Sweden Moves Towards Gender Neutrality [Support Thread]

[Harrowdown]

While I think adding a neutral pronoun is good for practical reasons I don't really see how this is a feminist issue.

This is THE feminist issue. The ultimate goal of feminism is to dismantle patriarchal constructs of gender roles and societal norms. The movement is ultimately dedicated to total equality, not simply women's rights.

 

[Darken12]

Hm. I'm not 100% on all this. Whilst on one hand, gender equality is all nice and good, and yeah, gender roles are restrictive, but I think it's a definite mistake to treat boys and girls in the same way because they're not the same. This isn't sexism, or gender roles, they just are. I'm not saying that our society's gender roles are great and that's what boys and girls naturally aspire to, but pretending they're the same seems equally bad to me.

What's the harm, though? If we raise children neutrally and tell them that they can be whatever they want to be, and that nobody will judge them for their career or lifestyle choices, isn't that fostering more freedom and equality? You will have your stereotypically manly men and your stereotypically womanly women, but you can also have (straight and cis) men who like pink, are ballet dancers and househusbands, and (straight and cis) women who like sports, cars, wearing suits and are pro athletes, soldiers or miners.

I fail to see how raising children to be free from the restrictions of gender is a bad thing. Nobody will stop them from being as stereotypical as they want to be, they are just being raised without harmful and oppressive expectations.

Not touching the evopsych with a ten foot pole. I don't want the thread to go down in flames.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

[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]

In other words, no dissenting opinions allowed. How interesting.

This is my main gripe with a lot of these 'modern' issues. The thinking behind it is something I must be allergic or intolerant to, as no matter what dosage of gender politics reading I've exposed myself to, it always tends to make me feel sick.

See, the transformative forces of these 'progressive' thinkers claim to bring love, peace and happiness to mankind in general and societies (and the individuals they are made of) in particular. Thing is, so far, they are mainly divisive forces. They are intent to dismiss and deconstruct everything old, but the new they've made up is silly at best and scary by default. A lot of it follows the basic strategies laid out by Marx, and as such, they are constructed to demean, undermine, cripple and confuse the powers that be. The demonisation of the - political - enemy is not random, it is part of plan. Mao and Marx are still very much alive, and as long as there is something worth being torn down, desecrated or destroyed, some people will always find it very easy to see beauty and purpose in whatever heinous deed needs to be done to maximize the damage.

The transformers of society might oftentimes dress up as your friends or someone who is inclined to understand your very own, personal struggle. In the end, you'll always be their *****, their lackey, their foot soldier in their ongoing war not for you and your soul, but in their ideological struggle for new man, a supposedly better man, a man not bound by culture, religion, nation or creed.

I didn't come here to pee in your thread, Darken12. I respect you as an intelligent and caring human being. I just don't happen to agree on certain topics that are, alas, very important to you.

The outcome of the Swedish human experiment... we'll have to sit and wait and see. Let's talk about it in, say, ten to twenty years time. By then, we'll see how much confusion and damage it was allowed to cause in the weakest of society. If I'm wrong and Darken12's communicated line of thinking is right, children will grow up free and strong, not burdened with having to care about all this nonsensical gender malarkey. If, however, I and mine are right, we'll see quite a disruptive, pathogenic effect on indigenous people and people that are not wealthy enough to prevent their children from taking part in this latest experiment.

I like the idea of a more or less all-inclusive society, but that's an utopia, a dream - not reality. Immigrant communities that are allowed to live their own culture might be able to withstand this egalitarian/feminist attack better than the indigenous population. Which consequently raises the question about the real purpose of stunts like this. Egalitarian practices only really make sense when they are universal and compulsory - for everyone, no exceptions. Since most of us don't live in totalitarian societies that force us to live that one ideal to live happy and be left in peace, people who oppose such notions will be marginalized, ridiculed, pestered and, in the end, oppressed.

