Feminization

The feminization is a process consisting in marking female forms of names or adjectives where the traditional grammatical rules recommend the use of not marked forms.

One distinguishes on the one hand feminization from the terminology, or creation of term indicating with female trades, titles, ranks and functions (this terminological feminization is treated in the article Féminisation of the names of trades) and on the other hand the feminization of the texts, or techniques of explicit introduction of the marks of female during the drafting of texts (memorandums, articles of newspaper, etc), to which this article is devoted.

Problems

The feminization is registered within a fight antisexist.

This one denounces the “rule” commonly learned to the users from the French as regards agreement from the kind, rule which is stated by the well-known formula “the masculine carries it”. Thus, one writes: “The demonstrators in the street are in anger”, even if these demonstrators are in fact 4 men and 18 women.

Certain antisexists regard this grammatical “rule” as an artefact of a patriarchal company.

The feminized texts are consequently regarded as an approach less excluding by certain antisexists.

In this type of text, the female ones are clarified. To take again the example of the top one would write then: “Expressing Them and demonstrators”; or one would resort to typographical processes (“expressing Them in the street are in anger”, “the manifestantEs”, “Them expressing/i/o”, “Them expressing (E) S”, etc)

Grammatical analysis

The traditional against-argument explains why grammar does not know a concept of sex, but only of kind. And it is said whereas in French the kind “not marked” is the masculine. So that if one wishes to express that a group is composed people indifferently of sex as well male as female, one traditionally uses this kind not marked, as it would always be necessary to include/understand like an expression of the asexual nature of the group.

It is exact that the kind does not have in theory anything to see with the sex but is a pure formal property of certain words. Moreover, from many languages do without kind. It does not remain about it less than in the languages which have a kind, this kind recuts the opposition of direction male-female when it is a question of being animated sexués (of which the being human). From there the representation of the opposition masculine-female like returning to the distribution of the sexes, a representation which is heavy consequences on social plan (screening of the part played by the women on the public stage, résidstances psychological with the candidature for stations offered to the masculine, etc)

Typographical analysis

Incidental clauses of “E” in their various forms (bars, brackets, etc;) would not help the reading, which they slow down. Results of a study carried out by Gygax and Gesto (Heaviness of text and feminization: An answer to the French Academy, 2007) show the opposite however. Thus, the reading of names of trades in a form epicene or feminized is slowed down only at the beginning of text (with the first reading of the names) but it becomes again normal then, indicating an effect of habituation.

In addition, the affected words of this “E” could, according to some, being interpreters as being granted to the female kind, which would be likely to modify the direction of the sentences.

A sometimes advised alternative practice with which wants to underline the neutrality of the text with respect to the sex is to use formulas epicene S. For example, rather than “the Men”, Humanity will be used. But the legibility which is gained by avoiding the formulas typographically heavy is lost by the intrduction of a certain level of abstraction in the text.

See too

External bond

Decree and rules of feminization of the French language in Belgium
List of female used since the Old Mode until our days, SIEFAR, International Company for the Study of the Women of the Old Mode
Guide of formulation not sexist of the administrative and legislative texts of the Confederation (Swiss)

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