Hello Lena, hello all, On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:28:13 +0100, Lena ... lenarohrbach@gmail.com wrote:
I agree that grammar is not the main problem, but it might well be the one that is most easy to solve! You just need to change a few words to maybe have a big impact. :) To change the culture is much more complicated and will take much longer, although it's admittedly more important. (But maybe changing the words is a first step to changing the culture?)
Call me a male chauvinist, but on the question of Karl Marx vs. Judith Butler, I still go with good old Marx: "Das Sein bestimmt das Bewusstsein" (I translate that into: "the material circumstances tend to influence the ideology, rather than the other way around" (p>.5)). But, then again, I certainly would give it a try. Which brings me to a rule on the German-speaking Wikipedia:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Namenskonventionen#M.C3.A4nnliche_und...
A bunch of male geeks has constructed a "consensus" there, that the, admittedly actively feminist, but nevertheless quite usual, form with a capital "I" is to be banned from the German Wikipedia. Another male, Alexis de Tocqueville, would call such a rule "tyranny of the majority".
Thomas/fossa