Gender[queer],  Q&A,  Queer[ness]

Q&A: “I really have a problem when I want to speak about neutral people in French.”

anonymous said:

Hi. I really have a problem when I want to speak about neutral people in French. For the pronouns, there’s only a translation for ‘it’ or ‘that’ and that sounds weird. ‘They’ can only be masculine or feminine. A woman and a man, it becomes masculine. Misogynistic. The same for words and adjectives. You can only be a masculine or a feminine trans. You can’t be happy, you’re a happy girl or a happy boy. Articles, pronouns & adjectives are not neutral. So how can I speak about you for example?

yeah… as a native English speaker who speaks only a smidgen of (vraiment un petit brin de) French, i can only imagine how much of a pain in the ass it must be to speak in a gender neutral way about someone… and as you’ve pointed out, there’s also a lot of patriarchy and misogyny build into French (and English)… i get you, anon. 🙁

you asked how you could talk about me, for example, in French… i wish i had an answer to that. i can tell you the pronouns that i prefer in French (ille or ol) because i’ve been asked about pronouns in French before and i know that (at the moment) i like those two, but as you’ve said, neutralizing other parts of the language is harder. i’ve read a little about how some people do it, but my French isn’t good enough to even speak about myself in third person. any attempt would result in an awkward mix-and-match of things like this:

li créateur.ice de ce blog est Vesper, une personne non-binaire. ol a 31 ans et vit au Japon, mais est Américain.e. ol aime faire des photos et rêve de devenir photographe professionnelE… ! mais n’a aucune idée de comment lo devenir et encore n’a été publiéE pas une seule fois ! Un jour, ol vivra joyeusement en une maison avec deux chats, quatre appareils et une chambre noire, mais en attendant ol doit se contenter de san appartement, hérisson et appareils actuels.

……….so embarrassing. *hangs head in shame*

i wish i could help you, anon… all i can really do is point you towards resources and people who might be able to help you.

bonne continuation !

YouTuber and Blogger, Vesper is an American expat currently living in Japan.

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