Gendered Representations of Person Referents Activated by the Nonbinary Gender Star in German: A Word-Picture Matching Task

Abstract

The public debate on the use of the German nonbinary gender asterisk (Lehrer*in ‘teacher’) is emotionally charged. While it has been adopted by political and educational institutions, opponents argue that it is inappropriate for making persons identifying themselves beyond the male-female-dichotomy more visible. We investigated this claim by using a word-picture matching task directly assessing mental representations activated by the asterisk. Students evaluated whether pictures of persons read as male, female, or nonbinary were suitable illustrations of immediately preceding role nouns in masculine, feminine, or star form. Processing difficulties for female pictures following masculine nouns confirmed that the latter was not automatically read as generic. High acceptance rates and low reaction times for all pictures following the asterisk suggest it leads to inclusive mental representations including men, women, and persons beyond the gender binary. These results are the first to confirm that the asterisk elicits the intended inclusive interpretation.