Gender-appropriate language: the culture war over the German language

Some say that the UN made the start when it made gender mainstreaming a model for the whole world in 1995.

Soon afterwards, something began to slide in the German language.

Others look to Karlsruhe, where the Federal Constitutional Court ruled in 2017 that the division of people into women and men is discriminatory for some.

The third option in the birth register and in job advertisements is now called “Divers”.

In order to do justice to this group linguistically, it is no longer only activists (*) who use special spellings like this gender asterisk.

But maybe it all started with Luise Pusch.

In 1980 the linguist, together with three other linguists, published the first German "Guidelines for Avoiding Sexist Use of Language".

Their goal was to make the language more feminine so that women would be more visible - equality through the means of vocabulary and grammar.

Pusch once argued that the German “men's language” hides women better than a burqa.

Today she is 77 years old and continues to watch carefully how Germans deal with their language, what they argue about, what is changing.

She doesn't see herself at the destination yet.

"There has always been a strong headwind," she says, but is pleased that feminists have now risen to leading positions and have given the debate weight.

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