Users on social networking site Facebook can now proclaim themselves “allosexuelle”, “transkvinde” and “lesboflexible” as the site rolls out a vast array of alternative ‘genders’ across eight different languages, with more likely to follow.
Breitbart London has already reported that Facebook launched a huge variety of new gender options for the Swedish version of their site, allowing users to be things like “icke-binär” (non-binary) and “pojkflicka” (tomboy), to coincide with the start of Stockholm’s LGBT Pride celebrations. This follows on from the various English language versions which already list over 70 different genders.
A quick browse of through the site’s different language options soon reveals another six languages where users can select from a long list of gender identities.
In Spanish, for example, users can choose to be “asexual varón” (asexual boy) or “androginx” (a version of the word for ‘androgynous’ that removes grammatical gender). Italian users can also choose to be “in esplorazione” (exploring) or “trans donna” (trans woman), while Germans can define as “drag” or “zweigeschlechtlich” (again, androgynous).
The incredibly varied options are a sign of how gender politics is influencing languages across the Western world. As gender theory gains ground and becomes increasingly mainstream, social justice warriors invent ever greater numbers of words to describe themselves.
It is notable, however, that all the languages that offer these options on Facebook – English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish and Danish – are spoken in liberal Western nations.
Languages such as Arabic, Russian and Mandarin Chinese eschew the non-traditional choices, while even Thai, spoken in a country known for its ‘ladyboys’, only allows users to choose between male and female.
As gender ideology spreads, it is inevitable that other languages will follow, with Dutch, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, Catalan and Basque all likely to have their own terms for “gender queer” and “questioning cis male”.
Given the uniquely Western nature of the phenomenon, though, it may yet be some time before the “transbelgiin” of outer Mongolia can self-define.