German academics and authors call for end to 'gender nonsense'

The Guardian UK ^ | 08 Mar 2019 | Philip Oltermann

[blueplum]

A group of German authors, comedians and academics have added fuel to the flames of an increasingly bad-tempered culture war over language bias by calling for a fightback against “ridiculous linguistic constructions” designed to make German more gender-neutral.

In an open letter published by the Dortmund-based German Language Association, signatories including the philosopher Rüdiger Safranski, novelist Peter Schneider, comedian Dieter Hallervorden and the former head of the country’s domestic intelligence Hans-Georg Maassen, hit back against calls for more gender-neutral generic nouns..(snip)

...The protest letter, headed “An end to gender nonsense!” and published shortly before International Women’s Day, argues that the distribution of gender to generic nouns in German is too arbitrary for there to be a systemic sexist bias.

[mosesdapoet]

Caption should read;
German academics and authors call for end to (Linguistic language) ‘gender nonsense’
When I first read that caption thought it was directed ridicule at the she=he=it movement going on here. Instead they’re deutch sprechen which still BTW has the impersonal pronoun sie.

[NetAddicted]

Oy, this is scary.