German Family Minister Kristina Schröder, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, has upset fellow party members by suggesting that God go gender-neutral:
In an interview with the weekly newspaper Die Zeit in which she discussed gender roles in children’s literature, Schröder also took on God’s gender, and fellow members of her Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, are not impressed.
The German language has three definite articles for nouns to indicate their gender — der (masculine), die (feminine) and das (neuter). The noun der Gott, or God, is masculine. But Schröder told Die Zeit that the article for God shouldn’t matter. It could just as easily be the gender-neutral das Gott, she said, saying the article “doesn’t mean anything.”
Schröder also took on the sexism of the Grimm fairy tales (“There are seldom positive female figures there”) and racism in classic children’s literature.
Said Bavarian Social Minister and Christian Social Union member Christine Haderthauer, “This overly cerebral nonsense leaves me speechless. I find it sad when our children, due to blatant insecurity and political correctness, have the strong images that are so important to their imaginations taken away.”
December 28th, 2012 | 10:33 am
In France, the rule that gender is a classification of nouns, not of things, has been vigorously defended by the académie française.
Thus, a number of military functions are feminine in form, une estafette, une ordonnance, une sentinelle, une recrue, une vigie, une vedette and, of course, une personne.
Others are invariably masculine. So, « Mme le juge », or le professeur, le médecin, although, here feminists are campaigning for gendered forms – the exact opposite of their demands in the UK, where gender-neutral titles are insisted upon. The Jospin government even produced a paper on it – « Femme, j’écris ton nom » [Woman, I write your name]
In some dialects, one finds « le dame dieu » [Lord God], a reminder that « dame » was once common gender, from Late Latin domnus [lord]
December 28th, 2012 | 10:52 am
Whether or not one ought to use different pronouns is one question, but God is definitely not male. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
Let’s be perfectly honest and admit that all of us (me included) find it almost impossible to think of God as anything but male, and objections to characterizing him as anything else (even though he isn’t) are largely due to that irrational prejudice. Christine Haderthauer is no less prejudiced than the rest of us.
December 28th, 2012 | 12:42 pm
In German, “manliness” is feminine: die Männlichkeit. And knife, spoon, and fork are each differently gendered: das Messer, der Löffel, die Gabel. Go figure.
December 28th, 2012 | 2:40 pm
The second person of the Trinity is male, at least in human nature.
December 28th, 2012 | 3:26 pm
The second person of the Trinity is male, at least in human nature.
Gregg,
In this incredibly vast universe, male and female, at least as we know it, may be an utterly local phenomenon, and in the overall scheme of things, trivial or pointless. It might possibly even be an embarrassment. Or, I suppose, it might be a fundamental principle of all of creation. Given the diversity of what it means to be male or female as we see it in various species on earth, I am inclined to think that in creation as a whole, it’s not very important.
December 28th, 2012 | 3:59 pm
And Venice was directed by la Signoria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signoria_of_Venice
The article and the noun are feminine, but I doubt a woman’s face ever graced its assembly.
One could find all sorts of other curious-sounding combinations of Italian and its dialects, perhaps of all Romance languages.
December 28th, 2012 | 6:53 pm
@David Nickol: Nice to see that you have quoted from the Catechism to illustrate the Church’s definitive position on an issue of theology. Every matter of faith and morals should begin with a consultation of the text of the Catechism.
December 29th, 2012 | 8:46 am
Some have suggested that masculine and feminine are fundamental aspects of reality, only imperfectly embodied in the distinction of male and female.
Ruskin was of this view, when he said no one could think of the moon as other than feminine. This was a desperately unfortunate example, for “moon” is masculine in all the Germanic languages, including Old English Mona.
Another view is that grammatical gender is simply a grouping of nouns, according to the rules of agreement between nouns and adjectives and pronouns. In both Greek and Latin, this produces three groups and the ancient grammarians dubbed them masculine, feminine and neuter. There is no reason there could not have been four, or half-a-dozen, in which case, they would have just numbered them, as they did declensions and conjugations.
December 29th, 2012 | 10:46 pm
The second person of the trinity was incarnate as a male. Why? Don’t know. But “one in being” with the rest of the trinity might give one a unique insight… and this person of the trinity gave us a prayer called the “Our Father”. Seems interesting, no? I agree that God is neither male nor female… and all humans, of both genders are created in the image of God. We got ourselves a conundrum here.
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