Feminism and French: the language of controversy

L’ecriture inclusive, is a controversal subject in France. Feminists declared we should write differently to empower the feminine form whereas it is not well-understood that the masculine form is set as the neutral form. I will tell you in this article where the debate comes from and why am I completely against it.

What is this controversial language: “l’ecriture inclusive”?

“L’ecriture inclusive” is to write “pharmacienne” (female pharmacist) for jobs when talking about women instead of “pharmacien” (the masculine neutral form) or “des salarié.e.s” (employees).

In France in 2017, there was a debate brought by feminists on the way we write. As you know, in French, adjectives, nouns and many more agree in number and gender they refer to (to know more, you can take a look at my article “Gender of French nouns: how to overcome this difficulty?”).

Let’s take an examples:

-If Aaron says “I am bad at it”, he will write in French “je suis nul à ça”

-If Berenice says “I am bad at it”, she will write in French “je suis nulle à ça”

Well, here comes feminism… Women that fight for the their rights and equality, where a small minority may have no problem when women are put above men. They decreed that we should change the way we write, but what are they trying to achieve, and would that have any impact on the societal struggles of feminism?

If I take the previous example, you would have “je suis nul.lle à ça”. This is called “l’ecriture inclusive” (literal translation “inclusive writing”).

I just would like you to imagine for a second. You want to learn French and you know it is a difficult language but you are motivated and believe you can succeed with your dedication. You find an article, written with “l’ecriture inclusive” in every single sentence. What would you feel about it? Would that make your learning easier than expected or harder?

“Et vous, étudiant.e.s qu’en pensez-vous? Je pense que vous seriez fou.olle.s de voir ce type d’écriture de la part d’un écrivain.aine.”

The Minister for Economic Affairs and Finance released some guidance of good practice for the women-men equality. This guidance focuses on the progress of equality in industries. The priorities are to attract women in industries, to keep talented women and make the women evolve in the industries.¹

I really believe that it is great to promote these kind of jobs for women because in the world we grew up they might not be aware that all the jobs are possible for a woman, but of course there are limits though, not all jobs are suitable for all people regardless of gender. In my opinion, feminism and its associated arguments are polarising in nature, always at the extremity and never holding the the middle ground in a balanced debate. I would argue that “L’ecriture inclusive” should not necessarily be decided by feminists, real problems require real solutions. Surely the value of a movement such as feminism is to positively impact the social, political and economic rights of women across the world and not to be distracted by trivial arguments of language and its history.

Following this debate on “l’ecriture inclusive”, l’Académie Française (The French Academy) declared at the unanimity on the 26^th of October 2017 that, I quote: “It is already difficult to learn a language”, “an alarm is raised in front of this abberation”, “French language is now at a deadly risk”…² So, you understand that the reference of French language was completely against it.

Where is the debate coming from?

The debate around “l’écriture inclusive” has started again since the 24^th of February 2021 where the government suggested a law to ban this type of writing. Originally, the debate dates back to 2017 when the editor of a school book “Magellan et Galilée : questionner le monde” included this type of writing in a text with words referring to jobs “agriculteur.trice” (“a farmer” in English).³

To make it clear for you, this debate does not involve the gender of nouns, that means that “une table” (“a table” in English) will always stay feminine and “un radiateur” (“a radiator” in English) will stay masculine. Here, the debates is more around the designation of people.

The problem is that during the history of French language, it was agreed that masculine will be used as neutrality, which people summarized clumsily as “the masculine predominates” and little by little created confusion and feminists understood that as “the masculine is stronger”.

Why am I completely against “l’ecriture inclusive”?

As I mentioned previously, I am thinking first of all about French learners. French is already such a complicated language, why make it even more complex? Feminists do not take into account all of the millions of people learning French. Don’t you think this is a bit selfish, and detracting from the main aims of feminism?

You will tell me that even if it is authorized, it will take time to implement it everywhere. The problem is that when it is going to be implemented there is NO coming back to the original way of writing! Think about that and French learners in 10 years.

I really believe that it is important to be open-minded, and I understand that any language can evolve. However, what I do not agree with, is to “solve a problem” where there is none! There are already so many problems in general in our modern world, so why all this non-sense by inventing issues? This is completely ridiculous!

To finish, earlier I was talking about people learning French and the additional challenge they would have with “l’écriture inclusive”, but even for me, as a French native speaker, I cannot see myself reading texts with this type of writing. I will definitely end up with a migraine!

I would say for me feminism should be equality but realistically it cannot be in all domains. For instance, we cannot have as many women and men as builder! It does not make any sense because clearly there are less women interested by this job first of all and for having done some renovation I can tell you it is physical and because of women morphology compared to men it is logical this job will be less popular. The most important for me is to fight not to tell ourselves “If I was a man how this would have been perceived or how it would have happened?”.

As a French tutor, this would mean an extra effort to make it simple for my students. I would need to break down a sentence written with “l’ecriture inclusive” in several sentences to separate the masculine and the feminine to explain the difference otherwise it is illegible for a person learning French. Also, this would mean for me to work on it as it is a different language instead of focusing on major and more important issues my students have. If this writing was born from the natural evolution of the French language that would be more comprehensive than coming from a debate and a preference from a minority of the French population.

You can take a look at a video here, with a discussion from Eliane Viennot, a historian and literature professor.

Also, here is an extract from the news on that subject (watch from 8:04 minutes) and then a little discussion with Lucy Wadham, an English author, who explains the importance of the language for a French person.

Finally, I would love to know what do you think about “l’ecriture inclusive”? Let me know in the comments and feel free to share this article!

A bientôt!

References:

1.https://www.economie.gouv.fr/presentation-guide-bonnes-pratiques-innovantes-egalite-femmes-hommes-entreprises#

2.https://www.academie-francaise.fr/actualites/declaration-de-lacademie-francaise-sur-lecriture-dite-inclusive

3.https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/affaire-en-cours/affaires-en-cours-du-vendredi-26-fevrier-2021