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So I have thought this question over in my head before and I’ve come to the conclusion that Spanish-speakers may simply have a different idea of what gender neutrality is compared to English-speakers, but it is something that I’ve been curious about all around.

When speaking in English, I do often find myself using gender neutral language a lot to refer to groups of people, or a specific kind of person. For example, and to give some understanding to this story, I am bisexual. When I’m talking to people about my future love life, I often find myself using words such as spouse or partner, as pretending I’m simply just straight around people and using the word husband or boyfriend makes me cringe inwardly.

In my Spanish class, I did find myself having this dilemma at one point. Whatever prompt it was that we were writing, I ended up talking about what I would do with a future spouse, and ended up sitting there racking my brain for some gender neutral way to express this, before I realized there truly was none that I knew of, sighed, and wrote “esposo” on my paper.

Now, it is of my understanding that in Spanish, masculine is the default. Even in a group where the majority is female, if there is so much as one male, you would use “nosotros” and not “nosotras.”

I know that English used to be just like this, but gradually evolved to include more gender neutral ways to express things. Remnants of this can still be seen even now in words such as “mankind,” as we know that “mankind” is not simply made up of men.

I do see this system of “masculine is the default” as being a little bit outdated myself, but it is not my place to dictate how the Spanish language should or should not work.

So, I guess my question is, is there a way to express things in a gender neutral way in Spanish, or is using the masculine by default gender neutral enough? It would also be interesting to know if there are any groups of Spanish-speaking natives who are pushing for reforms in the way that gender is expressed through the language. The whole concept definitely piques my interest, so I would love to be educated more on it.

aparente001
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  • @walen 's observations are on point, though I would like to caution that cónyuge is a formal word (so that using it in a conversation will actually draw attention to the choice of word, which might not be what the speaker intended), and pareja is normally understood to mean "unmarried partner". – pablodf76 Jul 13 '19 at 14:57
  • Esa pregunta parece tener un tinte político con la denominada "ideología de género". – alvalongo Jul 16 '19 at 01:50
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    @alvarolongo: He leído la pregunta varias veces sin lograr identificar el tinte político que comentas. Aparentemente se trata de una pregunta sobre el uso neutral del castellano y pienso que los comentarios de walen y pablodf76 son ambos acertados. – Ra_ Jul 23 '19 at 11:04
  • @Ra_, porque el que pregunta le preocupa y manifiesta su inconformismo ("a little bit outdated") de que no exista neutralidad en el español – alvalongo Jul 23 '19 at 20:46

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