Enlarge image
Forbid government agencies to use gender stars or inland I by law?
The majority of the proposal met with approval
Photo: kzenon / iStockphoto / Getty Images
It may not be the most important question of our time, but it still has what it takes to become a hit in the federal election campaign: Gender-neutral language is a hot topic - and there are already concrete advances.
The spellings were ideologically motivated, grammatically incorrect, emphasized the divisions, said the CDU member of the Bundestag Christoph Ploß in the SPIEGEL interview.
His demand to legally prohibit gendering by government agencies sparked violent reactions.
Criticism came, for example, from SPD leader Saskia Esken, who accused the CDU of being "overwhelmed by social change."
FDP top candidate Christian Lindner recommended that the CDU, instead of a possible gender ban, deal with a “review of economic policy” by Federal Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) if it wanted to win over “conservative voters”.
But the issue of gender-equitable language apparently hits a nerve - and polarizes, as a representative survey by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL shows.
According to this, 53 percent of Germans are in favor of a ban on gender-neutral language for government agencies.
38 percent are against such a regulation.
You can find out more about the Civey method
here
.
The fact that government agencies use gender-equitable language has met with resistance from voters in the Union parties, for example.
More than two-thirds of them are in favor of a legal ban, and supporters of the FDP and AfD agree even more.
Almost three out of four respondents consider a ban to be the right thing to do.
The situation is markedly different in the opposite political camp. Almost half of the supporters of the Left Party and the SPD are in favor of prohibiting government agencies from gendering. However, around ten percent of the SPD supporters are still undecided on the issue, and this percentage is even higher for the left.
The potential for conflict that the topic harbors was recently revealed, for example, in an internal left wing dispute.
The spokeswoman for the parliamentary group, Doris Achelwilm, spoke out clearly against a gender ban in response to a request from SPIEGEL.
Her influential party colleague Sahra Wagenknecht, at the same time the left-wing top candidate in North Rhine-Westphalia, described the "language monstrosities of gender language" as "discriminatory, in that they disqualify the language of the majority of the population as outdated and retrograde".
The only party whose supporters clearly oppose a ban on gender-equitable language are the Greens.
Two thirds of their supporters speak out against the corresponding guidelines.
But even with the Greens there is isolated criticism.
For example, Baden-Württemberg's Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann complained last year after a guideline published by the city of Stuttgart about "language police officers".
Everyone should be able to talk, "as he has grown up," demanded Kretschmann at the time.
Kretschmann may be concerned about alienating the electorate he has stolen from the CDU in the southwest by using gender-sensitive language.
The green party leadership around Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock could have similar concerns.
Because it seems clear that the Greens have to address more than just their core electorate if they want to appoint the head of government from autumn.
Greens are behind Union
If you look at the results of the polls of the parties, the trend of the past few weeks continues.
The Greens again have to accept slight losses and are currently behind the Union with 23 percent, which comes with slight increases to 27 percent.
The Greens' short-term high in the polls at the end of April seems to have ended for the time being, while the CDU and CSU are gradually approaching their polls from the time before the mask and corruption affair.
In view of the meanwhile peak values of almost 40 percent in spring 2020, the survey results for the Union are still comparatively poor.
At the FDP, however, the upward trend continues.
The Liberals can currently hope for 13 percent of the vote.
The gap to the SPD, again almost unchanged at 16 percent in the polls, the third strongest force, is dwindling further.
The AfD is ten and the left six percent.
fek