Where I come from, where my genes were stored for three generations, do you know what they called people that prayed to God, conducted Christmas or Easter or other religious holidays and rites? Bogana. No, it was not 'Bogan'. It was the 'god people'. It was a slur. A bad word. A word that could get you in trouble in the socialist paradise of Tito's national communism. Yeah, communists claim that this description does not fit. I don't care, we lived in it and we survived it, albeit mostly by luck, refusing to die and eating maggots and rats and wet dirt.

You don't know what demon you're praying to, and you'll only realize it once you've successfully summoned it.

May you live in interesting times.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

*Snip*

You specifically said "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."

That quote specifically states that any opinions condemning Sweden's decision are not allowed, which counter arguments inherently are meant to do. You also specifically kept repeating that only positive takes and support of the matter were allowed, and anyone who opposes Sweden's practices should just make their own thread. There is no misreading that - you're OP clearly made counter-arguments and disagreeing forbidden. A thread dedicated entirely to supporting only one side of an issue has no discussion value by it's very nature, hence people's issues with your OP.

If you wanted to not have a flamewar, you should have just said to keep things mature and that you don't want this to get locked due to flamewars. Banning opposing viewpoints is only going to make things worse and greatly increase the likely hood of the thread getting locked, which is counterproductive to want you apparently want. I'd definitely suggest editing the OP if your intent was simply not to have a flamewar.

I never said they were not allowed, I was merely hoping to keep the thread as positive, friendly and supportive as possible. After the massive backlash, I decided to clarify what I meant, as apparently politely requesting people to stay positive is some sort of capital offence.

A positive thread has plenty of discussion value. Discussion is not wholly limited to whether you are for or against something. People can be for something and still discuss the intricacies of the matter. In this case, we could discuss what other measures could be taken, if this could be applied to the English language, the country's take on children education (as I'm discussing with another poster) and so on.

I edited my post after seeing the OP update, as the post was being typed while you made the edit.

However, you did in fact forbid counter-arguments. Your exact words were "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." Once again, a counter argument by it's very nature condemns the viewpoint in question, and you explicitly forbade condemning Sweden's decision. Nowhere along the lines did you're pre-edit OP merely request counter-arguments to be polite and reasonable, but instead told people to only support Sweden's decision. Your OP is much better now, but there's no denying what it originally said.

As for your point that an all-support thread has discussion value, I strongly disagree. A thread that only allows for agreeing viewpoints (in this case that Sweden's decision was a good thing) and tells people who would condemn said viewpoints to leave doesn't encourage people to discuss the validity of said viewpoint and as well as other viewpoints. Instead, all discussion becomes varying degrees of the same exact thing - that the original point is right. That's not a discussion, that's merely reinforcing one specific viewpoint. What purpose does that serve? The point of a discussion is to provide greater perspective on a subject in the hopes of becoming more knowledgable. Doing nothing more than repeating the same viewpoint over and over does not provide any new perspective in any way, and thus does not serve the basic purpose of a discussion. A discussion's primary point should be to hear counter-opinions and other people's perspectives, not the other way around. Preventing opinions that condemn the original opinion is counter to the point of a discussion, and thus eliminates the value of the discussion. Hence, no discussion value.

 

[Jayemsal]

Race is a myth.
There are no significant biological differences between anyone of any "race."
All variations can be attributed to biological mutation, and offer no significant reason to qualify as a category.

That is the single most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, of course there are genetic differences and trends between races of people. For example African Americans are more likely to contract sugar diabetes or lupus than Caucasians, proving a genetic difference between the two races. I'm against discrimination and all, but pretending races don't exist will not cure racism.

It helps to actually read what I said.

All of those differences are results of biological mutation.

NONE of these are significant genetic differences.

Race is a myth.

 

[Darken12]

I didn't come here to pee in your thread, Darken12. I respect you as an intelligent and caring human being. I just don't happen to agree on certain topics that are, alas, very important to you.

