Well obviously your "gender-neutral English" just made up the problem itself that is not present in languages having both unique forms. Nobody needs a pallete with all colors grey to be perfectly neutral for all when you can have completely unique and fitting colors for everybody.

I resent the usually baby boomers look around. I am just relocated to now fit into the baby boomers (keep changing age group)all of the women I know have worked since they were old enough and paved the way in "something men do" for women so lay off the baby boomer #*$t.

Well, in English a lot of _objects_ are female by default. So yes, it is done but in a much more subtle and way too offinsive way. 'E.g. A boat is an IT, not a SHE. If a boat is a she, your mother is a boat. (just for the contrast, I don' mean it for real). Every language is sexist that has female and male "version" for the same statement, and where objects and animals are mentioned as 'she' or 'he' (even when we don't know the sex of the animal, or the name of the boat), instead of IT.

Master Markus, this is a problem that came up in English speaking countries. Before American's Political Correctness, I've never encountered in any other country this type of issue. Giovanni is actually right. I give people too bored here, to think about Asiatic languages (Chinese, Japanese) where they have no plural, no different forms of past or future. if you say one butterfly or 10 butterflies, actually you'll say 10 butterfly as well in those languages. And when the number is out of the sentence, shouldn't the butterflies get angry for not being counted (same goes with everything). This is a made-up issue invented by English speakers. in most latin, slavic languages, gender is applied to all nouns. We have policeman and policewoman, trashman and trashwoman (sure not really used like that, but as a declination of the word). If English speakers whom get sexists over the language have nothing better to do, I suggest they start using policewoman and policeman, trasman and trashwoman.

they are/where only thought of as 'something men do' because for an extremely long period of time (and even now to be honest) these jobs mostly consist of men statistically. Its not that the jobs are 'sexist' or anything like that, its just that men and women tend to have differences in what they want to do with their lives. Its the same reasoning behind why trash collectors are considered 'trashmen', because the job consists mostly of men. It isnt sexist, its descriptive.

you missed the point m8

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Actually it is Blond/Blonde

@WhateversNotTaken it's mostly english related because the default is "policeman" "fireman" etc, but I think it could be a problem in other languages as well, because some languages label everything with the male variant unless it's something stereotypically female.

How so is that English related? Just asking.

ahahahaha! thank you!

What are you even talking about? That is not how the English language works. Words like "scientist" and "architect" and "physicist" are gender neutral. Sexist people ADD the word female to them in order to emphasize that the person is female, likely to point out how weird or anomalous they think it is. This is hard to understand? Do they say "Hey is that female nurse?" No, they say "Here is that male nurse" because the default is that nurses are women. The word nurse is gender neutral in English. Adding a gender as an opinion on who should hold the job is sexist. This is a simple idea.

The thing is, she shouldn't have HAD to work "harder than normal" to get into her line of work. If the same type of competence the men in the field have wasn't enough, that's sexism. If she needs to worry about being pushed around because she's female - well, that's sexist too. Just because we women sometimes accept that these things are as they are doesn't mean they aren't discriminatory. In short, if a woman is qualified for a position, she should have exactly as much chance as any man to be hired for it. If she is hired and competent, she should be treated with exactly as much respect as the men in her field. The fact that this isn't true for all positions everywhere is sexist.

John Ashley. No it is not sexsit to have male and female variant of words. I think it is mean that language accepts female position of that job. And the communication is easier, you do not have to explain if you speak about man or woman. Also in my language you know if the person is a male or a female only by the name and there are no misunderstandings like in American movies . Every thing in my laguage is he, she or it. It is not sexist it is just as it is.

In my language, normally you would want to say "medic" if you wanted to be gender-neutral. "Doctor" is, for some antiquated reason, perceived as a masculine word. So when someone comes and says "the female doctor", you bet it's a +50 male who cannot fathom a woman succeeding in such an important position.

