Vanish

German is a heavily gendered language, with distinct female and male forms for a lot of words. While it's been pretty common to just use the 'generic male' term for, say, occupations (i.e. just using the male version of a word to refer to mixed groups of people), there's been a push in the last few years to use more gender-inclusive (or gender-sensitive, whatever you want to call it) versions of terms.

In written form, this usually means that you'll 'merge' the two terms with a * indicating that you're referring to a mixed group.

For example, if you're talking about teachers, instead of just using the generic male term Lehrer, or using both male and female (Lehrer und Lehrerinnen), you just write Lehrer*Innen (or LehrerInnen, or Lehrer_Innen, depending on preference).

The Bavarian state authorities, who are traditionally Christian maniacs, have now decided that this is unacceptable. They're arguing that this inclusive language goes against freedom of speech, that you need to be able to "have unrestricted discourse in a liberal society", and that an ideologically-influenced language like this would prohibit that. And so, in the name of freedom of speech, they are banning the use of the gender inclusive terms by schools, unis and state officials. It's as insane as it sounds.

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