Be Consistent!

By now, my readers know my discomfort with gendering. In February, I gave you an example of gender madness in Germany:

Studentinnen (female) and Studenten (male) are now not only officially but commonly called Studierende.

That's not all. When I passed the other day the entrance to this very Lutheran Students' Community building, I read the following:

So what is the correct name of the Community?

Let's face it; the use of the present participle and the Binnen-I to make the language gender-equitable are not the only possibilities currently discussed in Germany.

These options are not part of the official orthography, e.g., Genderstern (Student*innen), Gendergap (Student_innnen), Doppelpunkt (Student:innen), and Mediopunkt (Student•innen). Of those, the internal-I, the gender asterisk, and the gender gap are widespread. The Council for German Orthography does not endorse these options but at least discusses them as means to strive for gender-equitable written expressions.

In 2020, the Duden* listed the internal-I as a possible "gender-appropriate language" but insisted its use is "not covered by the official rules."
*Germany's Webster

The Council for German Orthography only admitted, "Since the internal-I has a 'graphostilistic' aspect, it is an element of text design."

There is no end to the discussion. The Greens recommend more gender-neutral terms for official communications. Should one use the asterisk instead of the interior-I to include all genders and gender identities?

The slightly right-wing Verein Deutsche Sprache (German Language Society) bitterly opposed any gendering of the German language and wrote, "In principle, a gender starlet is nothing more than five silly apostrophes* arranged in a circle."

*comparable in English to the grocer's apostrophe

Which now? Red Baron keeps shaking his head.

*