gender

Omg, my co- worker who did not even bother coming to the meeting about re-doing the questions is fighting me on this and directing me to census categories. I suspect religious grounds are behind that. Nnnnnggggg. 20 emails and counting.

Crut - that would be great but would cause us probs with auto-categorizing the data.

Everyone agreed yesterday to change the question, bar the co-worker who skipped the meeting. We just needed to sort out wording. Today no-one except me is responding to her emails saying we mustn't add any other options. Her reasons: (bear in mind we are asking parents as well as children about their gender):

Again, I think g3ender should be m@le/fem@le. If there is a consensus to have third option, which I d0n't think there is, then the third opti0n should just be blank. I don't think w3 are in a position to get into terminology that is p0tentially confus1ng (children aren't usually transg3nd3r and p@rents don't necessarily choose a different g3nder for young childr3n). It becomes too pol1tical as well.

I responded to that by saying I disagree but would go along with the results of a vote, so please let's have show of hands. No-one responded, and the person trying to get the new questionnaire together has now asked our supervisor to decide. I think I know which way it'll go, unfortunately. I could still be wrong.

How is gender manifest? Should gender be understood as entirely cultural? For example, I think of gait and voice as associated with gender. While both are associated with the body, I think of the former as an understanding and the latter as a given.

gender pronouns for consideration as a possible set: you (en), one (en), on (fr)
Are there other language equivalents that are as impersonal as possible?

In languages with neuter gender, can you use neuter pronouns after your name and what does it mean when you do this?

Sweden introduced a gender-neutral pronoun last decade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_(pronoun)

xp: i don't really know what you mean, neuter as a grammatical gender and gendered pronouns (as prominent in english) are not really related

this might be of interest (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_pronoun#Gender)

many languages do not distinguish female and male in the third person pronoun.
Some languages have or had a non-gender-specific third person pronoun:

Malay (including Indonesian and Malaysian standards), Malagasy of Madagascar, Philippine languages, Māori, Rapa Nui, Hawaiian, and other Austronesian languages
Chinese, Burmese, and other Sino-Tibetan languages
Vietnamese and other Mon–Khmer languages
Igbo, Yoruba, and other Volta-Niger languages
Swahili, and other Bantu languages
Haitian Creole
Turkish and other Turkic languages
Luo and other Nilo-Saharan languages
Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and other Uralic languages
Hindi-Urdu
Georgian
Japanese
Armenian
Korean
Mapudungun
Basque
Persian

Some of these languages started to distinguish gender in the third person pronoun due to influence from European languages. Mandarin, for example, introduced, in the early 20th century a different character for she (她), which is pronounced identically as he (他) and thus is still indistinguishable in speech (tā). Korean geunyeo (그녀) is found in writing to translate "she" from European languages. In the spoken language it still sounds awkward and rather unnatural, as it literally translates to "that female".

I know from personal experience that Chinese or Turkish speakers that have come to English (or, for instance, Dutch) later in life sometimes tend to exclusively use 'he' for the third person, regardless of the particular person's gender (or in some cases throw in a random 'she' sometimes, again regardless of the actual gender).

Thanks for the link and sorry for the possible confusion. I think what I mean, and sorry for working this out here, is this: if gender in language is used to convey the gender of a person, in a language with a neuter gender, what does it mean when you put neuter gender pronouns with slashes in between in parentheses behind a name?

Are there always male and female versions of nouns for gendered species in languages with gender and if there is not would it be wrong to use the masculine or feminine to refer to an instance that is not masculine or feminine respectively?

(where gender identity is an issue and needs to be conveyed in language, I think it would be best to mark (recognize, signal, announce) in the first and second person.)

(or first is where when has authority and second is where it is a priority to mark for communication and third is where what does not need to claim any knowledge)

(third is where one does not need to claim any knowledge but perhaps being able to refer presumes knowledge in which case all persons bear responsibility)