My tweets

[keiramarcos]

• Tue, 23:48: Lexicon Valley: Why Do Some Languages Have Grammatical Gender? http://t.co/HgYJv4JEJG via @slate
• Tue, 23:54: "Marriage" is not a gendered noun. The excuses people will use for bigotry astounds me.
• Tue, 23:55: There is no gender in the English noun. While traces remain in the personal pronouns, grammatical gender is absent from all English nouns.
• Wed, 04:03: Official Hannibal Trailer: http://t.co/yDjcFFuWi1 -- This is going to creep me the fuck out. I can't wait!

Comments

[vasaris.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* It can be argued that its a kind of gendered verb, though (not that I agree with the Prop 8 fuckwit). In his definition of the action of marriage, the action requires a man (and if we want to go there with a variety of religions and cultures) an indeterminate number of women. By that logic a similar action is taken by two men or two women, cannot be marriage because the action is missing a required bit.

I personally think the logic is full of shit, as I believe the basis is flawed (because if we're going to use that kind of definition, I'm setting the first person who tells me women are property -- property that is transferred via marriage -- on fucking fire.)

[keiramarcos]

I don't agree. No noun in the English language is gendered. Period.

[pyrotechnik.livejournal.com]

You are correct. There are only gendered pronouns. Latin based languages, such as Spanish, French, and Italian, have gendered nouns. German also, as far as I am aware, does not have gendered nouns. It has gendered pronouns.

.....I'm a bit of a language geek. Um.

In other news, I can't see why there would be any debate on this. The Constitution says that everyone is equal under the law. Anything else is unconstitutional. Period. So anyone can marry whomever they wish, as long as they are 1. not already married, 2. trying to marry their cat, dog, horse, etc., or 3. marrying someone underage without parental permission. No where in there does it specify gender.

(I think this needs "The Times They Are A Changin.

Boom.)

[vasaris.livejournal.com]

To marry isn't a noun. It's a verb. And, no, we aren't stuck with gendered nouns and verbs, per se, (I really don't miss Latin and having to screw around with that) there are plenty that carry gendered connotation. Men's shirts aren't blouses, for example, and women fought like hell to make pants unisex rather than a male thing. Men don't menstruate, nor is birth something associated with them.

Ergo, a noun or a verb can carry the connotation of a gender even though it isn't "gendered". You, yourself have touched on the issue of using "beautiful" or "pretty" for males in your fiction. The words as strongly associated as terms used for females, and can be considered as mildly (or profoundly, depending on the attitude of the recipient) insulting when applied to a man.

The argument that has been made re: marriage (as either a noun or a verb) carries a specific gender connotation is stupid, though. The point is that there's no reason for it to do so, beyond ancient customs rooted in male privilege and the transfer of ownership of women (and their fertility). We've mostly shucked the ownership issues, there's no reason to cling to the remainder of dead, disgusting customs. That anyone would even ask if it was a gender (rather than sexuality) issue is freaking absurd.

[keiramarcos]

Except I didn't say "to marry". I said "marriage". I'm actually quite aware of the differences between a verb and a noun. I've been a writer for thirty years.

[vasaris.livejournal.com]

And you're fantastic at it. I made the argument that if you expand to the verb form, douch-canoe's argument can make sense -- if you accept a flawed basis for his logic.

[keiramarcos]

I guess the main problem is that I can't accept any part of his flawed logic. I have a real problem with people who bend and twist facts to justify bigotry.

I also have a real problem with people who are willfully ignorant and anyone would make that argument is an ignorant motherfucker.

[vasaris.livejournal.com]

Oh, I fucking hate their logic -- being able to see it just makes me angrier, if anything. That a Supreme Court Justice would even ask that, like its relevant makes me furious. These motherfuckers want to use their ancient holy book to dial back the evolution that marriage has undergone in the past century. Women are no longer property, people can choose their partners without reference to race or creed, fertility or infertility -- the myriad traditions that the word "marry" brings up are things we have willfully dispensed with as we have fought our way to accepting people as being people, equal under the incandescent ball that ties us in its orbit. To even try and make it about some kind of gender issue rather than a straight up equality and fairness one, to slyly talk about it as though the only use society has for marriage is children... It makes me want to scream in outrage.

I see the logic they espouse and I want to shove his face into the rotten underpinnings, point at each slimy, termite ridden plank and column and ask if he is really that fucking blind. The true horror of it is I know that he'd say yes, because he, and those like him, can't see or smell the rot. They're gutshot, with septecimia raging through them, and they insist the stench is roses and gardenia. It's sick.

[vasaris.livejournal.com]

*stares at rant* I shouldn't do this shit at work, talking to truckers all day does exciting things to my grammar.

[otrame.livejournal.com]

You should check out McWhorter's Our Magnificent Bastard Language. He discusses why English is such a weirdo language within its language family (which is German, by the way, not Latin).

I recommend the audiobook version on Audible.com, because he does it himself and you get to hear what he is talking about.