This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Sigh, I guess this merits an effortpost as it is rather complicated. But since you asked a lazy bastard with a chip on his shoulder, you will get a biased rant instead:
Die, Bart, die
German has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. Der Baum (the tree), die Pflanze (the plant), das Haus (the house). These loosely map to biological sex, but not always. For example, das Mädchen (the girl) is neuter. And die Person (the person) is feminine.
This gets complicated when it comes to professions. Most words for professions take the masculine grammatical gender. If you want to point out that a specific professional is female, there is a derivative form of that, mostly ending in -in (or -innen for the plural). For example, der Lehrer, die Lehrerin (the teacher, the female teacher).
It was long-standing convention to use the masculine plural when referring to groups of people of a certain profession, rather than the longer feminine form. Die Lehrer can refer to a group of male teachers or to a group of mixed-sex teachers. Die Lehrerinnen refers to a group of female teachers exclusively. The astute reader will have noticed that the nominative article for plurals of all genders, die, is identical to the nominative singular article for feminine nouns. This will be important for sneeding later.
Now, it has long irked German feminists that they would be referred to as Die Feministen rather than Die Feministinnen. Clearly this is a conspiracy to undermine the belief that women, too, can excel at any job they put their mind to! We are brainwashing little girls into wanting to become Hausfrauen rather than Raketenwissenschaftlerinnen! Mind you, there was never much evidence for any of that and the few studies I have seen are so comically bad I wonder how they ever passed peer review.
Anyhow, so the social engineering began. First we just said everything twice: Die Lehrerinnen und Lehrer. Then we started to get more efficient (we are Germans after all) and just put a capitalised "I" in the middle of words for professions: Die LehrerInnen. But this, too, was boring. And you can't really show how progressive you are when you are butchering the language in the same way even the most boring conservative Journalistin is. So we started referring to Lehrer_innen. Or just used the participle, even when it made no sense at all: Die Lehrenden (those who are currently in the process of teaching). Doesn't that look nice? But Halt! What about Die Transpersonen? Shouldn't they be included as well? So now we currently settled on Die Lehrer*innen until next week when some Professorin der Geschlechterforschung needs a new grant. How is that pronounced, you ask? Easy, with an audible pause in the middle of the word. Which suits German about as well as the click sound would Irish. So if you ever asked yourself why German academics sound as if they had a terminal case of the hiccups, you now know why.
Of course, all of this is entirely unprincipled. Nobody is complaining about a man being referred to as Die Person, or wondering why we use feminine articles in the plural. In the beginning, it was a way to show group allegiance. And no, nobody will force you to use that kind of language if you don't want to. Don't be silly, you paranoid right-winger. Now it has become a way to show the pesky peasants who's boss. So you better start on your hiccups if you don't want to be suspected of hating Die Frauen.
As always with German it’s the Mädchen I worry about. They must be very confused.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link