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A: What should be included in a disclaimer about the omission of gender-neutral language in a bachelor's thesis?

O. R. MapperI am going to respond to various parts of your question step by step. For those unfamiliar with German, I am going to add a brief description of the gender-neutrality issue at the end of this answer, because things are quite a bit more complex in German than in English. German universities a...

+1 for 'I would indeed advise against expressing you are "not using gender-neutral language". You could try and focus on stating that some terms "can be understood in a gender-specific way".'
I'd agree with using gender-neutral nouns when it doesn't sound awkward and otherwise if possible, alternating by section or chapter. But don't do what some have done: a mindless alternation in which "he" and then "she" are used to refer to what is obviously a single person.
"grammatical form that is not normally used as a noun" I think this is exaggerated. For certain verbs it seems to me it is common, even irrespective of gender-neutrality. Let's stay around participant (which by its etymology even seems to be a present participle, too): Mitwirkende or Mitwirker?
@quid: Teilnehmer. It is true that for some terms such as Mitwirkende, the present participle is commonly used, but those are the ones unaffected by a transformation to a gender-neutral term, so they cannot serve as examples for using a different grammatical form specifically for reasons of gender-neutral language that is indeed commonly used.
I wrote "stay around" to suggest that it is similar yet not a direct translation. .Yet in fact Teilnehmende would not seem that uncommon a word either. "Die Führung beginnt in zwei Minuten. Teilnehmende werden gebeten zum Eingang zu kommen." Anyway, my point is that using the present participle to create a noun from a verb is a common thing, while your answer could be (mis?)understood to claim it was not. Granted there are some issues, especially in cases where the meaning is somewhat different: Both Hörende and Hörer are common nouns but would not mean quite the same thing.
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@quid: I find the use of Teilnehmende in your example quite weird. To me, it sounds like those who are already taking part in one of the guided tours should leave their group and come back to the entrance. In contrast, I would perceive anyone who has signed up as a Teilnehmer, even if their guided tour has not yet begun. In any case, I have added a remark to my answer to clarify the present participle is indeed commonly in noun use for some words.
Thanks for the modification. It might not be the place for a detailed discussion. A further detail, it seems not quite correct to say that it "does not change by gender" as typically it is just that the m/f plural happen to be the same.
@quid: Can you give any examples? As far as I can tell right now, present participle forms themselves are always the same for male and female (as long as we ignore the changing articles and adjectives) - der Mitwirkende - die Mitwirkende; der Studierende - die Studierende; etc.
Sorry I did not think as much about this remark as I should have, but it's only with the definitive article that it's the same, with the indefinite article it's different. "Ein Studierender und eine Studierende waren die einzigen Anwesenden." // Actually, thinking and checking a bit more, technically, it's a substantivised adjective, where the adjective was obtained by present participle adjectivization. The actual word is Studierender (m) and Studierende (f). At least that's what Duden says. With special remark that the plural becomes common as gender-neutral form.
Sorry to come back to this. But I just read your English example fully now, and it seems misleading. What should the German sentence be that corresponds to the ing-ed version and that would be gender-neutral? I continue to think you need plural throughout else it does not work (except if you use say "der/die Lehrende" but that seems half-way and the need is not visible from the English example.)
@quid: Words such as Student are replaced with the seemingly more gender-neutral Studierende, even though it's only true in plural, as you correctly point out. Nonetheless, the replacement happens just as well in singular (maybe because diverging singular and plural forms would sound weird, too). As an example, have a look at Uni Ulm's Studierendenstatistik website, which contains phrases such as "Jeder Studierende wird nur einmal als Person gezählt."
Yes, that's interesting. But "Studierende werden nur jeweils einmal als Person gezählt." would seem to work just fine.
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When confronted with different grammatical cases these terms tend to loose their ability to neutralize gender stylishly. What if you want to give sth. to einer/einem Studierenden ? You omitted the classic StudentInnen btw.
@moooeeeep cases seem not relevant (it is already 'ein Studierender' and 'eine Studierende'). As explained above it just does not work for singular, yet does work for plural.
@moooeeeep: In my answer, I tried to replicate StudentInnen with the actorsResses example.
In regards to gender neutral pronouns in English, I see singular 'they' used a lot more than 'it' when referring to a person.
@Jase: Indeed, for some reasons, statements such as "The user scans the screen before they click a button." sound quite natural in English, whereas "Der Benutzer oder die Benutzerin sucht den Bildschirm ab, bevor sie eine Schaltfläche anklicken." sounds either ungrammatical in German, or conveys the image that it's always two users, one male and one female, who are acting together and whose behaviour is being described. The latter may be a result of having to list two noun forms, as "Die Reinigungskraft putzt, bevor ihnen ihr Gehalt ausgezahlt wird." sounds definitely ungrammatical.
Even the English form of gender-neutral language is inconvenient, basically advocating the use of three words ("his or her", "he or she", etc.) where one word used to do. Most of the time I prefer to fall back on the grammatically incorrect solution of using collective pronouns to skirt the issue (so "their", "they", etc.).
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@aroth: Indeed, see Jase's comment and my response to it.

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