Gender-neutral language, also called gender-inclusive language, is the practice of using words that don’t give an idea of someone being female or male. For example, the word "fireman" gives the idea that a person in that work is male. An offer for a job as a "cleaning lady" gives the idea that only a woman should do the job. The gender-neutral alternatives are to say "fire fighter" and "janitor," respectively. Then it is easier to see that these jobs can be done by a person of any gender. Gender-neutral language is important in feminism, because changing the way that people talk can help make sexist ideas less common. electricity and magnetism study guide For example, the sexist idea that some jobs should only be done by people of certain genders.
Gender-neutral language is also important to many people who have non-binary gender identities. For one reason, this kind of talk helps fight against nonbinary erasure, which is the common but wrong and sexist idea that there are only two genders. Since gender-neutral language doesn’t give the idea that a person is male or female, it can also apply to people who identify as other genders, outside of the gender binary. Non-binary people can ask to be talked about in this way.
English has grammatical gender, but only a vestige of what it once had. Old English once had grammatical gender for inanimate objects, but this practice started to disappear in the 700s, and vanished in the 1200s. bp gas prices ny The population of England at that time spoke several languages, and the same inanimate objects had different genders in those different languages. They may have stopped using that part entirely just to make it simpler. English stopped using grammatical gender for inanimate objects, but it still uses grammatical gender for people and personal pronouns.  There is enough to make a challenge for nonbinary people who don’t want gendered language to be used for them.
Gender-neutral language has become common in English today largely thanks to the pioneering work by feminists Casey Miller and Kate Swift. During the 1970s, they began the work of encouraging inclusive language, as an alternative to sexist language that excludes or dehumanizes women. Miller and Swift wrote a manual on gender-neutral language, The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing (1980). Miller and Swift also proposed a set of gender-neutral pronouns, tey, although they later favored singular they, or he or she.  There are several books on gender-neutral English, such as Rosalie Maggio’s book The Nonsexist Word Finder: A Dictionary of Gender-Free Usage (1989).
Much of the language that is often called gender-neutral has a problem: it’s more than a little bit male. This is the problem that the gender-neutral he pronoun, "you guys," and similar kinds of language have in common. "Linguists call male terms used to include females androcentric generics."  Androcentric generics have several problems. It can be arbitrarily seen as either including women or excluding women depending on whims, which has made trouble for women when it happens in legal documents. It can also give the impression that someone is in some way male, which can be unclear or insulting to people of other genders.
Much of other gender-neutral language has a problem: it gives the idea that female and male are the only genders. For example, calling an unspecified person by he or she pronouns, a speaker addressing "ladies and gentlemen," an invitation saying "both genders welcome," and so on. Much of Western society thinks this is inclusive enough, because it doesn’t know there are other genders. This language excludes nonbinary people, who would prefer an unspecified person to be called "they" rather than "he or she," would prefer a speaker to address "the audience," and an invitation saying "all genders welcome."
• Pare/Pair. "Depending on spelling, this can be a shortening of the word "parent" or the "pair" to another parent or to the child. electricity kwh cost calculator This can also reference an au pair. An au pair is a live in childcare worker, but the term means "equal to", implying that one is equal to a mother or father. gas bijoux nolita An au pair is usually a woman, but not always. The title could also call to mind the French word for father, or the fruit as a general affectionate nickname"
• Nore. This word was voted for by an online trans community. "Nore" is derived from the sentence "I am neither a boy nor a girl". The word also has letters from the words " non-binary" or " neutrality", "b oy", "gi rl", and " enby" which can represent non-binary people being a mix of masculine and feminine, both, or neither. The word was made not to replace the popularized word "enby", but to stand by it as a more formal alternative to girl/boy, since "enby" was considered to be too "cute".
• Bro. Short for brother. This one is taking advantage of sexism/ the male standard in language to use a more masculine term as a way to casually refer to siblings in general. The casualness of the abbreviation might make it slightly less gendered than the full word ‘brother’. static electricity in water Sometimes people associate ‘bro’ with fraternities and irresponsibility.
Norwegian is a language with three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, but they have nothing at all to do with real gender. For example, "kvinne", which means "woman", "kusine", which means a female cousin, "jente", which means "girl", and "dronning", which means "queen", are all or can be masculine nouns. There are also a few odd words, such as romkamerat, an inclusive word meaning room-mate. The word "kamerat" means male friend.
Unlike English, Russian has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. While neuter allows some non-binary people adjectives to use, this gender is not ideal for non-binary people for grammatical reasons. The first is that most neuter nouns decline like masculine nouns. The second is that neuter animate nouns do not change in the accusative case, while both masculine and feminine nouns do. This implies that people using neuter words are not human.
Spanish has two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine. Like other Romance languages, it’s very difficult to talk about a person in a gender-neutral way. This is because every adjective, noun, and article are all either masculine or feminine. It’s difficult or even impossible to be completely gender-neutral in standard Spanish. gas in babies that breastfeed However, feminists, LGBT people, and other activists today have made ideas for how to speak Spanish in a gender-neutral way when necessary. For example, it’s now common for people to write "Latinx" or "Latin@" as a gender-inclusive version of "Latino" and "Latina". For more information, see Wikipedia’s article: Gender neutrality in Spanish and Portuguese.
Some words, regardless of their own grammatical gender, are used for men and women alike, without changing the word’s ending. Its article stays the same, too. (However, when these nouns are used for women, it’s now acceptable in standard Spanish to optionally change to the feminine article.) These words are epicene ( epiceno). This is the closest that standard Spanish gets to gender neutral language.
Some words in Spanish aren’t consistent in what grammatical gender they have. They’ve been used as feminine or masculine words depending on the place and time period. They may have one conventional version, plus an alternative gender that is used poetically or in archaic language. These words are rare. There are only about a hundred of them. They still mean the same thing even when their gender changes. (Unlike, say, la cometa "kite" and el cometa "comet.") They’re called ambiguous nouns ( nombres ambíguos en cuanto al género).