Translated by Miguel Álvarez Sánchez Tlaxcala
The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published following letter to the editor , which was republished on lembeck.de. Author unknown
In the German language there is a natural gender (sexus) and a grammatical gender (genus). Feminist linguists like to confuse the two, not to say throw them wildly together. Yet even linguistic laypersons, if their view is not clouded by ideology, can easily recognise the difference. Firstly, there are three genus forms (masculine, feminine, neuter), but only two biological sexes (male and female). Secondly, the genus is also used for objects without any recognisable parallel to the natural gender: the hearth (Der Herd), the street (Die Straße) or the book (Das Buch). The fact that the bosom (Der Busen) is masculine, the glans (Die Eichel) feminine and the member (Das Glied) neuter is also clearly not based on any biological background.
It is similar, for example, with the reader or the customer. While the genus is used intersexually (the guest, the human being, the person, the orphan, the child, the individual), the sexus represents a further splitting into male and female.
