Hey, I wanted to probe a bit into why you don’t write in gender neutral language on your website.
(For those who are not German: in German most nouns that refer to persons are not gender neutral by default, but always refer to either male or female persons, with the male version having been the default version for a long time. In the last decade, there has been a pushback against this and people started to adopt gender neutral language, which often looks a bit clunky though.) -
I saw that you justify this with better readability in your FAQ, but I didn’t find the response very satisfying. On reasons not to write gender neutral:
Readability: My guess is that at this point, most people have gotten used to gender neutral language and don’t really stumble when they read it anymore. Actually, I think there’s probably a fair share of people that stumble when they read non-gender neutral language nowadays. There are also some less clunky solutions (e.g. the female version with a capitalized “I” or explicitly stating that you’ll alternate gender between sections/pages). (They aren’t as correct because they exclude people who are not female and male, but probably still a better alternative than not using any gender neutral language at all)
Appeal to target audience: You might worry that gender neutral language might not be appealing to some target audiences that would usually donate fairly large amounts of money, but would not if the website was written in gender neutral language. (e.g. conservative leaning, wealthy donors.) You’ll know better than I and if you have convincing arguments that this is the case (and outweighs the money you could raise from people who are repelled from non gender neutral language), I’d probably support your decision. I would be somewhat surprised by this though. To me, using gender neutral language seems fairly normal and professional and not “lefty wooi-booi student initiative” anymore (e.g. the German Federal Agency for Civic Education uses gender neutral language, at least partly.)
The time cost of using gender neutral language seems fairly small
On the other hand:
I know at least one person who isn’t involved in EA but interested in effective giving that almost didn’t donate via effektiv-spenden because you don’t use gender neutral language. I would guess that a fair proportion of your target audience might be similarly inclined.
Apart from that, I also care about gender neutral language for feminist reasons, but that’s not what I wanted to focus on
Thanks for your comments. We’ll most likely start to “gender” once we relaunch the website somewhen in the next couple of quarters. The reason why I’m reluctant to do this is because I’m quite certain that this will decrease the mass appeal of the website. So when we do it we’ll do it with the expectation of decreasing the amount of donations. Reasons are:
- Currently our site is kind of gender neutral already since we don’t just use the male version but male and female versions alternate (see https://blog.zeit.de/glashaus/2018/02/07/gendern-schreibweise-geschlecht-maenner-frauen-ansprache/ for a longer explanation). There are at least some people who care about a gender neutral language who prefer this approach (it was also the new and progressive way to do it when I was at the university). - The vast majority of Germans don’t use a gender neutral language themselves and I would assume that most don’t want it to be used in general. I don’t have a data source for the latter but the fact that pretty much all newspaper don’t use gender neutral language different to ours seems to be a clear indicator for that. This obviously doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t do it, just that it’s not mainstream yet. Obviously it’s very different with different demographics. Eg when I think of people I’m close with I know several who are kind of actively annoyed with gender neutral language but they are all 40+. It’s not because they are opposed to the concept but because they are used to a different language and it make the language less appealing for them. I tend to agree (I’m also 40+). For me it’s the same as with vegan food. It’s the right thing to do but it’s just not as appealing as the stuff I’m used to. Talking to EAs who attended university during the last ten years I’m sure it will be quite the opposite.
I’m still unsure about this, but personally I found that discussing this topic for a few hours has not convinced me of the importance of using those new gender-neutral forms, except insofar it is really important for some fraction of students who tend to be politically active and open to EA ideas and who feel like women are kind-of actively excluded in the common language. It also feels to me a bit like an in-group signal of progressive groups and I cringed a few times when I felt socially compelled into using it.
Hey, I wanted to probe a bit into why you don’t write in gender neutral language on your website.
(For those who are not German: in German most nouns that refer to persons are not gender neutral by default, but always refer to either male or female persons, with the male version having been the default version for a long time. In the last decade, there has been a pushback against this and people started to adopt gender neutral language, which often looks a bit clunky though.) -
I saw that you justify this with better readability in your FAQ, but I didn’t find the response very satisfying. On reasons not to write gender neutral:
Readability: My guess is that at this point, most people have gotten used to gender neutral language and don’t really stumble when they read it anymore. Actually, I think there’s probably a fair share of people that stumble when they read non-gender neutral language nowadays. There are also some less clunky solutions (e.g. the female version with a capitalized “I” or explicitly stating that you’ll alternate gender between sections/pages). (They aren’t as correct because they exclude people who are not female and male, but probably still a better alternative than not using any gender neutral language at all)
Appeal to target audience: You might worry that gender neutral language might not be appealing to some target audiences that would usually donate fairly large amounts of money, but would not if the website was written in gender neutral language. (e.g. conservative leaning, wealthy donors.) You’ll know better than I and if you have convincing arguments that this is the case (and outweighs the money you could raise from people who are repelled from non gender neutral language), I’d probably support your decision. I would be somewhat surprised by this though. To me, using gender neutral language seems fairly normal and professional and not “lefty wooi-booi student initiative” anymore (e.g. the German Federal Agency for Civic Education uses gender neutral language, at least partly.)
The time cost of using gender neutral language seems fairly small
On the other hand:
I know at least one person who isn’t involved in EA but interested in effective giving that almost didn’t donate via effektiv-spenden because you don’t use gender neutral language. I would guess that a fair proportion of your target audience might be similarly inclined.
Apart from that, I also care about gender neutral language for feminist reasons, but that’s not what I wanted to focus on
Hi Chi!
Thanks for your comments. We’ll most likely start to “gender” once we relaunch the website somewhen in the next couple of quarters. The reason why I’m reluctant to do this is because I’m quite certain that this will decrease the mass appeal of the website. So when we do it we’ll do it with the expectation of decreasing the amount of donations. Reasons are:
- Currently our site is kind of gender neutral already since we don’t just use the male version but male and female versions alternate (see https://blog.zeit.de/glashaus/2018/02/07/gendern-schreibweise-geschlecht-maenner-frauen-ansprache/ for a longer explanation). There are at least some people who care about a gender neutral language who prefer this approach (it was also the new and progressive way to do it when I was at the university).
- The vast majority of Germans don’t use a gender neutral language themselves and I would assume that most don’t want it to be used in general. I don’t have a data source for the latter but the fact that pretty much all newspaper don’t use gender neutral language different to ours seems to be a clear indicator for that. This obviously doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t do it, just that it’s not mainstream yet. Obviously it’s very different with different demographics. Eg when I think of people I’m close with I know several who are kind of actively annoyed with gender neutral language but they are all 40+. It’s not because they are opposed to the concept but because they are used to a different language and it make the language less appealing for them. I tend to agree (I’m also 40+). For me it’s the same as with vegan food. It’s the right thing to do but it’s just not as appealing as the stuff I’m used to. Talking to EAs who attended university during the last ten years I’m sure it will be quite the opposite.
I recently discussed this with a friend and found a poll among Wikipedia authors from 2019, showing that a clear majority prefer the generic masculine over gender-neutral alternatives. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/Formen_geschlechtergerechter_Sprache#Auswertung
I’m still unsure about this, but personally I found that discussing this topic for a few hours has not convinced me of the importance of using those new gender-neutral forms, except insofar it is really important for some fraction of students who tend to be politically active and open to EA ideas and who feel like women are kind-of actively excluded in the common language. It also feels to me a bit like an in-group signal of progressive groups and I cringed a few times when I felt socially compelled into using it.