Irenicas said:
True equality can only be reached by ignoring the differences between people. To this end, we can only reach equality when there is a state that does not have prejudice against anyone. By anyone I mean not only homosexuals, heterosexuals, difference races, religions, and so on, but also criminals, peodophiles, gluttons, and so on. We cannot actually have true equality when we are "prejudiced" against groups like these.
One step in this direction is to avoid unneceesary labelling. We should not ignore differences, but accept the fascinating fact that we are different, not jumping to conclusions because of those differences.
Also, our very language prohibits us from being equal. That may seem a little odd, but let me explain. Built into our very language system is the fact that we must refer to someone by either male or female pronouns. There is no neutral pronoun other than "it", and I doubt people would be terribly impressed if you refered to them as "it". So our very language makes it impossible for us to be utterly equal.
In the same way as language an be manipulated, we should recognise this fact and, when necessary, manipulate language. The underlying problem is that many people can't see the difference between language and the real word. Germans, for example, have no problem with the fact that
Mädchen 'girl' is grammatically neuter.
On a linguist board, I started a thread on John 1:1. I had seen the claim that the reason for using
logos 'word' instad of
sophia 'wisdom' was that the former is masculine in Greek and the latter feminine, so sophia couldn't refer to Jesus. The general view was that people are perfectly able to distinguish between grammar and reality.
Another problem people have is between using adjectives - when something is used as a descriptive, and when it is bein used to seperate people. Let me give you an example: If I was picking someone out of a group and said "Dan's the tall black guy", no problems. If, however, I said "our new postman is very good - he's black" there is a little... uhh... difficulty there. Also, look at the words I am forced to use! "postman" - I am instantly forced to seperate the two sexes, when often there would be no need to. It's so built into our society that Microsoft word doesn't recognize "postperson".
I have no problems here. Much of the possible difficulties can vanish, depending on how you say things like that. If I say, "I have my shoes repaired at this Assyrian's", most people will understand that I imply that immigrants often work cheaper and better and are thriftier than native Swedes.
We don't have a very loud debate on language equality in Sweden. It more or less takes care of itself. When cohabitation escalated, a new word
sambo 'together-live', 'cohabitant' was coined. Perfectly gender neutral, which comes in handy when describing a person's status in for example newspaper interviews. "He lives with a
sambo and two cats." The
sambo could be a man, it could be a woman.
The '-man' suffix isn't as common in Swedish as in English. Many words are already neutral. Our 'postman' is a
brevbärare, 'letter-carrier'. We accept that male nurses are adressed "Sister". In my capacity as a translator, I don't bother very much, but never the less, for unsuspecting audiences I often use little things like "she/he" instead of the normal "he/she"; I use '-person' in unusual places rather often when I feel that listeners/readers/customers can take it, and I'd love the day when I hear an umpire admonish somebody for "unsportspersonlike behaviour". (Our word for 'sportsman' is, however, gender neutral.)
There is of course also the posssibility to use disclaimers in written texts, like "For the purpose of this law, 'he/him/his' may refer to either gender", or, in a book I am reading now, "In this book I use the pronoun "she" when referring to the author of a text. But it refers to both genders."
Again, it is all a matter of how we use words, the tone we use, how we look when using the words and how we think the listener/reader will react.
