First, let me make this clear: in Spanish, I am not generally in favour of gender neutral language. The reason for this has to do with the structure of the language: in Spanish there are words that are "masculine" and "femenine" and the word "género", which gender is usually translated to, usually refers to this linguistic construct rather than what we refer to as gender in English (many people will argue that this is not true and that género refers to both, and I am not going to have that discussion here, just check the definition in the Diccionario de la Lengua Española from the RAE and you'll see that I'm formally correct). More than this: I do try to use collectives when I speak in Spanish (rather than the masculine plural, which is the usual voice used to refer to a group of people), but I don't feel that using the masculine plural to refer to a group of people invisibilises women at all. This is because I tend to think of language as economic and practical, and the fact that one form or another is used to generalise doesn't really affect how I think of things. Many people disagree with me, arguing that generalising using a masculine makes men the norm... Well, ok. I disagree, I think thinking men are the norm makes men the norm, but maybe I'm wrong.
Now, as to gender neutral language. In English, a language unburdened by géneros using gender neutral language is easy 99% of the time. When referring to a group of people use "they", when referring to a single person of undetermined gender use "they". This solves most of it. But I admit to having a huge problem when it comes to the use of words for, erm, sentimental partners (the erm is because I don't know how else to work this but sentimental partners sounds weird). Generally, I think that I don't have any reason to specify whether my partner is male or female. No one should care about this, and it should be up to my partner whether they want to be identified as either or neither, but until that preference is made clear, a gender neutral should be used. It's easy, many will say, just use partner! Yeah. Well, here lies my problem.
First of all, I find the word partner extremely serious. When people say partner, to me it sounds like "life partner". To me it implies a long-term commitment similar to marriage where the two people involved haven't gotten married. And I know this is a personal thing, but I don't like it. I wish there were a gender-neutral equivalent to boyfriend or girlfriend that at the same time were as casual. I don't mean that everyone who says "x is my girl/boyfriend" means that they're in a casual relationship with x, but there is a lot more room for variation. A girl/boyfriend can be someone you've been seeing a few weeks, but who isn't that serious yet, or someone you've been seeing for a couple of years, where you're perhaps not an established couple the way a married couple is but where things are quite serious. To me boy/girlfriend seems to allow for a lot more gradation.
Another point, again purely in my head, but also why I find it troubling, is that when introducing your partner to someone else, a lot of the time their gender is obvious, so saying "partner" instead of "boy/girlfriend" could be confusing (it could be a business partner, a lab partner, etc).
Now for another situation where I find so-called gender-neutral language uncomfortable: I like using the word "guys" to refer to a group of people, and a couple of people have called me out on it. Funnily enough, these people weren't annoyed by my use of the word (they weren't offended that I'd identified them as male) but rather they were pointing out that someone might be offended. Anyway. I like using the phrase "you guys", especially in written communication, to imply a plural. Since you is both singular and plural in English, I find this an easy way to make the distinction, without the negative connotations that "you people" has (I mean, "are you guys coming to the theatre later?" sounds a lot better than "are you people coming to the theatre later?" I think). Now, many people have argued that guys is becoming a gender-neutral word (more and more it's being used by girls/women to refer to groups where everyone identifies as a woman), so maybe there's my solution right there.
I don't know. On the one hand, I see the need, especially in a language like English where it's so easy to do, to use gender neutral language. It means that when putting an example, our example isn't male by default. On the other, I feel that we should maybe start considering language for what it is: a tool to communicate. It tends to simplicity and to saving words, and this leads to generalisation.
Considering above all that pigeon-holing people into different classifications (male/female, single/married, etc. etc. etc.) is part of the problem when it comes to discrimination (it is divisive and non-inclusive, even anti-inclusive, but this matter is for another blog-post), and considering how easy it is to adopt a language that is gender-neutral (of course not all discrimination is gender-based, but this is what I'm dealing with in this post), I think we should do our best to do so. Not because changing language will make people feel better, but mainly because language has, to an extent, power to change how we think and view things.
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