Gender Neutrality

Hello Amig@s!

Gender neutrality, or rather the lack thereof, is a troubling aspect of our times, showing that modern humans are not really that advanced. I found this paragraph when looking up “at sign” on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign

“In Portuguese and Spanish, where many words end in “-o” when in the masculine gender and end “-a” in the feminine, @ is sometimes used as a gender-neutral substitute for the default “o” ending. For example, the word amigos traditionally represents not only male friends, but also a mixed group, or where the genders are not known. The proponents of gender-inclusive language would replace it with amig@s in these latter two cases, and use amigos only when the group referred to is all-male – and amigas only when the group is all female. The Real Academia Española disapproves of this usage.”

Perhaps @ needs to become the 28th letter of the Spanish alphabet. (The 27th is Ñ.)

While English lacks grammatical gender, it still has a pronominal gender system. I am trying to use s/he more often to  refer to people more inclusively, but have not found a shortcut method for her and him. I note that many others are using a  gender-neutral singular “they”.

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