Guest contribution by Jayrôme C. Robinet
The new Governing Mayor of Berlin, Kai Wegner, has spoken out against gendering in the administrative language. This leads to the well-known criticism of people who advocate for gender equality. Because, according to a common interpretation, nouns like “authors” are generic masculine, so it makes sense to intervene in a gender-fair way in the ending: authors, authors, authors and so on. However, there is a contradiction in the commitment against the generic masculine: It completely ignores the fact that the generic feminine runs parallel through the German language. For administrative regulations and in contracts, Lann Hornscheidt and Ja’n Sammla suggest in “How do I write diverse?” (w_orten & meer, 2021) proposed a gender-free strategy to work with the plural instead of the singular, so that everyone is meant.
