(the fourth option is, of course, a joke)

It is my considered opinion (feel free to disagree, but nicely, please) that iĉismo would be destroyed (or at least severely wounded) if we just admit new root words for the feminine counterparts to "those dang 20 root words" (patro, and company): matro, sestro (fratino), etc. Then we could allow "ge-" to be attached to EITHER ONE of them to make the epicene version (which would have the side benefit of giving listeners an idea of the sociopolitical leanings of the person speaking). It seems that it's this issue that is what drives iĉismo in the first place, so why not just get rid of the problem? Of course, people would still be free to use patrino, fratino, etc. if they wished.

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.

For 99% of Esperantophones, iĉismo is simply a non-issue. We don't need to do anything about it, because it is already (mostly) dead.

If you look at any serious Esperanto text - a news article, a scholarly article, a literary work - you will almost never see it. If there are exceptions, they are vanishingly small compared to the overall body of literature.

The option to introduce separate, explicitly feminine roots is interesting (and unlike iĉismo, not kontraŭfundamenta), but I will note that the (large) majority of Esperantists simply see no need for them.

What exactly is wrong with patrino, nepino etc.? It's different from most natural languages, which have a separate root for such terms, but you can't hold a language accountable for other languages' tendencies. Esperantophones have been using them for well over a century without difficulty.

Tempodivalse:For 99% of Esperantophones, iĉismo is simply a non-issue. We don't need to do anything about it, because it is already (mostly) dead.

If you look at any serious Esperanto text - a news article, a scholarly article, a literary work - you will almost never see it. If there are exceptions, they are vanishingly small compared to the overall body of literature.

The option to introduce separate, explicitly feminine roots is interesting (and unlike iĉismo, not kontraŭfundamenta), but I will note that the (large) majority of Esperantists simply see no need for them.

What exactly is wrong with patrino, nepino etc.? It's different from most natural languages, which have a separate root for such terms, but you can't hold a language accountable for other languages' tendencies. Esperantophones have been using them for well over a century without difficulty.

Oh, nothing is wrong with patrino & Co. at all. It's how I speak. In all the other languages in which I know the "dang 20 root words," (granted most of them are gendered languages) most of the time, there is/are only a separate word for "mother" "woman" and maybe "sister" and "brother" The rest of them just use the regular "feminizing suffix" type of construction: Spanish: hijo/hija (daughter), hermano/a (sister), tio/a (aunt) etc. Russian does it with nephew/niece (племяник/-ица) and grandson/granddaughter (внук/внучка) and nobody makes a huge stink about them.

My (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) proposal is merely a way of saying, "OK, fine. Here ya go. Now shut up"

iĉ/riismo is not going away; it's growing. in every urban community around the world, languages are evolving to reflect the new understandings of gender identity. this trend is evident by the popularity of people like Caitlyn Jenner. Esperanto, if it's not going to lead, will follow.

sproshua:iĉ/riismo is not going away; it's growing. in every urban community around the world, languages are evolving to reflect the new understandings of gender identity. this trend is evident by the popularity of people like Caitlyn Jenner. Esperanto, if it's not going to lead, will follow.

icxismo and riismo are not identical. if anything riismo only is a "subset" of or overlaps icxismo and could very well survive (it's ekstrafundamenta, afterall, rather than kontrauxfundamenta as is icxismo) while icxismo falls by the wayside.

And for what it's worth, there were those who said the same thing about Ido (that it's not going away and that it's growing). Maybe the first turned out to be true, but the second was definitely way off base and has been for over 100 years now.

Icxismo isn't going away. But my prediction is that it will receive at the same level of justified disrespect and dismissiveness that it has been given for however long it's been around. Language evolution is driven by fluent speakers and I'm not seeing a high level of support for changes among people who speak fluently.

Most Esperanto speakers correctly realize that sexism is found in the speaker of a language. The language is a product of its time but in fact, you can add all the "matro" and "setro"s that you want to a language, and that won't stop sex discrimination.

Last I checked, having separate words for "brother" and "sister" didn't help any English speaking women get more promotions.

erinja:Most Esperanto speakers correctly realize that sexism is found in the speaker of a language. The language is a product of its time but in fact, you can add all the "matro" and "setro"s that you want to a language, and that won't stop sex discrimination.

Last I checked, having separate words for "brother" and "sister" didn't help any English speaking women get more promotions.

True enough! Something the "icxistoj" don't seem to have "gotten" as of yet.

we're all talking about different things. i'm not talking about sexism as a societal problem. i'm talking about language as a function of one's being, how one thinks about oneself.

sproshua:iĉ/riismo is not going away; it's growing. in every urban community around the world, languages are evolving to reflect the new understandings of gender identity. this trend is evident by the popularity of people like Caitlyn Jenner. Esperanto, if it's not going to lead, will follow.

What metrics are you using to determine if iĉismo/riismo is growing? I can only repeat that, in almost all serious or semi-serious Esperanto texts, use of iĉ and similar reforms is exceedingly small, and as far as I can tell from reading the literature, has remained that way ever since the time they were proposed. Just look through the Tekstaro, or more recent editions of Monato, or even a Vikipedio article written by a fairly proficient Esperantist.

erinja:Language evolution is driven by fluent speakers and I'm not seeing a high level of support for changes among people who speak fluently.

I think the above sentence sums it up best.

People can be sexist; the meaning (semantics) of sentences can be sexist; but a language per se cannot be sexist any more than an automotive gearbox or a computer CPU - because it is content-neutral; it's just the structure into which meaning (which can be sexist or not sexist) is placed. To call Esperanto itself "sexist" is to make what philosophers call a category mistake.

sproshua:we're all talking about different things. i'm not talking about sexism as a societal problem. i'm talking about language as a function of one's being, how one thinks about oneself.

Sounds a bit like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Tempodivalse:What metrics are you using to determine if iĉismo/riismo is growing? I can only repeat that, in almost all serious or semi-serious Esperanto texts, use of iĉ and similar reforms is exceedingly small, and as far as I can tell from reading the literature, has remained that way ever since the time they were proposed. Just look through the Tekstaro, or more recent editions of Monato, or even a Vikipedio article written by a fairly proficient Esperantist.

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.