Hi Florence Just a small remark : actually the message that was used in the end on the site notice is gender neutral, and was acceptable for all. There is sometimes a way out of the binary gendering in French, « nous" for example has no attributed gender. Using wikimedien·ne·s does not include people who do not want to be affiliated to any gender at all (we say a-genre in French, but I dont know the word in english). I take an example: instead of saying « lecteurs et lectrices », one can say « le lectorat » and nobody would even notice (even the persons opposed to the feminization of titles). Now here there was a big debate on Theresa May’s https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresa_May page, and in the end one can read now « première ministre » which is probably one of the first time the community voted in this direction (with lots and lots go heated debates). The French community is not as irrational about neutral gender as it used to be, that’s for sure. So I would not be as pessimist as you are actually, the French community is not used to using gender neutral language but there are examples of it. See for example there for the next Wikiconvention https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConvention_francophone/2017/frwhere the term « participant·e·s » shows up in the first page… Kind regards, Nattes à chat
Le 7 avr. 2017 à 21:58, Florence Devouard anthere9@yahoo.com a écrit :
A couple of weeks ago, I was asked - in my capacity of meta admin - to change the phrasing of a site notice on meta, meant to call for participation to the month of Francophonie.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Centralnotice-templat...
The sentence of the call in the site notice was in language neutral terminology.
"les Wikimédien.nes" instead of the more traditionnal but non neutral "les Wikimédiens".
That phrasing raised an uproar on the French pump. So I replaced the term by "nous" (we). Seems to settle things.
Clearly the French speaking community is not ready to adopt the gender neutral specific language accross the francophones projects. Alternatives (such as the "we") are possible but not always.
Florence
Le 06/04/2017 14:58, Fæ a écrit :
Thanks for the examples from French and I'm sure that our experienced translators will have in mind specific best practice guides to turn to. I like your illustration of "un/une adminstra-teur-trice" to show the challenges. The use of "singular they" remains uncomfortable for many English readers, but it has become a recommended standard for journalists writing in English.[1]
Once the principle of gender neutrality is agreed, I just don't know what our next steps will turn out to be for non-English versions. However I am much encouraged by the positive views on Commons, and I'm hopeful we can, and should, find a way to set a better example for our fellow projects in our aim to feel welcoming for all contributors. :-)
Links
Thanks Fae Wikimedia LGBT+
On 6 April 2017 at 12:30, Antoine Musso hashar+wmf@free.fr wrote:
Le 05/04/2017 à 12:52, Fæ a écrit :
I'm taking that further by proposing that we stick to a neutral gender for all our policies and help pages. In practice this means that policies avoid using "he or she" and stick to "they" or avoid using a pronoun at all.
As a non native English speaker the use of a plural form definitely confuses me or at best. The example takes a sentence from Commons:FAQ which roughly looks like:
A photographer has to be given credit when his or her picture is used.
With the proposal to instead:
A photographer has to be given credit when their picture is used.
Why isn't "picture" plural as well? If using masculine as a neutral pronoum is the issue, just stop using the pronoum entirely. Eg one can instead write:
A photographer has to be given credit when the picture is used.
That is going to be quite a challenge when ported to other languages. For 'A photographer', the english indefinite article is gender less.
In french that would be either 'un' (masculine) or 'une' (feminine). What some are advocating is using:
Un/une photographe
If the noun varies as well, that becomes messy. Here for 'administrateur':
Un/une adminstra-teur-trice
That is not solvable in french and all other latin based languages most probably have the same issue (blame Rome!).
-- Antoine "hashar" Musso
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