I fully respect your viewpoints and I want to thank you for your politeness, but I fear your views are (perhaps justifiably, due to your background) one-sided. Random change happens organically. Focused change needs effort, and meets resistance. My personal intent is not to divide or demonise, but to avoid having social progress drowned in a sea of mindless, fear-driven backlash. I wish I could just post the link and say "discuss!" and know that people will be respectful and polite, and that the thread won't be locked because the discussion is not vicious. But that's not the case. At least here, these issues tend to devolve into a flame war between the fear-driven reactionaries and the "I've had enough" supporters (I count myself amongst the latter).

A truly surprising number of people flat-out do not know how to retain their composure and calm when faced with something that scares or angers them. They lash out, unthinkingly, and the flame war begins. Hence my overbearing requests to keep people polite.

Now, personally, I believe in the deconstruction and systematic destruction of traditions that disempower and oppress, yes, but not at the expense of human dignity. I wouldn't condone the things you're describing. I wouldn't use those views to justify inhuman means.

I edited my post after seeing the OP update, as the post was being typed while you made the edit.

However, you did in fact forbid counter-arguments. Your exact words were "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." Once again, a counter argument by it's very nature condemns the viewpoint in question, and you explicitly forbade condemning Sweden's decision. Nowhere along the lines did you're pre-edit OP merely request counter-arguments to be polite and reasonable, but instead told people to only support Sweden's decision. Your OP is much better now, but there's no denying what it originally said.

Then it was my mistake, because I was going by the (unstated) assumption that disagreement was allowed. My requests were to avoid things like "this is the work of fucking morons who should die" and that sort of thing. I should have been more clear.

As for your point that an all-support thread has discussion value, I strongly disagree. A thread that only allows for agreeing viewpoints (in this case that Sweden's decision was a good thing) and tells people who would condemn said viewpoints to leave doesn't encourage people to discuss the validity of said viewpoint and as well as other viewpoints. Instead, all discussion becomes varying degrees of the same exact thing - that the original point is right. That's not a discussion, that's merely reinforcing one specific viewpoint. What purpose does that serve? The point of a discussion is to provide greater perspective on a subject in the hopes of becoming more knowledgable. Doing nothing more than repeating the same viewpoint over and over does not provide any new perspective in any way, and thus does not serve the basic purpose of a discussion. A discussion's primary point should be to hear counter-opinions and other people's perspectives, not the other way around. Preventing opinions that condemn the original opinion is counter to the point of a discussion, and thus eliminates the value of the discussion. Hence, no discussion value.

I suppose we will have to agree to disagree. I've had fascinating conversations with fellow feminists on different aspects of feminism, with LGBTQ+ activists on the nature of LGBTQ+ rights, hate crimes and so on, and with fellow scientists on the application of different results. Sometimes pouring new ideas, adding onto someone else's conjectures, offering critical analysis and proposing alternatives is just as enriching as debating a subject with someone who disagrees (or, in my opinion, far more so than simply saying "welp, we'll have to agree to disagree" after you've established that the two of you are never going to go anywhere in the conversation).

 

[Somebloke]

So "they" CAN be used in singular and still be considered grammatically correct?
-Well and good then; That means I can drop the clunky "he/she" and "(s)he" constructions, that I have persistantly been using, for lack of something better. (EDIT: Would still prefer a proper, dedicated word, though...)

Swedish does not have an equivalent pronoun to specify an individal of unknown/irrelevant gender, so I, for one, welcome the initiative.

It is just unfortunate how the bulk of people, right here on this forum, as well as elsewhere, can apparently not resist second-guessing the whole thing and mistakenly (...or deliberately obfuscatingly...) assume there is more to it than lexical clarity, and then proceed to project their own gender politics agenda onto it...

 

[theSteamSupported]

I'd just like to point out that there are feminists who actually are opposed to this new pronoun. They belong to a different generation of feminism, which embraces femininity rather than rejecting it as a social construct. These feminists point out, as someone mentioned earlier, that hiding the fact that someone is female would reinforce the idea of women as inherently less.

As for me, eh, there are situations where such pronoun would be appropriate. It's just that, as addressed earlier, we swedes are fairly not familiar with new pronoun. When was the last time we ever had a new one?

