Quickies: 4/13/2012
By Sweden adopts a new gender neutral pronoun as part of a larger movement to remove gender distinctions.
Robert Spitzer, a pyschologoist who published one of the only papers that provides evidence that it's possible to become ex-gay, repudiates it. The journal still won't retract it, however – stating that questionable interpretation is not a data flaw.
London transportation authority refuses to run "ex-gay" bus ads.
NOM (the National Organization for Marriage) got hacked on Thursday, and the hackers published material repudiating NOM's anti-gay marriage (and anti-gay) stance. NOM's Twitter was by far the best part.
Image courtesy of BBC News.
Unfortunately the news about the new word didn't hit my SFI-class (swedish for immigrants) and i got points substracted from my last test using it 🙁
That article about Sweden was honestly awfully writen and not at all representative of the discussion going on here.
A private company who publishes our "National Encyclopedia" decided to att "hen" (he/she being "han/hon" in Swedish) to their encyklopedia. This was done after a discussion in several news papers where proponents where basically arguing that "hen" is a convenient word when you don't actually know the gender of a person, or when the gender is unimportant. Nothing else.
There's no "larger movement to remove gender distinctions". No attempts to "banish gender". That's only the opponents argument, but I've never ever heard any serious feminist in any serious media actually argue that position. Nobody thinks we can rid ourselves of gender. We're just trying to make our language more convienient by not HAVING TO adress a persons gender weather it's relevant to the conversation or not.
I'm just so damn tired of explaining these things to my friends, and now these misrepresentations gets international coverage as well. Just wanna put some more balanced information out there.
momiji, so is "hen" a word I can use both gramatically and in everyday conversation?
I'm honestly confused since the word seems to be on the wiktionary/wikipedia but my teachers insists its wrong to use it and its not a "real word".
PS: The swedish wikipedia article on "hen" does have a reference to feminists arguing to use "hen" to increase equality between the sexes (or thats what i understand from it).
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hen_(ord)
I would say it's split, but changing towards becomming mora acceptable. I know that a few years ago, the word was not very well known and you were discouraged from using it in for example academic papers were correct language is an issue. But since it's now included in NE it and it's been all over the media and increasingly picked up by papers like DN, it should be acceptable and considered correct to use.
I would say you could use just like han or hon, so pretty much all the time.
Its no mystery why the Archives of Sexual Behaviour won't retract it with Ken Zucker as the Editor.