English is actually one of the less “sexist” languages.
Most Indo-European (and many other) languages have “gender” as a much more integral part of the language. Most nouns and sometimes verbs are either masculine or feminine, or sometimes neuter.
How do feminists apply this idiotic concept to German or Spanish?
She would have been horrified if she ever visited a plumbing supply house, with all those male and female fittings.
I can speak for German.
The German language has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
As Mark Twain famously pointed out in his essay "The Awful German Language" (part of "A Tramp Abroad"), there are numerous examples of nouns not at all corresponding to their grammatic genders (the word for "turnip," for example, is feminine, while the word for "girl" is neuter).
Many occupational designations end in "-er" (e.g., "der Lehrer" = "the teacher"), and can be simply femininized by adding "-in": "der Lehrer" then becomes "die Lehrerin."
So in most cases, it's possible to feminize words without too much clumsiness.
The problems start when writers insist upon feminizing the PLURAL so that both genders are accounted for: "die LehrerInnen" (= "teacher/Esses") - even though, according to standard rules, the Plural can account for both sexes / mixed groups.
And the situation gets really silly when nouns which are NEUTRAL are forceably feminized, as with the neutral word "Mitglied" ("i.e., "member" - as in "member of a club or organization"), the Plural of which is "Mitglieder." Because the Singular "Mitglied" is pluralized by adding "-er," and "-er" LOOKS like a masculine ending, they twist this into "MitgliederInnen."
As a side note, the (neutral) noun "das Fräulein" ("the young lady" or "Miss" as an honorific / form of address) has become taboo, since it is a diminutive of "Frau," and is hence regarded as condescending. Only my gray temples protect me from contemptuous looks when I address, e.g., waitresses ("servers?"; ""serveresses?") using this now antiquated form of address.
Regards,
In the same fashion they apply it to Arabic, Swahili, Nahual, or Chinese. In short, they don't apply it at all...
the infowarrior