Gender-neutral wording

[Leloiandudu]

Hi, currently one of the questions says 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.' I believe that 'their' or 'his/her' is a better way of saying it. Another option is to skip the pronoun altogether: 'From each according to the ability, to each according to the need.'

[JoshuaKimsey]

That specific question is actually the famous quote by Karl Marx, so I don't believe it should be changed. It is a great demarcator for whether someone will trends towards capitalism or socialism. Also, technically "their" would grammatically incorrect, and "his/her" is just somewhat awkward. The pronoun could be skipped, but because it is a specific quote by Marx, I do not believe it should be changed from how Marx said it.

[elifoster]

"Their" would be grammatically correct, hsoj95.

[JoshuaKimsey]

Well even still, I don't support doing this. It's a very specific quote by Marx and I don't support changing it.

[elifoster]

Eh I dunno. I've found people quote it using "their" more often than not to be more inclusive.

[JoshuaKimsey]

While that may be true, it would be misquoting the original saying by Marx.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs

[TristanBomb]

While normally I would strive for gender neutrality, as others have pointed out, this is a famous quote and is probably best left as is.

On Wed, May 17, 2017 at 4:55 PM, J K notifications@github.com wrote:

While that may be true, it would be misquoting the original saying by Marx.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs

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[JoshuaKimsey]

Yeah, I completely agree with @TristanBomb on this. I have no issue with gender neutrality, but I do have an issue with changing a famous quote.

(Also, thank you @TristanBomb for showing me that my email is shown publicly in those alert emails. I didn't realize that was a setting that had to be turned off. 🙂 )

[Leloiandudu]

The question is, do we want a reaction to a famous quote, or to its meaning? I'm inclined to believe that the original intent was to find out how the respondent reacts to the idea, not to the quote itself (or to the figure of Marx).

[JoshuaKimsey]

I disagree! Just because Marx's quote isn't considered politically correct, doesn't mean it can or should be changed. Any more than Ayn Rand's famous quote, "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." should be changed simply because it uses the word "Man" instead of human or person.

The past wasn't politically correct. I doubt many people will be dissuaded by the use of the "wrong" gender pronoun. Most criticism I've seen revolves around the questions being to broad and not specific enough. Changing Marx's quote will only add to that issue I'm afraid.

[elifoster]

It doesn't make the quote any less specific to its meaning to change it to "they".

[ghost]

I'm not going to pretend I care about political correctness, but I do feel like replacing "him/his" with "them/their" would be (if only slightly) beneficial. It might help people stop and think for a second if they actually do support this quote rather than identify it immediately as Marx's. Additionally, the sex has nothing to do with what is being said. Changing it to neutral pronouns would be more inclusive, but preserve the quote's meaning.

But then again, it isn't really a big deal either way.

[JoshuaKimsey]

I still hold that the quote can't and shouldn't be changed. It's the quote by Marx, probably his most famous quote known world wide. Changing the quote, whether for political correctness or not, would only be trying to remove the meaning of the quote, a highly disingenuous move. You can't change the meaning of the quote and you can't change who said it, which means there's no legitimate reason to change the quote.

[elifoster]

The meaning is not altered at all and most communists I know, myself included, use gender neutral language when using this quote.

[ghost]

Even though I do not agree with Marx on his views. I do agree that we should not change it as it could mislead people in the future as this is technically rewriting history. We should preserve, not destroy.

[brmbrmcar]

Because it isn't really presented as a quote, it should use gender-neutral wording. However then again it should probably be reworded entirely.

And I can see you must not get a very good score on the progress axis.

[JoshuaKimsey]

How about instead we present it as an actual quote, quotation marks and all? That way, this issue becomes a, well... nonissue! Then we can have a different quote representing an opposite idea from someone else, say Ayn Rand or Fredrik Hayek, as another question for people to decide on.

[brmbrmcar]

I'd say the quote should just be re-worded, because unless you've seen the quote before the chances of you working out what it means are pretty much zero.

[JoshuaKimsey]

I somewhat agree. Either make it an official quote, as Marx said it, or just don't use it at all. I personally think using it as an actual quote is fine.

It could even be worded like this, "'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs', as Marx envisioned it, is a fundamentally good idea." That way, people know who the quote is by and what it is about. An opposite question opposed to this one could be, "'I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine', as Ayn Rand envisioned it, is a fundamentally good idea." That way, both ideas are stated for people to choose from and decide on!

[brmbrmcar]

How would they know what it is about just from knowing who said it?

[nissubjtsdjarwylwz]

If you are so strong and independent - do it yourself - why men should do it for you? You lobbysts want to be strong and oppressed at the same time.

[SheepTester]

The original quote is in German, so it was already disingenuous to translate it into English. That said, it was also "his" (seinen) in the original quote too.

But a good translation should convey the original meaning (that it wasn't intended to be specific to men) to a different culture (nowadays, "his" is almost always not gender neutral). So using "their" should still be a valid translation of the same original quote, for a variety of English consistent with the rest of the test.