orthohawk:If this were to be put into effect, I would love to see the roots come from the slavonic languages (because there aren't enough slavonicisms in the language, haha) or Greek or various other non-Indo-European languages.

Maybe I misunderstand you, but slavonic languages and Greek are Indoeuropean. Or did you simply mean that other examples would be non-Indoeuropean?

About your question, my answer is: keep calm and speak Esperanto. Esperanto is already neutral enough! The fact there is a "feminine" suffix makes it possible to use a word "malina" (masculine) derivated (? is the word correct?) from "ina" (feminine), whereas the feminine patrino is derivated from the masculine patro. So globally it's neutral!

sproshua:i'm not using metrics; i'm using logic. i'm not focused solely on E-o. my starting point is the effects of urbanization on society. i ruminate about these effects on language. and one of them, gender awareness, is a growing trend.

Well, thus far there hasn't been an observable effect on language, that I can tell. Even in English there has been no noticeable shift in the use of pronouns - except for the attrition of "generic he", which started many decades ago (a trend that has not been reflected in most other Western languages - the default pronoun in Slavic is still "he", and I believe in all/most Romance languages).

I agree gender awareness is growing, and it's a good trend, but I'm not so sure the impacts on language - Esperanto included - are that significant. "Time will tell," as they say. I can't predict how Esperanto or English will look like 50 years from now, though if past performance is any indication, it will not be a radical difference.

Besides, what the do we do with a male goat that sounds like an opera singer?

eo - kapriĉo = liberforma komponaĵo (ePIV)
en - capriccio = instrumental piece in free form... (Merriam-Webster)

dbob:Besides, what the do we do with a male goat that sounds like an opera singer?

eo - kapriĉo = liberforma komponaĵo (ePIV)
en - capriccio = instrumental piece in free form... (Merriam-Webster)

Or nepiĉo, which could get real embarrassing real fast ...

Tempodivalse:Or nepiĉo, which could get real embarrassing real fast ...

Because it would collide with the quasi-word "not-cunt", we drop the idea. Well, if that's not a rational argument! So brilliant!

BTW: Another thread which does not belong in the English-forum (IMO)

TBH I find it kind of off-putting how often people seem to put lingustic integrity (lack of change) over the human desire for representation. And I don't even care about these changes that much. It's like the discouraging pearl-clutching of "how dare one use a non-Fundamento pronoun, this is anarchy and madness!"

dbob:Besides, what the do we do with a male goat that sounds like an opera singer?

eo - kapriĉo = liberforma komponaĵo (ePIV)
en - capriccio = instrumental piece in free form... (Merriam-Webster)

Context. Or saying 'besta' or 'muzika' to clear things up?

Also, put that goat on YouTube!

As I can't accept singular ge- (kontraŭfundamenta) and for reasons of equality I would prefer the introduction of neutral bases from which one can derive all kinds of expressions:
parento - parentiĉo (=patro) - parentino - (ge)parentoj. patro and the other male roots could become archaisms.
This kind of iĉismo is laŭfundamenta and doesn't need any approval by the Akademio.

Fenris_kcf:Because it would collide with the quasi-word ..., we drop the idea. Well, if that's not a rational argument! So brilliant!

It wasn't intended to be an argument, more of an ironic comment.

Chove:TBH I find it kind of off-putting how often people seem to put lingustic integrity (lack of change) over the human desire for representation. And I don't even care about these changes that much. It's like the discouraging pearl-clutching of "how dare one use a non-Fundamento pronoun, this is anarchy and madness!"

I don't think I made such a claim. I have tried to make my commentary on icxismo (and other reforms) descriptive - that is, explain that it's not used by (virtually all) serious Esperantists, and hence will simply not be considered correct, no matter how much one may wish to the contrary, and irrespective of whether it makes the language more consistent or not - which is beside the point anyway, since the time for such tinkering has long passed.

I can't stress that enough: if we had that kind of "tinkering" mindset with any other language, we would not be taken seriously. This doesn't have anything to do with dogmatism or blind adherence to the Fundamento. (Ooh. I had an idea. Let's get rid of gender in Italian. It's useless and biased. Make it like English - no grammatical gender. ... *gets laughed out of room* .. you get the idea - can't tinker like that with living languages.)

For the record: if I were Zamenhof and had a chance to redo the language from scratch, I would add some kind of male suffix and make all familial terms neutral. I find Zamenhof's actual choice non-ideal. But I respect the current norms of Esperanto as a living language.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say Esperanto currently stifles representation. Could you clarify? Does this have to do with there being no male counterpart to -in?

How fluent is your Esperanto, sproshua? What comes to mind when you are speaking and you say "virino" or "filino"?

I'm a woman and a strong feminist, very sensitive to language use. I say "police officer" and not "policeman" in most cases. I pay attention to representation of women in literature and the media.

But I talk about being a virino with a fratino, no problem. Why? In my head, they are essentially separate roots. In my head I am no thinking "feminine man" when I say "virino", nor am I thinking of "feminine brother" when I say "fratino". I do not parse them out. To me, it is as if I have separate roots vir/o and virin/o, and again frat/o and fratin/o. I do not get upset about the "vir" in "virino" any more than I get upset over the "man" in "woman" (yes I know it's not derived from "man" but you get my point). Not enough hours in my day to get upset over those things, and it doesn't even cross my mind as I speak. And frankly, "kuzo" looks like a backformation from "kuzino" to me, at least compared to the English "cousin", similar to how "edzo" is likely a backformation from "edzino", from the Yiddish "rebbetzin".

There's lots of sexism in life and you could say that some linguistic choices were made with something less than full representation for women involved. But the language already exists and it's too late to go back now. I care about gender equality so I'm not going to waste my time worrying about linguistic forms when there are lots of more important changes I'd rather see. I wonder where we'd be if every person who bangs on about making the language's grammar less "sexist" instead worked towards getting better representation for women among Esperanto's governing and guiding bodies?

So yeah. Let's have some gender awareness. And let's have some real-world action to address gender inequalities, in ways that actually matter (these ways do not include language reform).