2023-05-10 13:52:26
On a rehearsal weekend, our choirmaster suddenly starts talking about singers and visitors. I can feel the gender trippers hit me in the stomach and my mind drift away. I miss the cue, flip through the sheet music, and think he’s not serious. Not this witty, skilful Bavarian, a musical genius who teaches amateur choirs every foreign piece, from Bach’s “B minor Mass” to Queen. Hadn’t he recently averted the choral debate about the alleged cultural appropriation of our “Porgy and Bess” performance with sweeping composure? So what.
I can’t possibly do without my choir. I’ve thrown out official letters, left conversations, unsubscribed from podcasts, and sorted out shows because I can’t stand the gender-stumbling language. I’ve been working with language all my life, it’s my tool. As an editor, I have edited thousands of texts for decades, i.e. made them more understandable and readable.
Now I’m hearing that stumbling blocks in the language are intended to draw attention to the existence of women and other identities. Attentive! Suddenly, gender should be emphasized, which sexualizes the entire language. And who understands a text quickly and easily when it is completely chopped up by constant references to men, women, diverse and endless stumbles?
The denigration of the German language torments me. Unlike my colleague Ingo Meyer, who received the Theodor Wolff Prize last year for his grandiose explanatory text on the catastrophes of gender language in the Berliner Zeitung and leafs through his arguments with composure, I get upset. Even irony hardly works here. On this point, however, we maintain a consensus. Critics of gender language agree, because this is not about opinions, but – be careful – about facts. They are all on the table, only gender apologists ignore them, like Trump did in his last election result: There are no tenable reasons for using gender language. None that have not been refuted.
Everything is based on the feminist claim that emerged in the 1980s that the German language is male-dominated and therefore discriminatory. When it comes to phrases like “readers reject paternalism” or “Berliners love music”, most people would only think of rejecting or loving men, but not women. In the plural, they are always just “meant”.
Since then, there has been increasing talk of readers, or of readers, soldiers, thieves, Jews. Women reportedly demanded more “visibility”. That men in constructions like surgeons actually “genderandfair” disappear, probably does not bother the gender group. It’s only men, probably still old and white, do they deserve better?
The difference between biological and grammatical gender
For this, other identity groups should also be meant by colons or stars – that’s what gender activists came up with. They accuse the organically grown German language that groups of men have banded together for centuries to oppress women with the generic masculine verbally as well. And today, society is finally enlightened enough to “cure” this sick German language that needs repairing?
Gender activists cite between 12 and 20 studies and tests designed to prove discrimination. Linguists and Germanists have examined them and reduced them to absurdity: no scientific standards, unrealistic laboratory situations without linguistic context, use of only three to twelve words, incorrect use of the generic masculine, tests with only 20 participants or only with female students. Many of these studies are linked in the text “No, the German language does not discriminate against women” published in the Berliner Zeitung.
Gender activists ignore the difference between biological and grammatical gender. But “leader” is not feminine, “head of state” is not neuter, “man” is not male. For all there is the cross-gender (generic) masculine in the plural. The assumption that people constantly produce images in their heads of occupational groups or groups of people is also unproven. Even if – who only sees images of men when hearing the sentence “Sudanese long for peace”? Not even the test people.
According to studies, pro-gender study results were also distorted or incorrectly summarized and interpreted in a questionable way. In fact, the tendency towards a male reading when using gender language was only slight, and often hardly measurable. Expected side effect: Words with pauses in speech led to police officers being mistaken for women.
The same controversial test is quoted again and again: name three actors – and men’s names follow. What else – if you don’t ask for three actresses. Language requires context, sometimes precision. In a study with common newspaper sentences, the subjects interpreted plural forms such as students, tenants, readers 99 percent gender-neutral, job titles such as doctors, pharmacists, politicians 94 percent.
The latter test dates from 2012. Meanwhile, the aggressive use of gender language has increased significantly. Employees of public broadcasters are required to do so. Berlin schools are allowed to change gender at will, disregarding the recommendations of the Council for German Spelling, which linguists severely criticize.
