I honestly love it

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[–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

I still have to pay attention to my words because I use gendered language reflexively from years of learned behavior (US English here) and I don't get it right all the time, so I'll be the first to say it's not only not weird to say "my wife" or the like, it is in fact far too damn easy for the words to just fall out on their own. It's been practice for me to get used to saying spouse and partner but I think it's good overall to omit the gendered aspect when it is irrelevant simply because the result is more inclusive language that resonates with an even larger audience.

We stopped including things like skin color and sexuality as an extraneous identifying detail in conversation a long while back (speaking in a really broad generality here, forgive me please) because people recognized it as othering. I feel like we're getting there with gendered language and like it's for the best.

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  • [–] 2 points 18 hours ago

    Interesting. Thats not really applicable to my language though, german is renowned for having specific terms for almost everything, and if it doesnt exist you can just make a new compound word for it and it will be fine. There is a reason english loans quite a few of our words to fill out the sparse vocabulary. Such a naturally descriptive language of course also affects how and what people communicate, and even think.

    For example, i could not even refer to my gf as my gender neutral partner without going out of my way to clarify that "Partner" does not mean a man but something unspecified.

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