Gender-inclusiveness of romantic vocabulary

[mikelove]

Hi,

 

A recent post in our forums prompted me to take a look at gender-inclusive vocabulary in the long-awaited new edition of our PLC dictionary (can't do much for most of the other titles we distribute, but with that one we have total editorial control) and I wanted to know if I could get some opinions on whether any of the following terms would actually only work for a male + female or would theoretically work for a romantic relationship of any gender:

 

爱情

暗度陈仓

吊膀

干柴烈火

搞对象

欢好

肌肤

结缡

居室

乱点鸳鸯

青梅竹马

情爱

情缘

通情

耳鬓厮磨

两小无猜

娃娃亲

来归

彩凤随鸦

并骨

床笫(之言)

二人世界

反目

分居

关系

鹣鹣

举案齐眉

伉俪

两口儿

两口子

仳离

破镜重圆

悄悄话

琴瑟不调

琴瑟和谐

卿

(鹊桥)相会

同房

同衾共枕

燕好

鸳侣

鸳衾

相敬如宾

休弃

空房

陪葬

糟糠之妻

枕边风

 

That's from a quick initial cull of PLC entries that include "man and woman" or "boy and girl" or "husband and wife" in the context of romance + are not obviously gender-specific like 儿女情长 or 夫妻. (though some of them are probably kind of irrelevant - not a lot of 娃娃亲 or 陪葬 going on these days)

 

Not unexpected that there'd be a few of these still around in a dictionary that was originally written in the '70s but we'd like to make sure they're completely removed in the new edition at least.

[Shelley]

I don't understand Maybe I am really dumb, I have read the post several times and looked at some of the examples in the list but I just don't get it.

 

The one thing I will say is why get rid of anything, it may come in useful to someone reading a book written in the 70's and need to look up some of these words.

 

Are they offensive to anyone? If not why not leave them in.

 

I apologise if I have got this all wrong but as I say I need clarification.

[gato]

I think he might be talking about rewriting the definitions to be non-gender-specific.

[gato]

凤 is traditionally used to referred to female (龙 referring to male), so the words containing 凤 might not be good candidates for gender neutrality.

[Shelley]

Oh do we need gender neutrality? Does this sort of thing upset some people?

 

It doesn't bother me. In fact I really like all the things that are associated with men and women in chinese culture, silver, the moon, the phoenix are some things for women and the sun, gold, and the dragon are some things for men. This is the yin and yang of the world.

 

Hard to completely remove this from the culture. How can the world be gender neutral? 49% are men and 51% are women so there is gender.

 

This doesn't mean lack of equality and all the rights you would expect for men and women to ensure they have a fair and equal life.

 

Sorry rant over, feel free to ignore me.

[dwq]

To be pedantic, 鳳 is male, the female being 凰 .

[朱真明]

@Shelley

 

I think that you have fundamentally mistaken the purpose of this post. This has nothing to do with being politically correct by altering what may be sexist terminology. This post is about determining the true meaning of these words so that the translation is accurate and properly accords to the actual meaning of the words.

 

I think I ought to also clarify the difference between sex and gender. 

 

Oxford:

 

Sex- "Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions"

 

Gender- "The state of being male or female (typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones)"

 

Sex refers to the classification of male, female or intersex by biology whilst gender is classified by psychology.

 

One person can be classified as female sex whist also being classified as male gender. This is completely supported by science. 

[xiaokaka]

Can you send a link to the Pleco forums thread?

[yaya990011]

Good

[Shelley]

Thanks for the explanation, I think I now understand.

 

I won't delete my posts as i think this makes for confusing topics, with one half of the conversation missing, but I would like to put my posts in "brackets" as it were and not continue to derail this topic, for which I apologise,

[朱真明]

No need to apologise, you didn't seem to be coming off as offensive or aggressive.  

[Shelley]

@ 朱真明 thanks for your comment, I was concerned about derailing the topic and not about upsetting anyone, which I hope I didn't do

[mikelove]

Yep, not planning to delete anything, just to rewrite them to reflect whether they actually are gender-specific or not.

 

And I'm not pushing any sort of agenda here, just keeping up with the times - if a term actually would apply equally well to a homosexual couple then the dictionary ought to make that clear, otherwise it's not doing its job.

[Shelley]

Ah now I understand

[lips]

I hope Pleco is getting expert advice from native Chinese linguists as well.

 

FWIW, my layman view is that most of the terms *can* apply to same-sex relationship.  It'd look weird because homosexuality was traditionally rarely mentioned in, at least mainstream, literature.  Exceptions would be 娃娃亲 and 糟糠之妻.

[mikelove]

Oh yes, certainly - never hurts to have more opinions though.

[studychinese]

Didn't you know that there are no homosexuals in China? Lol.

This reminds me of when I first arrived in China. For some reason I had an image of ideological communists with little red books so I was out there calling people "comrade". That didn't last long.