Many young people have long since thought that the phrase “residents” is not reserved for appreciative forms of address, but belongs twenty-seven times in a speech because that is the only way it can be non-discriminatory. Language monsters such as “mountain-climbing people”, “friendship” or “patient advocates” have to be accepted because of “justice”. And if the “Tagesschau” in a news item about a family law replaces the word “mother” with “person giving birth”, then something will probably be wrong with the term “mother”. But hey, that’s the next efflorescence of the gender controversy.
Last year, respected linguists and literary scholars criticized the gender language that was spreading in public broadcasting. Professors such as Peter Eisenberg, Franz Rainer, Martin Neef, Gisela Zifonun, Heide Wegener and Claus Peter Zoller called for gender practice to be placed on a scientific basis. So far, 663 linguists and literary scholars and thousands of other critics of gender language have signed the appeal.
The public broadcasters did not respond to the request with an investigation, but on the contrary with ignorance, self-righteousness and derision. The former ZDF presenter Claus Kleber speaks of “ossified German teachers” and hostile to the scientists in a program as “language police”. In the knowledge, of course, that the gender activists have long since established themselves as language police by changing, stumbling and bloating.
Petra Gerster and the mostly older gender opponents
Kleber’s former colleague Petra Gerster explained to the television audience on ZDF that the mostly older gender opponents were afraid of a multicultural society in which more women had a say. Broadcasters announce that people should not be discriminated against and insulted by insensitive – i.e. non-gendered – language.
Aha, so it’s not about the best arguments for good language, but about morals and feelings. I can have a say. Because I feel discriminated against and offended by gender language. The inventors accuse me of having been stupid enough all my life not to notice that I am using unfair male language that does not “see” me as a woman. That to this day I write in an insensitive and discriminatory manner, because I reject constructions such as “walkers” and “locomotives”. Left-green gender activists see the language as an expression of their attitude and want to use it to position themselves ideologically and morally. They think that is woke, modern, young, enlightened, fair and attentive. Opponents of gender, on the other hand, are sorted on the right.
People should talk in their bubbles as they want. However, the process becomes encroaching when gender practice creates confusion in schools and is forced upon the television viewer when it consciously rises above the “common” people.
I am not an isolated case with my outrage, but part of the vast majority of society. We gender opponents make up two thirds to three quarters of the fee payers. We pay for the non-tariff salaries and huge pensions of the television faces and broadcaster management, even for their million-dollar scandals. But we cannot escape the artificially generated stumbling block language and its constant instruction in public law. The broadcasters, administrations and universities do not take into account a gradual change in the language, as it has been developing for centuries, but follow institutional guidelines that they publish themselves, which are scientifically untenable. Which student at Trost would still submit a non-gendered work if his university made clear recommendations for it beforehand?
Gender does not sensitize, it divides the German language community. As emphatically as the GDR has not been able to do in 40 years. At that time, the population coldly ignored the phrase German. Today, the topic of language is becoming increasingly exciting. This is shown by the mountains of post that go into editorial departments for texts on gender issues. Or also the reactions to the great epistolary novel by Juli Zeh and Simon Urban “Between Worlds”, in which a Brandenburg farmer and an established Hamburg culture journalist correspond. His part is “mixed up” to the point of pain and thus shows the absurd excesses of this language. Readers and listeners groaned, some stopped reading because of the gender parts as unbearable.
Gender – where is this culture war leading to?
And where does this culture war lead, in which a people is to be re-educated to more “linguistic justice” and does not want to? Where are the studies on this? The public broadcasters let the demand drain easily. But with this language revolution from above, shouldn’t a few of the 200 gender professors in Germany and 40 coordination centers for gender studies work to harmonize the language dispute so as not to contribute to further social divisions? It can’t just be about rewriting old children’s books and the question of whether menstruating people can continue to be called women.
By the way, our choir director is speaking properly again, he just wanted to test how it sounds, haha, with pauses in speaking. But he doesn’t rule out anything for the future. His children, he says, consider gender to be completely normal.
#educational #measures #language #police #annoying