Romina Navarro, Giovana Fleck, Violeta Camarasa, Tori Egherman, Laila Le Guen, Belen Febres-Cordero, Marisa Petricca, Andrea Paola Hernandez, Manuela Burghelea
Image from Pixabay, under Pixabay License, remixed by Global Voices. In the coming months, Global Voices will explore non-binary language initiatives, initially known as “inclusive language”. This first collective story begins with an exploration of gender in Romance languages. Language can be seen as a form of magic that impacts the world. What we say and how we use language affects our thinking, imagination, and our reality. In most Romance languages, there are feminine and masculine gender marks for pronouns, nouns, adjectives, determiners, and demonstratives. In situations where a person's gender is unknown or when referencing a mixed-gender group, current Romance language conventions prioritize the masculine form as the generic standard. Unlike Romanian, which has preserved the neuter gender from Latin, the French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and Catalan languages only have binary gender forms and, therefore, pose special difficulties for gender neutrality. Activism for gender neutrality in language is part of a larger movement to question, resist, and dismantle sexism conveyed through language. Activists claim that the dominance of the masculine gender in languages is not neutral, as purported, but rather has been imposed historically through ideological and political processes. During the past few decades, movements have pushed for the increased visibility of women and other genders in language by promoting the use of neuter pronouns and inflections with different combinations of symbols or vowels. Photo by Chabe01, Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 4.0 Children who study French quickly learn the oft-repeated grammar rule: “masculine takes over feminine”. This means that in plural sentences with different genders, the masculine form dominates. Among French-speaking communities, an orthography known as inclusive writing has gained prominence in recent years to address this linguistic gender bias. The first way of adopting inclusive writing is to use existing neutral forms where possible, for example, “lectorat” (‘the readership’) instead of “les lecteurs” (m.) or “les lectrices” (f.). The second technique explicitly includes both masculine and feminine endings. For example, the “e” and “ice” endings, often used for feminine forms, would follow the masculine form, for example, “lecteur·ice·s” (‘readers’). Although this orthography has been adopted by some media outlets, universities and a few companies, it remains highly controversial, most notably in France, where critics argue that it is unnecessary. The most common new pronoun used to refer to non-binary people or to a mixed-gender group is “iel” — a contraction of “il” and “elle” (‘he/she’). Yet, there is still no consensus as to how to mark a neutral gender in other parts of speech. For example, if “iel” is used, speakers might still be forced to pick, later on, one of the binary gender options for adjectives’ or nouns’ endings. So far, pronouns and gender-neutral alternatives have no institutional stamp of approval and are not widely used outside of queer, LGBTQI+ and feminist circles. “No kid is born a macho” sign in a march for women's rights in Santa Fe, Argentina, 2017. Photo from Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA 4.0 Movements in the Spanish-speaking world have been pushing hard for gender neutrality. Language activism has been especially strong in Argentina, where it has become a powerful rhetorical and political tool in public discourse: President Alberto Fernández has used some forms of gender-neutral language in his speeches, several universities have allowed it in academic papers, and public offices like the Central Bank have included it in formal communications. Several attempts at gender neutrality have been implemented over the past decades in Spanish; the earliest included the use of “x” and “@” to replace the vowel that marks gender such as ‘tod@s’ (‘everyone’). More recently, activists started using the “e” as a generic, neutral alternative, and the neuter pronoun “elle” emerged as an alternative for “él/ella” (‘he/she’). While these forms are predominantly used within LGBTQI+ and feminist communities, a recent report by fact-checking news site Chequeado shows that some gender-neutral words are already being accepted (or tolerated) by Argentine speakers. Also, a new survey by the Spanish organization Fundéu highlighted the increasing use of “x”, “@”, or “e” by Spanish speaking Twitter users in each country. Portuguese is similar to Spanish regarding alternatives for gender neutrality.