Lacking completely any kind of neutral form we have not much other options, we still use the masculine form if there is no feminine variant yet but it's grammatically weird.

thats called language, language is something that forms over time, and will not just be changed eecause someone fainthearted feels offended

I'm Italian not spanish. Actually most group names related to humans like family, team and even brotherhood are feminine. It is true that in a group of males the spare female is omitted but if the majority is female we use the plural feminine and than list the odd male(s) on the side. It worked like you say once but nobody does that anymore, it's confusing.

So you think your language is c**p? just because you do not like it? in the end, language follows rules. If you walk through a field and find a fence, you can tear it down, because you think its in your way and its false to be there, you do not see any apparent reason why its there. Or you can accept the fence beeing there, and let it stand. Then you find out what its about. And then you can decide if its there for good or if you should adjust the rule and take it down, when you come to see that its not needed anymore. In case of your language concern: there is no need to change a rule that works just fine, just because a minority (and I am not talking about women, women are in fact a majority, slightly more women than men on earth, like 55 to 45 %) that dislikes it for some hidden agenda, is no reason to change this rule.

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Its even worse. Technically (I refuse to do it) if there is 99% female individuals in a group and only 1% males in spanish you are still required to use the masculine. Thats how fragile toxic masculine ego is...

Nora, I disagree with 'weak males tried to hold them back'. I agree that they should get more invoolved and I am happy that they do! However, I dislike when people try to portray the male sex as bad, greedy, weak, or lustful pigs.

Volker H, there were several women on that black hole team. The one whose photo went vital wrote the algorithm that filtered out the “everything else” data. Without that partake algorithm, it wouldn’t have been possible. The person who took the photo wrote one of the other algorithms, without which the project also wouldn’t have been possible. But, that man isn’t in danger of being overlooked, that woman was. The paper they published, the “main” person, has their name listed first, all contributing team members names get listed after. Hers is first, because the team knows who did what.

funny, I post thr truth about the scientist in question and I think it was you disliking it

Clearly you have not worked in science before because I have a stron argument against yours. You actually make a compliment to your main argument against it. Her age. If it was a man, 32, then it would be there as well. Why? Because its a great accomplishment and more than that a great accomplishment of a young scientist, in this case a women. 32 is damn young to reach something like thsi. But all you see is the bad men, thanks for that. First check the facts (statistics), then make conclusions and then when you want to share that, keep your prejudice genderrasist emotions out of it Edited: got rid of that typo

check out what I came across on 9gag: https://9gag.com/gag/av89pQO she did only like nothing and took the credit, nice equality

Nicolas Puentes Good response!

I guess we should just assume that women just don't like science all that much, and not think there might be any other cause, like millennia of sexism that pushed them away from those fields, in direct and indirect way, in obvious and subtle ways. There's no sexism since it's just stat...don't bother finding out what's behind any of those stats.

Why do you think it isn't going to change, when it's already changing?

Marie Curie and Ida Lovelace would like a word. . .

@‘BlahBlah’— Women aren’t that great in science? More like for centuries, weak males tried to hold them back, to the point of even when women did get into science, they were treated in a disrespectful manner, and much of their achievements was stolen by the males around them. Google, “Underpaid women ‘computers’ mapped the universe in the 19th century” ; also google “List of female scientists before the 20th century” And google “List of female scientists in the 20th century”. Search also about the fact that the first programmers were women. Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you; you don’t want to be disrespected, so likewise treat others (females or males) with respect. And you were being quite disrespectful when you assumed that women aren’t great in science. Don’t let your ignorance let you disrespect an entire gender; that’s really low, and your parents ought to be ashamed of you for not raising you right. And @Max Harkins: I say ‘weak males’ to differentiate between them (the sexist males— and they are weak for trying to belittle women to hold them back— it isn’t a mark of strength to belittle others, and weak males do try to belittle women to hold them back and put them down) and actual men (who aren’t sexist lowlifes), because I know that [not] all males are lowlifes.