Everyone wants to be seen, to varying degrees, in different forums – invisibility is the privilege of those who are not being overlooked.

Not recognizing this privilege is at the center of many heated debates when it comes to inclusive language. In German, the “Gendersternchen” in a word like “Lehrer*innen” is commonly assumed to stand for anything that’s not either male or female when you want to talk about all the teachers, when you want to include everyone. Traditionalists argue – correctly – that German grammar affords us the – dubious – luxury of the generic masculine. If you say “Lehrer” (that is, use the masculine form), that means everyone. But here’s the rub: If you’re a man, you know you’re included when someone says “you guys”. If you’re not a man, you can’t be sure. And this “you can’t be sure” is the difference between getting a job or not getting a job. It’s what defines the height of the glass ceiling. It’s the root cause of the gender pay gap. It’s what makes people insist on the Gendersternchen.

Traditionalists like to say, “but the generic masculine means you also.” Gee, thanks. Whether I’m included or not depends on your graces? If you don’t grant me the privilege, I have to squeeze myself into the picture myself, like Donald Trump pushing his fellow heads-of-state to the side to be in the group photo.

Meryl Streep calls herself an “actor”, not an actress. I haven’t asked her why, but think about the implications of the sentence “she’s the highest-paid actress in Hollywood” for a minute …

Saying that Meryl Streep is the highest paid actor in Hollywood in German is not that easy. If you say, “sie ist die bestbezahlte Schauspielerin in Hollywood” that means there might be many men who are paid more (which is true). If you say “sie ist der bestbezahlte Schauspieler in Hollywood”, you’d be using wrong grammar. If you employ the Gendersternchen, you’re including male, female, and non-binary, but you’re also constructing a very awkward sentence that’s hard to read and practically impossible to speak: “Er*sie ist der*die bestbezahlte*r Schauspieler*in in Hollywood.” It would really be easier if we actually had a generic form (masculine or feminine) that was worth its money.

But we don’t, so we have to perform some nifty mental gymnastics. “Sie verdient als Schauspielerin mehr als sonst jemand in diesem Beruf in Hollywood.” Correct, but extremely unsexy. Maybe, “niemand kann in Hollywood ihre Schauspielgagen toppen.”

Imagine this is a sentence said in a movie. So now, you need take into account a possible gesture or emphasis. Maye someone is pointing at Meryl Streep as they’re saying “she”, so that the pronoun has to be in the same place as the gesture. Gone is the beautiful sentence you’ve just come up with, because the “niemand / no one” falls on the gesture pointing as the person says “she” …

And now, as if things couldn’t get any worse, add to this the challenge of trying to match the length of the sentence, the rhythm, and the bilabials, to the original sentence.

Now you have an idea of what a dubbing scriptwriter does. And why, of all the people dealing with language on a daily basis, we might be the best people to ask when it comes to inclusive language in visual media. Because we have the privilege of thinking about all this every day.