Why do you use gender neutral language by default?
Why do you use gender neutral language by default?

How do you gender neutralize?⁠

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I’m ~65% sure I would support that conclusion upon perfect knowledge and reasoning, transition costs aside; ~58% with transition costs. I’m very sympathetic to consequentialist arguments abstractly, but I would still feel bad emotionally about using gendered pronouns as I think it would likely still be a short term cost.

I gender neutralize for:

Niceness:

rarely relevant to discussion; mentioning gender in a conversation not about gender is really suspicious, just like mentioning other part of someone’s identity that are not relevant (imagine it wasn’t a common saying, like “This person WHICH IS FEMALE BTW did [...]”; that’s what it sounds like to me to hear “She did [...]”

free up people to be who they want to be, and not be constraint to 2 or 3 categories

if someone tells me they have a preferred pronoun, and meta-prefer people using their preferred pronouns, I will use it not to be rude

avoid having people think about sex when the discussion is not about sex

I think on average people overupdate from that information, and even if they know that, they might still be biased

Consequences:

gender roles are an obsolete adaptation

people have less children, part of the house work have been automated, and our institutions to take care of children during the day (so no need for someone to stay home)

note: but maybe maintaining the prevalence of gender distinction is important to increase fertility; this could very well change my conclusion

(maybe related?) non-hetero-attracted people people can have biological children, and even though some can argue that used to be not selected for (←there’s a lot to unpack here), this is now probably the opposite given they can (and tend to, I think) be more selective in their gamete selection

Some relevant research I found on this (mostly just skimmed summary):

(read partly; skimmed)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257663669_The_Gendering_of_Language_A_Comparison_of_Gender_Equality_in_Countries_with_Gendered_Natural_Gender_and_Genderless_Languages⁠

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evidence that speaking gender neutral language reduces sexist behavior

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4735429/#__sec4title⁠

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4735429/⁠

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http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=4285800&fileOId=4285804⁠

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http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/when-he-doesn%E2%80%99t-mean-you-gender-exclusive-language-ostracism⁠

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http://www.pedocs.de/volltexte/2017/14598/pdf/cepsj_2017_2_Marjanovi269_Umek_Fekonja_Peklaj_Gender_differences.pdf⁠

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http://allenmcconnell.net/pdfs/womenasmen-PSPB-1996.PDF⁠

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https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12144-014-9224-7.pdf⁠

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https://www.facebook.com/mati.roy.09/posts/10158525787909579?comment_id=10158527091029579⁠

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Why do you use gender neutral language by default?Why do you use gender neutral language by default?

Why do you use gender neutral language by default?
Why do you use gender neutral language by default?