 

[Harrowdown]

Hm. I'm not 100% on all this. Whilst on one hand, gender equality is all nice and good, and yeah, gender roles are restrictive, but I think it's a definite mistake to treat boys and girls in the same way because they're not the same. This isn't sexism, or gender roles, they just are. I'm not saying that our society's gender roles are great and that's what boys and girls naturally aspire to, but pretending they're the same seems equally bad to me.

I did have to study a load of stuff on sexism in language for my A-levels, it's interesting, and yeah, I kinda see that it's unfair, but ultimately I think it's a touch too pedantic to really give a damn about. For a comparison, 'sinister' comes from the Latin for left, but I've never met a lefthanded person give anything other than a chuckle over it.


I also have a sneaking suspicion that from an evolutionary standpoint (forgetting ethics at the door), gender roles are kinda... good.

Boys and girls may be biologically different, but gender identity is far less binary. The argument being made here is that gender specific terms enforce rigid societal constructs of gender identity, defining men as entirely and inherently 'masculine', and women as entirely and inherently 'feminine'. Of course, such strict notions of gender identity simply do not reflect the reality of psychological gender identity. Nobody is one thing or another; rather, they can inhabit any point on a vast spectrum.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Hm. I'm not 100% on all this. Whilst on one hand, gender equality is all nice and good, and yeah, gender roles are restrictive, but I think it's a definite mistake to treat boys and girls in the same way because they're not the same. This isn't sexism, or gender roles, they just are. I'm not saying that our society's gender roles are great and that's what boys and girls naturally aspire to, but pretending they're the same seems equally bad to me.

I did have to study a load of stuff on sexism in language for my A-levels, it's interesting, and yeah, I kinda see that it's unfair, but ultimately I think it's a touch too pedantic to really give a damn about. For a comparison, 'sinister' comes from the Latin for left, but I've never met a lefthanded person give anything other than a chuckle over it.


I also have a sneaking suspicion that from an evolutionary standpoint (forgetting ethics at the door), gender roles are kinda... good.

Boys and girls may be biologically different, but gender identity is far less binary. The argument being made here is that gender specific terms enforce rigid societal constructs of gender identity, defining men as entirely and inherently 'masculine', and women as entirely and inherently 'feminine'. Of course, such strict notions of gender identity simply do not reflect the reality of psychological gender identity. Nobody is one thing or another; rather, they can inhabit any point on a vast spectrum.

I'm not saying gender is necessarily binary, but I think in general there is a difference between male and female (say hello, hormones!). It's not black and white, but it's far from flat grey either.

The point I'm trying (badly) to make, is that if we're going to try and do all this stuff, then we need to be really careful about it- the situation we're in now may not be perfect, but that doesn't mean we can't fuck it up in entirely new ways.

What's the harm, though? If we raise children neutrally and tell them that they can be whatever they want to be, and that nobody will judge them for their career or lifestyle choices, isn't that fostering more freedom and equality? You will have your stereotypically manly men and your stereotypically womanly women, but you can also have (straight and cis) men who like pink, are ballet dancers and househusbands, and (straight and cis) women who like sports, cars, wearing suits and are pro athletes, soldiers or miners.

I fail to see how raising children to be free from the restrictions of gender is a bad thing. Nobody will stop them from being as stereotypical as they want to be, they are just being raised without harmful and oppressive expectations.

In theory, sure, fine. In practice, I do wonder how say, schools would deal with it. The easy option would just to give everybody the same treatment, which I don't think is necessarily the right thing, but it's probably the cheapest. Sex education is shoddy enough in the UK as it is, and I see all kinds of added complications by trying to deal all this.

 

[Callate]

I'm all for there being a way to address those who do not wish to define themselves by their gender with fairness and respect.

But I think the belief that gender is nothing more than an artificial role imposed on one by society, forcing an individual to conform to a strict binary sexual identity, is the wishful thinking of a minority.

 

[Aramis Night]

Personal anecdote time, my primary school actually banned trading cards because they were the source of an incredibly amount of fighting, disputing and a whole array of problems. Rather than consuming manpower and resources dealing with all that individually, the school just banned them. It's possible that's what happened here.

