erinja:
No need to share your stereotyped views of gender roles in this thread. It's not really on topic. You could open a new thread in the Esperanto forums on "the differences between men and women" if you wanted.

It is on topic if we want to look at whether people want or not to use gender forms, if it's in our nature or not, or whether it's just a culural thing. Your view is native language influence, as you've written, my view is that the human brain and the way it's geared has something to do with things, which is why the cultural bits exist. Depending on someone's identity, they might think differently about that.

Obviously not all people are te same but I thought everyone here was smart enough to make that assumption so i didn't feel like mentioning that I wasn't trying to stereotype. Now I don't know if you're calling foul play, but it sure seems that way and it's pretty annoying that we can't discuss the impact of gender roles on language on a topic pertaining to it.

I have seen no difference whatsoever between men and women, on use of the -in- ending (or on the ge- prefix). It's influenced heavily by national origin and native language, but not by gender. But you probably wouldn't know that, since you haven't spent any time in Esperanto events.

Thanks >:-|... I actually am quite aware of that and can tell that native language, especially European ones, influence gender in Esperanto. I don't think it's clear cut though, and human gender still has a productive effect on languages to this day.

And then there's Sudanglos observation that Esperanto's evolution is somewhat unique, meaning gender's evolution in the language is not just based on tradition but innovation too, so we might wanna explore how people might innovate that way.

BTW, if teachers and nurses are stereotypically female, explain why we'd bother mentioning ithe gender at all. Shouldn't it be implied? So why do we need instruistino and not virinstruisto? Something doesn't add up with such a simple explanation.

Even if gender did influence how Esperantists use suffixes (I've seen zero influence of this nature), you still wouldn't be in a position to say so, because you haven't experienced it. It would be like me giving my opinion on Indonesian irregular verbs.

People are used to talking about female teachers and nurses because they're female-heavy professions. Europeans tend to add -in- in cases where they're used to regularly distinguishing between male and female; inhabitants of a country, professions with a lot of women (secretary, teacher, nurse, etc). In cases where there are few women in a profession, some of those European languages lack a feminine form for that profession, so you could expect that those speakers are unused to saying those words with a feminine ending. In Italian, for example, many professions historically linked with men lack a feminine form. Some of these languages have started adding feminine forms as women enter those professions, and some haven't.

erinja:you still wouldn't be in a position to say so, because you haven't experienced it. It would be like me giving my opinion on Indonesian irregular verbs.

I don't see what's wrong with you having an opinion on that. I mean, I don't know if Indonesian verbs can work on the whole "regular-irregular" scale like IE verbs, but if you're interested in something I don't see what's wrong in having an opinion on it.

Maybe it's a cultural difference, we Australians seem to not care about who's wielding an opinion with which qualifications (perhaps due to over exposure to our small-town families with their own opinions, or our politicians )

Anyway, seems like the case/dilemma is closed, I'll just go with your reason.

erinja:Otherwise, we can use it to emphasize that a neutral word is including both males and females. "Instruistoj" (teachers) may be a group of only men or only women, or mixed. "Geinstruistoj" is specifically a mixed group. "Instruistinoj" is specifically a women-only group. "Virinstruistoj" is specifically a men-only group.

Bear with me on this. Had I tried to work this out on my own. I think I would have tried to write 'Virinstruistinoj' and 'Virinstruistoj'. Why would the former have been wrong, or would it have been wrong at all? Or just superfluous?

"Virinstuistinoj" would be wrong. It would be a male teacher who is female, which doesn't make that much sense.

vir/o means man, vir/in/o means woman. You could consider this to be an irregularity, in that the word for woman literally means "female man".

However, with words that are inherently gender neutral (like instruisto) you would never put on two different gender indicators. "virinstruistino" (male female teacher) would make about as little sense as "geinstruistinoj" (a male and female group of female teachers)

erinja:vir/o means man, vir/in/o means woman. You could consider this to be an irregularity, in that the word for woman literally means "female man".

This is the sort of business that led me to think that way. Basically inserting 'instruo' into 'virino'. I realise it's wrong.

As a gay man with high esteem for family (and respect), I appreciate the words "geedzo" and "gepatro", which I plan to use.

Being that most (all?) of the gendered nouns in Esperanto are terms of kinship, whether via family or other hereditary bonds, the use of ge- in the singular to mean "of either sex" is very useful in this day and age. However, I can't think of any other instances where this usage would be necessary or desirable.