Listen, dear man: inside

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Dear citizens. Dear readers. Dear contemporaries. Dear people. Dear language users. I hope I named them all, named them, meant them and picked them up. I am sure that I will get your attention, because the language policy seems to be more important today, especially in the prosperous areas of the planet Earth, than real politics, including in the Swiss Confederation. Language, a means of communication, has become a battlefield.

The Zurich administration is addressing the people of Zurich with gender stars, even if, according to current polls, they don’t want to be addressed that way. Universities excel in issuing language guidelines in which they instruct their students—modern German students—to express themselves according to gender. If you do not bow to the dictations, your grades will be deducted. This is an educational measure, and indeed: is it acceptable for young people to use discriminatory forms of language?

But be careful. This type of framing is a trick. New forms of artificial language are seen as expressions of gender-appropriate language, meaning that anyone who does not submit to dictate is a discriminator. And who wants to be accused of linguistically vilifying others because of their gender?

Only – the one who uses the generic masculine gender, as I do now, is not a discriminator and also not a supporter of patriarchy, but follows the simple logic of the German language. He uses a purely functional notation: Anyone who talks about drivers in general means not just men, but all people with a driver’s license, regardless of gender.

Thus, the fall into sin was just a consistent double naming of the sexes, dear readers. Because this is how the sexualization of language began – and it knows no boundaries, no end. Naturally, there is always someone who feels left out, with or without a star.

The so-called inclusive language turns out to be exclusive—and exclusive. It is a construct of the supposed academic elite who use it to show belonging to their group. But language belongs to everyone and therefore to no one, it serves to communicate content, and not to demonstrate its own virtue. living language. The tongue develops from below. Prohibitions, decrees, and the requirement to adhere to an academically defined gender-fair language are unworthy of a free society.

René Scheuil is a philosopher and director of the Swiss Institute for Economic Policy (IWP) in Lucerne. He writes to Blick every second Monday.

Source: Blick