[by Jean Szlamowicz]
There are symbols and symbols.
When we say that the lion is the symbol of strength, it is an idea accessible to everyone because it is a culturally shared representation. When we talk about "the invisibility of minoritized bodies", the idea ofinvisibility takes us beyond the realm of shared representation: such an expression refers to a partisan symbolic interpretation, that is to say that symbol and changes meaning to only designate a view of the mind.
"Inclusive" writing thus claims to "make women visible" by including feminine endings everywhere. Make them visible? But by what tortuous reasoning would ophthalmology have to do with language? Language is precisely used to detach oneself from reality by using signs that have no relation to what they designate and that allow one to refer to something other than appearance. If we had to visualize beings in language, why don't we adopt ideograms resembling the drawings indicating sex on toilet doors? Or write feminine words in pink? That wouldn't be more absurd.
"Including" is not a linguistic operation, it is a simple metaphor that "symbolically" allows one to claim a superior moral position. And then, it is believing in the effectiveness of self-decreed symbols in a magical way: putting -E would have a social impact!… Ideologues thus claim to reform the language presented as “unequal” in order to be able to write “Elle était une fois” and use “a language capable of rendering Justice to Us”. But why would the “e” be the symbol of the feminine? The ending in -E is the mark of the feminine only in certain cases (certainly not in the stopwatch, nor in the father… nor in le !) and the feminine is not necessarily marked by a -E (portion, glow, half-time, ugly, mannequin…).
There is nothing to "include" in language and certainly not by confusing two meanings of words feminine / masculine — in one case, gender designates linguistic signs, in the other case, the sex of people. Inclusivists act as if it were necessary to have a correspondence between words and sexual beings.
But language works differently. When we say everyone came, word world is singular. It nevertheless designates a plurality. TheOEM may be a singular masculine noun, but it does not designate anything virile: it is a brand, which, practically, is embodied in a company comprising a plurality of human beings. We will agree that I can't stand troublemakers! is eminently inclusive: no one would dream of excluding women from this category. In short, the gender of words is not necessarily the gender of people.
But you will be told: it doesn't matter, it's symbolic. What defines a symbolic value is that it is shared by all without there being any need to decide. But accepting the militant adjuration "it's symbolic!" is to let ideologues decree what should be. We then slide down the slippery slope of anything goes.
This is how activists wanted to "invisibilize" the name of the man in words that were devoid of gender and without reference to masculinity. The sanitary protections in the restrooms of Cornell University were thus labeled free mxnstrual products so that the sequence of letters men does not appear! Doctrinal madness thus invents symbols to justify destroying them. But apart from the activists, no one interprets Menstrual as symbolic of male domination.
In such a frantic desire for inclusiveness, the opening of the 117e session of the US Congress was concluded with the formula amen and a-women by a Democratic MP. As if the Hebrew word amen (meaning so be it) should be interpreted as containing the plural English word men - No, amen doesn't mean "hi guys!".
Conversely, an antenna of the Family planning, instead of talking about women, prefers to use the expression "people who have a uterus" and, using inclusive writing that does not include anything at all, evokes the fact of "not getting pregnant". Harvard, we saw the word women replaced by birthing people (“people who give birth”).
Well, we need to know: do we make visible or do we make invisible? If language becomes the playground for everyone's demands, then there is no longer a common language: the splitting into a multitude of childish recognition codes results in linguistic communitarianism.
When we consider that the word woman no longer means "person with a uterus" and that it should include men who consider themselves "women", we have simply decided to break with the foundation of language: the arbitrary convention that the use of words is common to all. Such activism thus unilaterally changes the meaning of words woman et man, tyranny of the ultra-minority intending to impose “visibilizing” practices in order to “include” at all costs.
This frenzied inclusivism is a utopia of moral language, the linguistic equivalent of the toppling of statues of the cancel culture. Elimination, suppression, eradication of everything that displeases the activists - without ever taking reality into account other than in a "symbolic" way.
This is the whole problem with a "symbolic" reading of the world: if everyone invents a version of the world that corresponds to their fantasies, there is no longer any cultural unity or dialogue - just an insoluble conflict between each version of the society that everyone imagines. We thus see militancy split into a multitude of causes embodied in wild practices: midpoint, invention of new endings (neutral gender: and something beautiful would become beal), new words (iel to merge il et elle ; the e to la et le) — when we do not feminize the masculine (Jean-Jacques has been appointed director).
When we have established "visibilization" as a principle, then we reduce individuals to a label imposing an authoritarian symbolism for each presumed identity. Except that language is not intended to represent individuals! Or else, we will need as many words as there are things. However, it is the opposite that is the engine of language's functioning: without categories designating what surrounds us, we would be condemned to perceive nothing.
Thanks to categorization, chaise refers to all chairs, whether large or small, pink or blue, plastic or wooden. The use of categories allows us to overlook differences or to emphasize them. It is absurd to demand a marking of individualities on the basis of a scrupulous moralization. The introduction of identity policing is contrary to the nature of languages: it is precisely because they categorize in a schematic way that they allow for adjustments.
And above all, a language has nothing to do with political morality. Otherwise, we would have to conclude that a grammar is an ideology, that people think like their language and that there would therefore be peoples that could be described as "complex" or on the contrary "primitive". The psychology of peoples deduced from their language is a principle rejected by the sciences of language because it is profoundly racist.
“Invisibilization,” “masculinization,” “androphonocracy”… Verbal swelling passes for scientific and philosophical support. Fueled by the self-satisfied verbiage produced by academics who have pulverized all intellectual safeguards, inclusivist ideology intimidates, constrains, and threatens. In well-ordered troops chewing over their fixed vocabulary, activists then order the application of their symbolic interpretation and dictate what must be erased or inscribed in the language — the alliance of ignorance and authoritarianism under a cool, generous, enlightened exterior. The so-called thinkers who adopt the role of high priest of moral standards want to impose their big words, convince us of our imaginary sins, force the use of their chatter.
They just forgot that, in society, the symbolic cannot be decreed.
