Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union, criticizes gender-sensitive language. Credit: Christian Boci/Bloomberg
'Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary viewers, good evening.'
Newsnight hasn't yet succumbed to this type of «gender-sensitive» intro, but the welcome — or appropriate words — are now included in recommendation for TV news anchors on public TV channels in Germany.
Inclusive perhaps, but also fueling the rise of the extreme right.
At least, that's what Friedrich Merz, leader of the German opposition, thinks arguing that this apparent distortion of Goethe's language is the key reason why the far-right AfD now votes shoulder to shoulder with Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats.
“Every time a news anchor uses gender-sensitive language, a few hundred more votes go to the AfD,” said the head of the Christian Democrats.
Such outrage is by no means limited to Germany. Indeed, the seepage of new gender devices into the media, academia and official documents is causing a growing backlash in the roman-speaking countries of the continent, especially in Spain, Italy and France.
In Germany, the debate has mainly been about the use of the traditional “ generic» masculine form to denote mixed groups of people.
While feminists argue that this excludes women from the conversation, attempts to create inclusive alternatives have been cumbersome, critics argue.
Including the feminine ending adds five letters to the word. Add the guttural pause that progressives use to refer to non-binary people (denoted by *), and a word like Lehrer, meaning teachers, becomes Lehrer*innen.
News anchors are under increasing pressure to address their audience as Zuschauer*innen instead of the standard Zuschauer.
Language purists argue that this destroys sentence coherence.
An internet search with a gender star included that refers to non-binary people. Photo: U. J. Alexander/Alamy Stock Photo
“The entire gender debate is the bombast of people who have no idea about language,” boomed Wolf Schneider, the legendary news anchor, in a recent interview with the Bild newspaper.
< p>“There is not the slightest connection between natural and grammatical gender,” he pointed out, referring to words like das Weib, meaning “woman,” of the neuter gender.
Spain has an inclusive language and, in particular, the emergence Gender-neutral pronouns have become a political battlefield in recent years.
Ministers from the far-left Podemos party in the ruling coalition have promoted the use of nouns. and pronouns ending in «e» to avoid assumptions about a person's gender.
Irene Montero, Minister for Equality, is regularly ridiculed by conservative opponents for her insistence on using words like «todes» instead of «todos» to mean «everyone».
Similarly, members of the Spanish government, which adopted transgender legislation allowing self-identification of gender, use the term «niñe» to refer to a boy (niño) or a girl (niña).
In 2021, the conservative People's Party and far-right Vox petitioned Parliament to ban inclusive language in government documents, but the proposal was rejected.
«Politically correct stupidity»
Meanwhile, in Italy, efforts are being made to create a gender-neutral suffix in last year were called «politically correct recklessness» by the country's leading linguists, and a petition against attempts to introduce it more widely garnered more than 15,000 signatures.
Italian scientists are outraged by the growing use of the suffix known as «shva», including in a government document sent to university professors. It resembles an upside-down 'e' and is pluralized as '3'.
Intellectuals have warned that well-intentioned attempts to promote inclusion «destroy centuries and centuries of linguistic and cultural evolution».
This debate echoes similar ones in France, where the leading dictionary added «iel» in 2021. in his online edition. Dictionary Le Robert said it added the non-binary pronoun after noticing it was being used more and more by the French.
However, much of the debate in France has focused on «inclusive writing,» a spelling that adds hyphenated -e and -s to add feminine and plural meanings to grammatically masculine adjectives and nouns. Thus «Cher lecteur» [dear reader] becomes the unpronounceable «Cher e s lecteur rice s».
The French Academy called it a «mortal danger» to the language, while even Brigitte Macron, the first lady and teacher of French, recently spoke out against its use.
“Learning French is already difficult. Let's not add complexity to complexity. This is a cultural position,” she said. Claiming that she was speaking for the «silent majority,» she added that she was not opposed to adults freely changing gender, but was still opposed to the mixing of genders in grammar.
However, her husband takes a more ambiguous line .
During his first term, Edouard Philippe, President Macron's conservative former prime minister, banned inclusive writing in the French Official Journal, which publishes new laws, while Jean-Michel Blanquer, his former education minister, insisted that «not the future of the French language» and banned its use in schools.
«This is a godsend for populists»
However, François Jolivet, a member of parliament and Macron ally who unsuccessfully introduced a bill to ban inclusive language in all public documents, urged him to clarify the issue, noting that «even the President of France sends out invitations to deputies.» with the word 'député.e.s'».
«Now you have journalists on France Inter (France's main public radio station) who say iel instead of il or elle, and others who say «toustes» instead of «tous» (everyone).
«I think it's nonsense and I agree that it fuels the extreme right,» he told the Telegraph. «This is a godsend for populists.»
«I'm all for gender equality, but inclusive writing excludes all people who have reading problems, such as dyslexia, which is 15 percent of the population,» he said. .
This month, Conservative Senator Etienne Blanc urged the government to take a stand.
“(Albert) Camus said that all human sorrows arise from the fact that the language is not respected clarity. ”,.
“So yes or no to inclusive writing?”
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