inequal so you intend to destroy them. If you viewed genders as equal then the pronoun wouldn't matter because they would already be equal right? I believe in individuality (regardless of the ensuing paradox) and gender is a part of what defines who we are. Does that mean that either gender is locked into "roles" or whatever? Of course not. I grew up looking to my mom as the breadwinner. She went to college, got a job, ripped stereotypes in half like fucking phonebooks, and she still prefers to be called a she. She didn't need to hide behide neutral gender rhetoric to be awesome, she did it while being a goddamn woman. That is my opinion, feel free to disagree. But I have too much respect for women (and men, fuck the police) to disenfranchise them with defensive labels they don't need.

Good Day to you sir

Actually, I don't want to destroy the concept of gender because I view the genders as unequal. I want to destroy them so that people can do or be whatever they want regardless of how they were born.

Genders shouldn't be "equal", they should be one. All gender stereotypes should disappear - buying and wearing dresses should not be viewed as a female activity, it should be viewed as an activity, period, with no societal restrictions of any kind.

 

[knight steel]

Hmmm well I'm not sure about this on one hand creating a gender neutral term can advance the use of language and could help make thing equal on the other hand I can see this being used to deny the differences between the sexes and being misused.
So until we see how this goes I'll just say it's interesting and congratulations on trying something new: