Gender and Language: Turtle Topics Episode 1

Apologies for the late updates, I still need to learn to manage this around school. Also, Happy September!

So, a while back I was doing some language research and I came across a specific issue. Gender diversity and how to represent it in our everyday speech. This bit will be focused mainly on the facts of the matter, a.k.a., other people's opinions and the situation in itself. For this post, I'll be using English and French as my main examples.
For Americans, and most other English speakers, accommodating a person's gender preferences is to simply replace the pronoun, and on rare occasions, the verb. But that's about it. Endless pronouns can be generated along with endless possessive nouns, and since the he/she/it verbs are identical for English, just tell me how to pronounce it and we're all set.
French, however, is structured more traditionally. Most languages have the same set up in the sense that gender matters more than just if the person your talking about is male/female. In French, you have to worry if the inanimate object you're referring to uses he/she pronouns. On top of that, the verbs and adjectives are altered based on the gender of the subject--person, place, thing, idea, whatever.
In French, there are a few options. Some people use on, others use terms such as ille and iel. Alright, you have the pronoun, that's a start. Possessive? Can be easily worked out. On already has its own set of conjugations and whatnot. But the other two...how will you conjugate with them? Will there be a whole new set of letters that you add on to the roots of words? What about different forms? Those can be gendered too. Adjectives? Adverbs? What if someone doesn't want to use one of those terms? And they find a whole new term? Yes, while learning it all is very possible, it's not easy. All the different forms are so forgettable, and the default ones are heavily gendered. In English, you can learn the language and gender diversity can almost be a sort of afterthought that takes little effort once you open up to it. However, in most languages in the world, doing so proves to be an issue. Once you have a decent grasp at their bases, including other identities can sort of tear down a good chunk of what you just struggled to learn.
So, focusing back in on French, it's difficult for native non-binaries, because this language is the base of all they know, and including their own identities is so stressful. Due to this, there are indeed people fighting hard for certain changes to be made. Some French feminists even believe that this sort of implemented gendering is harmful to society. Languages with feminine and masculine objects tend to follow the "masc. over fem." rule. This says that you can only use female pronouns if everything you are referring to is feminine.
Example: a chair is feminine and a paper is masculine. If you have one chair: elle (she). If you have one paper: il (he). If you have five chairs: elles (they). If you have five papers: ils (they). If you have four papers and one chair: ils. However, if you have four chairs and one paper: ils.
You need them all to be feminine/female before you use the female pronouns. And there are people who claim this sort of thing puts a seed in children's minds that males dominate females. That sort of ideology clearly puts women at a disadvantage in the society with people not seeing them as lesser than their male equivalents.
Despite linguists disagreeing, the push for gender neutral language continues within the French culture. Even most of French society disagrees, and it shows from cases like gender neutral terms being banned in France's official documents. Feminists pushed back by releasing the first ever French textbook to include gender neutral language. There's scientific evidence that slightly tilts both ways, but nothing has really come out as concrete evidence for either side.

On the 10th, I plan on sharing my personal thoughts on this issue.