Posted on 05/01/2013 3:11:27 PM PDT by Maelstorm
No, JK, JK. Everyone's manhood and womanhood and non-binaryhood is still intact, no matter what the conservative gender-apocalypse-mongers are sure to do with this story. You can still be whatever gender you want to be, and embody whatever stereotypes you want—from swaggering alpha douche to limp lily on the fainting couch.
But the ever-progressive nation of Sweden has introduced a new gender-neutral pronoun—hen (neither the masculine han nor the feminine hon)—into its official National Encyclopedia. It's a heartening step in broadening the concept of gender and giving institutional validation to those for whom gender is more complicated than the stiff old male/female dichotomy. (And this is just an aside, but it brings to mind the aggressive challenges to gender in the new album from Swedish band The Knife.)
Here's Slate: Hen was first mentioned by Swedish linguists in the mid-1960s, and then in 1994 the late linguist Hans Karlgren suggested adding hen as a new personal pronoun, mostly for practical reasons. Karlgren was trying to avoid the awkward he/she that gums up writing, and invent a single word "that enables us to speak of a person without specifying their gender. He argued that it could improve the Swedish language and make it more nuanced.
....
(Excerpt) Read more at jezebel.com ...
They can use any wordings they want, but when it comes to stuff like electric and plumbing, there will always be a male and female fitting or plug.
You’ve GOT to be kidding me. HEN?
Please.
In Scotland, ‘hen’ is a woman - vocative term for a woman (e.g. ‘It’s aw richt, hen’), or a general term of endearment for anyone.
In other news, Swedish scientists say they have discovered a new number between 4 and 5. They will call it "bleen".
Making it harder to know what the other person is talking about is “improving” the language?
Um... no
Is this not more or less what ‘one’ as a pronoun has long offered in the English language?
Libs tried a similar thing in English several decades ago. It was a combo of he+she, him+her, etc. The resulting new preferred pronouns were about as ridiculous as the Swedish example.
Needless to say, the new preferred pronouns never got much traction. That was about the time MS or Ms or Ms. or Mz came into existence. [Is that still used?]
But they’ll stupidly affix the male end to the wall with prongs sticking out to symbolize their mastery over the male end.
So does that mean that the Swedish Bikini Team could be all dudes? Stop the world, I want to get off.
“In other news, Swedish scientists say they have discovered a new number between 4 and 5. They will call it “bleen”.”
So... your Post #5 should be actually be Post #bleen ?
:)
You just made me dig my eyeballs out with a rusty melon scoop. Thanks a lot.
I want to know what the Swedish Roosters have to say about all this.
Sweden where they made it unPC for a man to stand while peeing. The effort to make standing and peeing illegal thankfully failed. I wonder how many men in Sweden were brow beaten into sitting and peeing?
There's some of that in the Scottish usage, at least in the area of the west highlands. It has a bit of 'old dear' flavor to it.
I doubt that
We’ve had one of those for a while now - “it”. They’re welcome to borrow ours.
She
He
It, or
Transgendered.
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