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half3clipse t1_j5wp0hs wrote

Reply to comment by -y-y-y- in First Navajo woman becomes Speaker of the Navajo Nation Council by AudibleNod

Headline conventions accept syntactic ambiguity in favor of information density, on the assumption the reader is both 1: willing to not be deliberately obtuse and 2: if interested can read the entire following article which will explain the issue/event/etc in greater detail.

This is not new, and has been a telegraphic style was the convention long long before anyone in this thread was born. It's been how headlines have worked your entire life. If you read this title and don't easily grasp what they're talking about, that's pretty much on you.

>New Navajo Nations Council speaker to be woman for first time

That's still ambiguous anyways: It reads as if the new Navajo Nations Council speaker has just now decided to be a woman for the first time.

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damnitineedaname t1_j5x8xq7 wrote

Counterpoint.

Navaho Nations Council Elect First Female Speaker

Clear, concise, and shorter than the current title.

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UnicornOnTheJayneCob t1_j5xgfcq wrote

I explained this in another comment, but because of the Navajo conception of gender, saying it like that wouldn’t actually be whole or complete! To a Diné reader, it might even be LESS clear.

You can, for example, be female but not a woman. (You can be a masculine-spirited person with a female body, or a person with a female body whose spirit switches between masculine and feminine. Neither are termed “women”, and have their own gender names).

Traditionally, women do not become clan chiefs, though they participate in tribal leadership in other ways. So a role like this is significant for a person who plays a traditional feminine role among the people.

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rokhana t1_j5xjh0e wrote

I was under the impression that Náhleeh and Dilbaa simply meant feminine man and masculine woman respectively, men and women who are gender-nonconforming. Is this incorrect?

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UnicornOnTheJayneCob t1_j5ypeq2 wrote

I am not an elder or anything, but from what I was taught, it isn’t incorrect, but also it is sort of a shorthand, you know? Putting it that way is just a really good way of simplifying it at all without having to go into the whole structure of traditional society and myth, the different gender roles and the somewhat thorny issue of sexuality, how it all interacts with colonization/history, etc.

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