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Now Bavaria has outlawed this use of language by state employees, claiming it's ideologically motivated. If I were a professor in Bavaria, I could be sanctioned for the inclusive way I write.
Backlash against nature, women, immigrants ... it's all connected.
@W_Lucht Sounds crazy. But then again, many other things coming out of Bavaria is. (I’m working in mobility)
@W_Lucht hmm and you can't help wondering if it was always a gendered language...
@PenguinJunk
It's pretty ancient, the germanic languages had it. Actually, German has three genders (including neutral), but for people the neutral isn't used (just for children and babies ...).
@W_Lucht English used to use "comedienne", that's been generally dropped from usage. "Actress" is on the way out too, unless someone prefers to use the term for themself.
@W_Lucht What a viscous ideology wanting to include everyone! How did you think you could get away with that? /s
@samy
Now that you mention it ... 
@W_Lucht Can you just change to Professorinnen as the default, even when talking about a group of three men? That would keep the Bavarian government happy, I assume.
@anschmidtlebuhn
That would be one subversive approach 
@W_Lucht @anschmidtlebuhn we have the same problem in France, they even published some law that intented to forbid the use of inclusive writing (but in the end it just forbids to make inclusive writing mandatory)
Still, many companies and public structures are asking their employees to never use inclusive writing… which ends up with funny things like people telling their bosses that “ladies and gentlemen” is an inclusive phrasing or people, like suggested above, using the feminine form as “neutral” ^^
@Seth @W_Lucht @anschmidtlebuhn "damoiseaux demoiselles demoisX"
Actually you must mention both major genders now, "Professorinnen und Professoren" to not discriminate against one, which would be forbidden already in many cases for institutions (Antidiskriminierungsverbot). "Professor:innen" is nice as it also can be interpreted to include more than these two genders. That's what the rightwing government in Bavaria is really targetting.
@W_Lucht Bavaria...Germany's bible belt
Bavaria: marching headlong into the 20th century.
@W_Lucht I mean, it sounds like it’s backlash against ideologically motivated rhetoric, and you’re laying out the ideology, confirming the motivation.
@tokensane yep, so it goes to show the problem with starting down that road, particularly in cases of state actors.
@tokensane all of them. They all play roles in the system, they all do work even if different types of work.
It’s about power and control, but it’s also about governments striving to be responsive to the populations, even if they miss the mark, since that’s generally the source of notions of right and wrong in the governmental context.
When low level workers use their positions to take ideological stands that go against the ideology adopted by a responsive government as a whole, it’s not surprising that there would be pushback from the top.
So yep, you could say it’s about power and control, to use Machiavellian language, but it’s hard to see how it could go any other way in a governmental institution.
If you’re talking about the relationship between the US federal government and US states, that raises very different complications.
But this is not about what is okay or not okay. It’s about what is.
A government responsive to its people will have policies that restrict what government employees can do.
@W_Lucht Polish is also very gendered. And Poland under communist rule tried to de-gender the language. We ended up with monstrosities like mixing a male (which was their idea of the gender-neutral form, obviously) version of the person's job with female-conjugated verbs.
So, before the "gender neutralization" we had "profesor poszedł na wykład" if you wanted to say "the [male] professor [male conjugation of <went>] to the lecture", and "profesorka poszła na wykład", to say "the [female] professor [female conjugation of <went>] to the lecture. So both the verb and noun used the same gender. And now we have stuff like "profesor poszła na wykład", which essentially boils down to "the [female] professor [male conjugation of <went>] to the lecture". It sometimes takes on really weird shapes in complex sentences.
There's been a movement to align the gendered forms back to the state before this partial forced neutralization, so the verbs would match the nouns. But, while no one has issues with female forms of low-wage or deemed non-prestigious jobs, like, say, a nurse, if you try to mention a female form of a lawyer, or professor, it's suddenly absurd, impossible to pronounce, tongue-twisting, unnatural, ideological, and so on.
@W_Lucht This sort of thing is why I get so worked up at people who refuse to make even minimal efforts in English. Strongly-gendered languages force us into weird contortions, but English makes it easy to be inclusive. It really is the Minimum Acceptable Standard: http://findthethread.postach.io/minimum-acceptable-standar
@W_Lucht France has banned the middle-dot similar notation from official documents, that doesn't mean you cannot use inclusive language though, it's just a bit longer, e.g. "Professeures et Professeurs" vs "Professeur·e·s" (I admit it might not cover absolutely everyone though 
@W_Lucht similar backlash in France with inclusive language :/
@W_Lucht are these the same lawmakers who champion free speech?
@W_Lucht some Germans I know who've lived here in Norway for years, are rather perplexed about what they see as an unnecessarily complicating way of expressing gender neutrality. They're the most feminist/pro-lgbt+ cis-het people I know, but they've gotten used to the Norwegian way of de-gendering language. We use the exact same words for job titles regardless of the gender of the person in question. Examples: professor, skuespiller, sykepleier, renholdsarbeider, or elektriker.
@W_Lucht If I'm not wrong, the new Trump-like president of Argentina has recently imposed a similar prohibition there (Spanish language is also gendered), and for the same ideological reasons.
@W_Lucht France officially did the same. Seems that it was a top priority in their lives.
@W_Lucht
This law might be unconstitutional and against the German Grundgesetz.
https://verfassungsblog.de/verfassungswidrige-sprachverbote/
@W_Lucht Use of any gendered terms is ideologically motivated, regardless of how long it has been part of a language or tradition. Though most people do it unconsciously or with regret because it’s just how they were taught to speak, adding extra letters to a profession every time the professional happens to be (or be perceived to be) female expresses an ideology of male supremacy. We should just be able to say professors, not “male AND (abnormal) female professors”.
@W_Lucht Whatcha bet people will start writing "Prof" now
@W_Lucht @petrichor German has three genders: masculine, feminine, neuter. Just use neuter.
@W_Lucht Simple solution: just use the female form everywhere.