'Françaises, Français': Why the French language need not be so sexist

[MineralMan]

6. Well, it is sort of changing the language.

And the French are very, very protective of the language, with an academy dedicated to keeping it "pure."

English is far simpler with regard to gender in language. However, even English has a habit of using masculine pronouns with collective groups. We're trying to get rid of that, but it's difficult even with a non-inflected language like English.

We're using "they" and "them" now, but that's difficult to standardize.

Ridding a language of patriarchal usages is very, very difficult to accomplish, since countless millions of people use the language constantly, properly or not.

Even in our most revered documents, masculine forms are widely used to represent all people, regardless of gender. "All men are created equal..." for one example. In historical documents, changing "men" to "people" isn't going to happen, although it probably should. So, the change will be gradual and halting. Altering language is a very difficult process, and requires people in general to stop using old forms and usages. It also requires careful rewriting and forethought to maintain a smooth flow of writing.

As a professional journalist and writer, I've been very careful in my writings to avoid gendered pronouns and many collective nouns for decades. Sometimes, that has required careful rewriting to work around common usages. In the 70s through the 90s, it was difficult to get non-gendered language past my editors, who wanted to revert back to traditional usages, but I persisted. Eventually, I became more skilled at writing naturally without using gendered pronouns. I got less and less blowback from editors over time, as acceptance of non-patriarchal forms became more and more common.