The feminist critique of language has been contested from its very inception. Opponents have distanced themselves from feminist proposals by arguing, for example, that language and reality are separate entities; that linguistic disparity is insignificant in comparison to other forms of discrimination; and most of all, that feminist approaches are ‘unscientific’. In this paper, I explore the late 1970s dispute between Senta Trömel-Plötz, Hartwig Kalverkämper and Luise F. Pusch as a particular example of the feminist vs. ‘scientific’ position. These three linguists are prominent voices in the German-language context and their arguments provide a valuable insight into the nature of gender and language debates in general. As I aim to show in the following, even empirical evidence does not necessarily bring a close to the discussions
