# Writing > General Writing >  Does an idea have a gender?

## cacian

In other words is it possible to quote an idea/concept as being masculine or feminine?

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## Charles Darnay

Sometimes I cant help but think you are trolling with these types of questions...

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## Mutatis-Mutandis

> Sometimes I cant help but think you are trolling with these types of questions...


Naw, I don't think it's trolling, though the OP could definitely benefit from some elucidation. A lot of her questions have brought on good discussions from time to time.

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## cacian

> Sometimes I cant help but think you are trolling with these types of questions...


I don't know what you mean by 'these types of questions'.
This post is relevant to something I am looking for.

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## OrphanPip

Well in French the gender of idea is feminine.

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## cacian

> Well in French the gender of idea is feminine.


Yes it is indeed !!!
_'une idee'_ is feminine thank you *OrphanPip.*
I am wondering why chose the word idea as a feminine in French/latin when the whole of the French language is 
masculine derivative. 
I am thinking in English it is neither right?

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## martunia99

it's feminine in Polish

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## cacian

> it's feminine in Polish


Hey *Martunia* thank you!

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## RicMisc

I believe that some ideas might be considered masculine or feminine. But that would have more to do with how society looks at gender and 'gender-rigidity' than with the actual gender.

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## Bewlay Brother

> Sometimes I cant help but think you are trolling with these types of questions...


No she is not trolling. I am 99 percent sure this is the same person who also posts frequently on another writers forum. I say this because they have the same name just with one letter differently, and the same picture. 

She has some very unorthodox beliefs. She only likes happy endings, and felt Gone with the Wind cheated the audience because they didn't end up together at the end. 

Here is a quote:




> In other words I won't mess about with the idea yes/maybe/no/don't know situations.
> As a writer I set myself a frame of mind in which I have settled fews issues such as
> No death in my stories.
> No MCS.
> No disapointments or misleading ideas.
> Once I have set my sets a clear goals then I can play with the rest.


MCS=main characters. So she likes to have no deaths or disappointments or main characters in her books. Very interesting, and I am being serious. I'm not posting this trying to make her look bad in any way. I am just genuinely intrigued. No deaths, disappointments, and main characters? That is crazier than anything Wolf has done! 

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/show...=238466&page=2

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## Jair

The word 'idea' is masculine in Hebrew and feminine in Arabic and most other Semitic languages, I believe.

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## cacian

> The word 'idea' is masculine in Hebrew and feminine in Arabic and most other Semitic languages, I believe.


It is conflicting how it varies from language to language.
Interesting!
Thanks Jair :Thumbs Up:

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## Pensive

I think it's _die Idee_ (feminine) in German too.
However it is masculine in my native tongue Urdu. _ka khayal_.

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## cafolini

What makes anyone think that because the word idea might be femenine or masculine, it might force its gender on what it means? Women and Men are not ideas?

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## xtianfriborg13

Whoa. I didn't know ideas have gender.

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## cacian

Well let's put it this way I think an idea stems from someone and if we are sometimes able to tell the gender of the writer we should able to tell whether it is a he or a she idea. In French or Spanish the gender of the the IDEA is feminine. Une idee or Una idea.
Let's have a look at Adam and Yves. Whose idea was it to take a bite at the apple?
But then whose idea was it to set it all up? Whose idea was it not to do it?
Three conflicting messages, three different people, and three ideas within one idea, reason, which is SIN.
In order to construct a sin concept one needed to plot in order to destroy to get to the third malevolent point and that is what is now recognised as the SIN.
The question is this:
Was SIN thought out before or after the event? Did someone know they wanted the SIN out and therefore plotted or did the SIN come after the event?
Ideas plenty of them but in which order? That should be the truth element to all universal truth.
In French SIN is masculine Un Péché . Funnily enough its feminine in French Une Pêche and means peach.
Is the idea of biting into a peach every time means he or she is a sinner?
Une clementine, a clementine, has also a derivative of clemency. Again the act of sinning is in the act of eating. Bread and wine comes to mind.

Sorry these are just speculations and so an idea has a gender or an agenda? Play on words.

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## hillwalker

Speculations indeed.

I don't think it's a case of *ideas* having a gender. It's a case of certain languages imposing a gender on every noun whether concrete or abstract. Not only French but German, Spanish, Welsh etc - but NOT English. I think this is partly due to the shared derivation of these languages from Latin where again every noun is either masculine or feminine.

Trying to tie language and its rules back to Adam and Eve is a little too fanciful. Can anyone tell me what language these two mythical characters spoke?