But it says in one of the articles they got rid of them because the boys 'gender coded' them and preferred them over the other toys.

I'm very curious what traditionally female toys/pastimes the school banned that little girls were attempting to engage in, if any. It seemed that playing house was being encouraged in numerous ways and i recall during my own childhood that was usually a female activity. Just seems a bit one sided. I'm sure this won't be lost on the boys if it is only their favored activities being disrupted by this. I'm sure they will grow up to not be resentful of their agency being denied at all. Im sure they will grow up to be very equality minded gentlemen, oh sorry,i meant hen's.

 

[Lieju]

I'm all for gender-equality, and would love it if kids weren't pushed into gender-roles, but I'm not sure how well this will work. Would people actually start using such a word?

Gender roles are shit. I like colour blue, and as a kid I was disappointed to find that in kindergarten I always got the pink nametags and mugs etc, and boys got the pretty blue ones. And when the other kids found out I liked blue (ecause I asked for the blue things), I was of course bullied for 'wanting to be a boy', and grew to hate pink because it was forced on me, and I was told that I must like it.

In school I was told that girls just aren't good at math, and other kids spread rumours that I was cheating because I got good grades in math.
I was told that things like liking invertebrates wasn't 'girly', and when I enjoyed stereotypically feminine things like making clothes for dolls I was bullied for that as well, because it was apparently a sign I was pretending to like 'boy-things' or whatever.

I have to this day issues in identifying as a woman (I'd just rather be neither), and I'm not sure if that would be the case if I lived in a more gender-neutral society.

I'd just like to point out that there are feminists who actually are opposed to this new pronoun. They belong to a different generation of feminism, which embraces femininity rather than rejecting it as a social construct. These feminists point out, as someone mentioned earlier, that hiding the fact that someone is female would reinforce the idea of women as inherently less.

As opposed to always assuming the person in question is of certain gender, which ever fits the stereotype?
That if you don't know the gender of someone, you guess based on stereotype, as in 'everyone on a gaming forum is a guy, so I'll refer to them as 'he'"

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I'm all for there being a way to address those who do not wish to define themselves by their gender with fairness and respect.

But I think the belief that gender is nothing more than an artificial role imposed on one by society, forcing an individual to conform to a strict binary sexual identity, is the wishful thinking of a minority.

yeah i'm more along the lines of this.

i'm all for inclusion and everyone being able to grow up how they want to without fear of simply being who they are, but actively getting rid of or banning the use of he/she/etc... just seems like a step back, i'm not saying the system now is perfect but jumping too far forward with that too fast could have some odd repercussions in the future. Unfortunately it'll be a decade or two before those effects really bloom, but who knows, i guess we'll see how sweden is.

 

[Colin Bagley]

How is someone expected to disagree with neutrality?

The only response I can come up with that fits such criteria is "Meh."

 

[Harrowdown]

Hm. I'm not 100% on all this. Whilst on one hand, gender equality is all nice and good, and yeah, gender roles are restrictive, but I think it's a definite mistake to treat boys and girls in the same way because they're not the same. This isn't sexism, or gender roles, they just are. I'm not saying that our society's gender roles are great and that's what boys and girls naturally aspire to, but pretending they're the same seems equally bad to me.

I did have to study a load of stuff on sexism in language for my A-levels, it's interesting, and yeah, I kinda see that it's unfair, but ultimately I think it's a touch too pedantic to really give a damn about. For a comparison, 'sinister' comes from the Latin for left, but I've never met a lefthanded person give anything other than a chuckle over it.


I also have a sneaking suspicion that from an evolutionary standpoint (forgetting ethics at the door), gender roles are kinda... good.

Boys and girls may be biologically different, but gender identity is far less binary. The argument being made here is that gender specific terms enforce rigid societal constructs of gender identity, defining men as entirely and inherently 'masculine', and women as entirely and inherently 'feminine'. Of course, such strict notions of gender identity simply do not reflect the reality of psychological gender identity. Nobody is one thing or another; rather, they can inhabit any point on a vast spectrum.

