Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore some trans and feminist concerns about the gendered aspects of languages beyond English, focusing in particular on Spanish, Italian, and German. Historically, discussions about gendered language have often challenged the ways in which language can make women (in)visible by addressing the implicit and explicit androcentrism and sexism in our language. We call this the visibility project. Recently, questions surrounding trans-inclusiveness and the possibility of avoiding gender markers altogether have become more prominent, often highlighting the issue of pronouns (e.g. the singular "they*). We call this the gender-neutrality project. However, anglophone philosophy offers a very limited discussion on how either gender-neutrality or visibility strategies could be applied to languages more gendered than English. To address this, we start by showing how gender expresses itself in the grammatical structure of our three sample languages, and identifying some of the specific visibility and neutrality strategies that could be (or are already) applied to them. This leads us to articulate an "innovative project which constructs nuanced and novel ways to transform gendered grammatical structures. Depending on their application, these strategies can fulfil gender-neutrality goals in some cases and visibility goals in others. This highlights, among other things, the ways in which genderqueer people have attempted to shape their linguistic resources in different linguistic contexts, while also opening up avenues for new research when it comes to discussions of gender and language.