H

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## manuscript

the window is feminine. the moon is feminine also. the sun is masculine. but the sunlight and the moonlight are both masculine. trees are masculine, but their leaves are feminine. flowers are also feminine. but the lawn is masculine. the bookshelf is feminine, the bookbindings are masculine, the pages are feminine, the contents are indeterminate. my desk lamp is masculine, but the bulb is feminine. the class is feminine, the teacher is masculine. current affairs are masculine, and abstraction is feminine. my heart is feminine, but my soul is masculine. my brain is feminine, but my mind is neuter. therefore, ideas are intersex.

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## blazeofglory

Feminism in language and literature ubiquitous and many languages have a good amount of it. When I was learning French, alas I could not complete it, I found gender in it. In Hindi too there is plenty of it. In English and Nepali I do not feel gender has a great role.

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## cacian

Good question.
Did they speak at all? I mean did they really exist more to the point?
The language they would have spoken is a tricky one. Doesn't the bible says something about it?
If not my instinct says they propably spoke the language of god? what is that ? I have not got a clue.
If they did not talk they seemed to have been very busy trying to disobey a god.
Haha. I am failing to answer this question very badly.

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## manuscript

cacian have you ever read the essay "The Laugh Of The Medusa" by Helene Cixous? i found it very interesting.

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## cacian

> cacian have you ever read the essay "The Laugh Of The Medusa" by Helene Cixous? i found it very interesting.


manuscript no I have not. It sounds intriguing. I will see if I can find it online.

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## manuscript

> manuscript no I have not. It sounds intriguing. I will see if I can find it online.


i hope i got the right essay, im pretty sure it is the correct title. it is an essay about the idea that language as it is used has been formed by the gender of its users, so that in a historical sense most of western thought having been written down in books by men, has been written in the form of a language created by men, and that masculine language has become bound up with the ideas it has described, so that the ideas are masculine. and so Cixous goes on to describe ways in which a feminine language of ideas might be formulated.

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## cacian

> i hope i got the right essay, im pretty sure it is the correct title. it is an essay about the idea that language as it is used has been formed by the gender of its users, so that in a historical sense most of western thought having been written down in books by men, has been written in the form of a language created by men, and that masculine language has become bound up with the ideas it has described, so that the ideas are masculine. and so Cixous goes on to describe ways in which a feminine language of ideas might be formulated.


Le Rire De La Meduse. I am looking to read it in French now.
That is indeed a very interesting way of putting. I never thought about it that way. 
A Language for women is very good but I would opt a language for both. It is even more interesting to create a language that both genders can use to identify them as well others. A language that speaks for both feminine and masculine reinforces our understanding of both genders which I feel is very pressing.
It is true that from the word go the language we speak is created by the masculine gender and therefore a woman to express herself will find contrived and conformist to those who made it created it to be masculine geared.
The French language is a very sexist language in that there could be 10 women in a group and are referred to them as ELLES in feminine.
But comes in one man in the group and the whole reference to them turns to ILS masculine plural.
In English there seem be a non indicative gender pronoun meaning when one says THEY it is not clear whether it is men/women or both.

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## manuscript

i like the idea of a language for both. that is so very strange about french gender.

sometimes i thought it would be wonderful if there were words in english to obliterate gender terms completely. sorry i dont know the technical grammar terms for what kinds of words these are, but words like "him" and "her" and "his" and "hers". i think it would be ideal if they could just be conflated into one term. like "hirs".

there are no words in english to describe the gender of a person who is not him or her, but other than him or her. unless, "its", which has no gender at all. maybe this is a sort of annihilation of gender, but it seems to suggest an entire annihilation of sex, that person cannot have a sex at all or participate as sexed in language, but becomes designated by the same term used to refer to a mere object, which does not seem desirable.

(sorry, i realise these thoughts are not properly worked out, and are perhaps off topic - i just find it interesting to think about.)

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## cacian

manuscript I absolutely agree with you.
I have always wondered about the lack of a neutral gender that does not signify a HE or a SHE. I have characters I wish not to reveal the gender. I want them to be either a He or a SHE or even both a HE and SHE at the same time. It is limiting in terms of writing.
Whilst I like to tell a story I also like the reader to think beyond genders and clichés because the both are tied.
Writing can be fun when all element of reality is swept off its feet and where every single detail of life is transported to a different world of thinking and being. Nothing is ever the same when a story unfold it is a different world with different elements and gender neutral process is one of them. 

I sometimes like to read books where I want the character to remain neutral. I wish not to be told about their gender all the time.
I want to read with something to think about but not too much and so a neutral gender can do that. It allows the reader to make their minds up about the characters and whether they want them to be a He or She. I call that ''engaging reads''.
I get bored with books when I am straight told everything spoonfed if you like about the characters the place the looks the thoughts.
As a reader I become self reliant on the writer to spoonfed me every single detail of the story. It is kind of tiresome from the writer's point of view because instead of toying with the imaginary element the writer is bound with details of everything.

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