I'm not saying gender is necessarily binary, but I think in general there is a difference between male and female (say hello, hormones!). It's not black and white, but it's far from flat grey either.

The point I'm trying (badly) to make, is that if we're going to try and do all this stuff, then we need to be really careful about it- the situation we're in now may not be perfect, but that doesn't mean we can't fuck it up in entirely new ways.

Yes, there are general trends towards 'typical' gender identities. However, I would argue that they're not entirely inherent, but are actually learned from a young age. Our culture, our media, and even our institutions constantly assert society's definitions of gender onto it's population, be it in the traditional literary archetypes of masculine adventurers and feminine 'damsels' in distress, or even in the near-fetishistic worship of the stereotypical sports stars of an American high school. If you're still not convinced, then try analysing the ways in which (usually) tabloid media report violent and/or sexual crimes against women. The use of language is very specifically intended to invoke very particular narratives, wherein femininity is akin to victimhood, and victimhood is often a result of nonconformity to gender expectations (drunk, dressed provocatively, etc).

Anyway, I don't think this whole neutral pronoun think is likely to fuck anything up. Not seriously, anyway. A lot of people were aggressively against the introduction of 'Ms.' as a title for women (not that you're coming across as aggressive or anything), but the result of that little experiment was fairly positive, if not monumental.

 

[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:

HEYHEYHEY I ALREADY POSTED THAT VIDEO... or rather a link to it. Can you do me a kindness and tell me how to embed videos in posts please?

Well you have already been answered but I'll tell just so there is no doubt: first brackets [] then inside the brackets you put the word youtube then go to the above code/link of said vid and copy the = and everything after it and paste it next to youtube, you'll get something like this without the spaces [ youtube=4gO7uemm6Yo ]

 

[Shock and Awe]

Deconstructing gender? I'm sorry but that sounds quite silly. Trying to bump off a concept that fits at least 95% of the population well is absolutely ridiculous. No one wants to argue against gender equality, but the gender dynamics we have in society in general are not entirely cultural creation. Men and women tend to be different in a lot of ways regardless of culture. To ignore this is foolish and counterproductive.

 

[Product Placement]

One: Are you a swede? Because I am.

I don't need to be a swede to understand how pronouns work. But no. I'm an Icelander. Our two languages are structured in a very similar manner. We already have a gender neutral pronoun and nobody's going around changing book titles into a more gender neutral form.

Two: The swedish word for men is "män", and the word for women is "kvinnor". But the new gender neutral word hen does not have a plural form (yet), ergo, if the story "Män som hatar kvinnor" had been named wih the aforementioned term hen, it would indeed have become "Hen som hatar hen". Or "hennor".

I understood that the first time. You're still replacing two nouns with the same pronoun or changing "Men who hate women" into what's essentially would translate into "It who hates it". Of course that sounds stupid. That's why no one in right mind would do it.

Third: the above is a reference to a swedish comedy sketch show, Partaj (Party), which made fun of the overly PC nature of the term by having a sketch wherein a librarian was rewriting all the books in a library to remove any references to gender.

Well, there was no way for me to know that reference without having seen that show. My experience with sketch shows is that they tend to take things out of proportions, in order to force out a joke out of a normal situation. Again, nobody would think of doing something like this in real life, without being a brain dead imbecile.

Fourth: No, a Smurf language would involve us randomly replacing random words with the word Smurf (or whatever we would end up using).

I know how the smurf language works. See my answer to your second point about why I couldn't help myself from draw parallels between it and your original argument.

How is someone expected to disagree with neutrality?

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Anyway, I don't think this whole neutral pronoun think is likely to fuck anything up. Not seriously, anyway. A lot of people were aggressively against the introduction of 'Ms.' as a title for women (not that you're coming across as aggressive or anything), but the result of that little experiment was fairly positive, if not monumental.

curious because i don't know, what did they use before that caused so much distraught over "Ms." ?