Just to be clear: As I write, there is no binding rule in any of the German-speaking countries to say that gender-neutral language must be adopted in written or spoken language. Everyone is free to follow their own best judgement.

Using gender-neutral language and getting away from the generic masculine was meant to create more visibility for women and non-binary people. It went hand in hand with ideas about inclusion, diversity, equal rights for women and men.

Paradoxically though, it actually makes it impossible to ignore gender or relegate it to what it often is: utterly irrelevant.  When you think it through, having to explicitly mention male and female forms is not gender-neutral at all, on the contrary. It is gender-specific.

Consider a statement of this type:

A group of researchers found a way of detecting Alzheimer’s long before its onset.

In German, if you subscribe to gender-neutral language you can no longer  report this fact “naively”, i.e. without explicitly stating “Forscher und Forscherinnen”). You cannot state that humans have achieved something of note by using the ‘generic masculine’ (“Eine Gruppe von Forschern …”). You need to find out whether the group was a mix of male and females, males only, or females only. This in my – and other people’s opinion – over-emphasizes the importance of gender in cases where one should not give one hoot.

By being forced to specify the gender of a person we accentuate the difference between the sexes, rather than making them equal. So rather than promoting an egalitarian world view, we are doing the opposite. We are actually taking away from what unites us (“humanness”), separating us into males and females, declaring gender specificity. Instead of inclusion we are creating a division.

When humankind makes a big step forward with an important discovery like this one, is it really important to know whether among the group of 5 there were 4 females and 1 male, or some females and some males (or individuals that don’t identify with either)? Most people would say, no, what’s important here is that the discovery has been made and that it will be of huge benefit to humans of all descriptions. After all, we do not ask whether the group also included people of colour –perhaps they were all people of colour. But we would not expect for this to deserve special mention. Human ingenuity is what counts.

Ask yourself whether when you read the above sentence in English you would say: “Hang on, were these all women, or men, or a mix of people?”. I don’t think so. So why would it be important for a German audience?

Similarly here:

The photograph shows a team of politicians being interviewed by journalists.

Everyone reading this in English happily assumes that the group will be made made up of males and females.

In two different translation projects today I came upon these sentences (authentic examples, with no further contextual information).

“Ultimately, the company’s CEO is responsible for the health and safety of the workforce.”

AND

“Biographies of the artists”

What would have taken me less than 15 seconds to render into fine German 9 months ago now involves stopping my work, writing a query in the query sheet, asking the PM to send the query to the client, then waiting for their answer. Because in order to translate this in a gender-neutrally correct way I need to know whether the company’s CEO is male or female, and whether the artists whose biographies are referred to are all women, all men, or a mixture.

I ask you: Is that sensible?

I see it also as an intrusion into privacy. I mean what if the CEO or one of the artists is biologically a female but actually wants to remain unidentified genderwise? Do we really need to probe into that?

In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, some opponents to gender-neutral language (and there are many of them) have voiced their concern that this development will hasten the demise of the German language and allow English to replace the vernacular in most areas, except perhaps the most intimate domestic scenarios and the local pub). They have also pointed out that German is already difficult enough for foreigners to learn and that the complications of gender-neutral language will deter even more of them from even attempting it. German might sink into oblivion, as everyone will find it easier to express themselves in English. Gender-neutral language can only hasten this development.

Another point worth noting is that gender-neutral language adds to the complexity of the language and decreases legibility. Because it is not just a matter of adding an asterisk or a colon or an underline. You have to duplicate articles, pronouns, possessives and there are all sorts of questions about what the “correct” for is, for example in the case of Arzt/Ärztin. („Bei Krankheit von mehr als drei Tagen hat der*die Arbeitnehmer*in ein Zeugnis, ausgestellt von ihrem*seinem Arzt*Ärztin vorzulegen, das von ihrem*seinem unmittelbaren Line Manager*in zu unterzeichnen ist.“). This can constitute a considerable hurdle for people who are not competent readers, who have a migration background or learning difficulties (all in all some 40% of the German population). The reading speed of competent readers decreases, and those who are not competent readers lose their motivation. This means, their ability to take part in communicative processes is  diminished. This also applies to people with visual impairments.

Consider also that there are no rules regulating the use of gender-neutral language. At present, we have chaos, everyone can do what they like (including ignoring the entire issue, of course), using *, :, _, even /, or both forms, or brackets. This is confusing for people who are only just learning to read, or learning German, i.e. for young children, for migrants, for refugees, but also for the elderly, or for people with impaired sight. So again, what started out as an endeavour in equality and integration actually discriminates against certain groups of people. Gender-neutrality at the expense of accessibility. Surely, this is paradoxical.

The only sensible way out that I can see is for a “moderate” use of inclusive language. Use both female and male forms where it matters. For example in speeches when addressing a mixed audience, in job advertisements where you wish to make sure you attract all genders, in HR contexts where inclusivity is a matter of principle. But don’t try to achieve 100% consistency by brute force. Giving women equal opportunities and more prominence as well as the same pay is a great idea but trying to change the structure and grammar, and the appearance of a language for the purpose of bringing about such change seems an odd way to go about it.

Noteworthy perhaps also: Already in the 70s and 80s of the last century there were efforts to introduce explicit female forms. At that time, the “Binnen-I” (interior i) was used: LehrerInnen, und BürgerInnen, Schweizer und SchweizerInnen. I ask you: When was the last time you came across one of those? They have all but disappeared.

Personally, I suspect that *, _ and : will suffer a similar fate. In fact, they may well be past their heyday already. They may have had their brief appearance in the evolution of the German language, but are now already on their way out – relegated to footnote (asterisk) status, a glottal stop that made a few radio and TV presenters choke.

ALPHA’s recommendation: Use a moderate form of gender-inclusive language, as adopted also by many leading newspapers such as Die Zeit or Die Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Use both forms when it seems appropriate, occasionally use the feminine rather than the masculine, but do it in a natural, free-flowing way, rather than under duress.

*Gender-neutral language or gender-inclusive language is language that avoids bias towards a particular sex or social gender.

**Yes, there have been a couple of blogs about the topic already, but as the debate continues and uncertainty prevails, here we go again.