Try this experiment on your own…!

You’re working in a group and would like to find out how the other people in that group realise generic masculine noun forms in their minds. “Generic masculine” means speaking or writing with exclusively masculine plural declension (as is still usually the case in German language), speaking of die Kollegen (the [male] colleagues), die Musiker (the [male] musicians), die Mitarbeiter (the [male] employees), die Schaupieler und Theatermacher (the [male] actors and [male] theatre people), etc…. Feminine forms occur only when absolutely necessary, with the generic masculine form used to represent everybody.

It often makes little sense to tell another human being, a person, a friend how important gender-inclusive language is when it comes to realising gender equality in our society. A better strategy is for us to use gender-inclusive language ourselves, living it and actively using it.

 

So how is this experiment done?

Ask every person in your group one of the following four questions in writing. Be sure to distribute these question variants equally among the participants. The participants should then write their answers on notecards (that you hand out to them along with the questions).

The four questions are:

• Nennen Sie bitte 3 Komponisten. [“Please list three (male) composers.” – A German speaker will take Komponisten to mean either “composers of both genders / any gender” or “exclusively male composers” depending on the context in which they read or hear it and/or their personal mindset.]
• Nennen Sie bitte 3 Komponisten und Komponistinnen [“Please list three male composers and female composers”].
• Nennen Sie bitte 3 KomponistInnen. [“Please list three (female) composers.” – A German speaker will take KomponistInnen to mean “composers of both genders” (when read) and either “composers of both genders / any gender” or “exclusively female composers” (when heard) depending on the context and/or their personal mindset].
• Nennen Sie bitte 3 Komponist_innen. [“Please list three composers (of any gender).” – A German speaker will take Komponist_innen to mean “composers of any gender” (when read) and either “composers of both genders / any gender” or “female composers” (when heard)]

Once the participants have finished writing down their answers, collect the cards and discuss their answers as a group. Please refrain from mentioning beforehand that the point of this discussion is not, of course, which specific musicians or composers they’ve mentioned, but whether and in what cases female musicians or composers appear (in light of the fact that one of the question variants contains only the generic masculine).

You’ll see that the differently formulated questions do indeed elicit different answers!

Experiments like this one are something like a litmus test for gender-inclusive language.

Because only if the question “Nennen Sie mir drei Komponisten” produces answers that include not only men, but women as well, were women not only “also meant” [as opponents of gender-inclusive plural noun declension claim] but also actually “also thought”.

Language does not stand still, and it is the speakers who determine how they want to—and actually do—express themselves.