Hey is gendered language a problem for non-binary ppl? I know nothing about any languages but v curious. Thanks!
I’m not an expert, so I’m gonna try to give elements of answer the best I can:
French has no neutral. The speech itself isn’t gendered in the way some languages are (there is no major differences between the way a man, woman or anyone else talk in the speech itself) but pronoun are gendered - and although French language does have this idea of 'troisième sexe' (third sex/genre) it’s more like a theoretical dumpster for all the identities not fitting in either male or female than a word for non binary people.
So as I say, there is no neutral: when you talk about a group of people you’d say "they" in English - but in French if the groups is 100% female, it’s gonna be "elles" (gendered female) but if there is one male in a groupe of girls it’s gonna switch to "ils" (gendered male) - by convention/norm, male gendered pronoun is used for any group of people with one male in it, even if the rest of the group is female or non binary the norm is that male pronoun wins.
It’s not exactly an answer to your question but it’s just to give you a clue on how gendered pronouns works in French - the males ones are the ones seen as ‘neutral’ or at least ‘representative of a group’ because we don’t really have neutral pronouns at all - this way it’s impossible to write a text in French where you don’t know the gender of the narrator - just by the pronouns you will use you will fall in one category male (il) or female (elle), whether you want it or not.
Our word "I" - "je" isn’t gendered, and the words “ille”& "iel"/"yel" have been used by non binary to find a way to get out of the "il" & "elle" - but it’s not a real solution because even then adjectives are gendered too and you go back to that choice again because you’re going to have to pick a gender for all the adjectives you use and if you go for male it’s going to be assume that you’re male or at least identify as such. Some non binary switch from one gendered pronoun to the other gender – although it’s seen as a grammatical error, while other go for the good all ‘il’ (male) because as I explain earlier, male gendered pronoun are considered the ‘norm’ – if you want to talk about humanity in a general sense, in French, it will always be male gendered. Our language as it is now offer almost no possibilities for non binary people – or anyone in our very vast “troisième sexe” (third gender) category to speak about themselves in a way the feel ok with – there is always a moment where they’re going to have to pick between male or female. (When you use “gender” in English it’s often translated by “sexe” in French despite the fact that the word “genre” exist in French too – and apparently in 2005, a commission on terminology and neology refused to switch from “sexe” to “genre” despite de fact that the idea of female gender and male gender (not directly related to biology) are ideas existing in France since a long time. Truth is that biology is still often seen as the only thing that matter. But like I said, I’m not an expert so I hope this was half understandable and not completely filled with errors. (it you’re more interested in gender in language and how it works for non binary & queer people this article about Japanese language and sexuality was quite interesting & a nice article on non binary and French language here but it’s in French…)
