[Gendergap] Hardcoded discrimination
m-blog at manubloggt.de
m-blog at manubloggt.de
Tue Feb 8 09:55:17 UTC 2011
Am 07.02.2011 15:28, schrieb Lena ...:
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 11:43 AM, Thomas Koenig<fossa at gmx.li> wrote:
>> JFTR: "Benutzerinkonto" is not a German word, it would look awkward
to say
>> the least to any native German speaker.
>
> That's right, but that's because "Benutzerinkonto" is wrong German
> grammar. "Benutzerinnenkonto" would be correct and sounds fine to me.
Some possibilities to solve the problem might be to
-find neutral words whenever this is possible so that you don't need any
gender markers anymore
- to not use gendered prefixes or markers whenever the sense of a multi
sense word (like "account") is made clear by the context
- to directly adress the person so that direct speech is employed.
like (instead of user account) only "account" and afterwards the login
field ; or "your account"
in German, the possibilities proposed above would come up to sth like
Nutzungskonto or Benutzungskonto,
only "Konto" or
"Dein Konto/Ihr Konto"
>
>> Besides that, I find all the chatter about grammar, quite tangential.
>> There is a culture of misogyny in the Wikimedia projects, way above the
>> level of comparable work or even volunteer environments, which is
neither
>> due to the use of grammar, nor can it be adequately fought with a change
>> grammer rules in the software.
>
> 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. :)
Yes, changing a few words may have a big impact, but that does not solve
at all the beyond structures that ally language, socialisation and society.
> 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?)
Changing some or even a lot of words is not equal to changing the
grammar, so - yes, changing some words may have an impact, but as long
as the language determining grammar structures stay unchanged, the
effects of changing some words will probably stay limited.
That does not mean at all that we shouldn't change words! - its just to
underline that, at the end, we also need to analyze and to trying to
change the underlaying structures.
>
> Best,
> Lena
>
Best,
Manu
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