Is Catalan sexist?

PalmaI never thought it would happen, but this year I've become a Barça fan (and a big one!). I've followed them all season and celebrated the League title like any other culer. At home, everyone had to watch the Super Cup and Champions League matches. I even dragged a friend to Barcelona to watch the last League match. It was the first time – and also the last – that we were able to see Alexia Putellas play for Barça and, even though the League was already more than won, the blaugranes played a very good match. I don't want to detract from Hansi Flick's team in any way, but the ones who, at 24 years old, have made me a Barça follower are Cata, Patri, Mapi, Pina, Kika, and Alexia. For me, and for many others, 'Barça' is the Women's team, without the adjective, by default; it's the unmarked form, even if it goes against the norm.

One of the fundamental issues surrounding the debate on non-sexist language in Catalan is identifying the problem being discussed. In other words, without fully understanding what we're talking about, everyone wants to have their say. Often, due to thematic proximity, the various open fronts related to gender in the linguistic sphere are confused, as Marina Casadellà explains in Som dones, som lingüistes, som moltes i diem prou. She mentions three: the change of grammatical gender in reference to people who request it, the uses of linguistic gender for non-binary people, and the use of the feminine as a generic plural, among others. In this case, we will focus on the latter point, which represents an example of the solutions that have emerged to combat non-sexist language. Because anyone can form an opinion, whatever the topic – I believe – first, one must know the arguments of all sides.

Two paradigms

It could be said that two paradigms currently coexist, which can be synthesized into two complementary phrases. On the one hand, the defenders of the idea that “it is necessary to change the language to change the world”, who express the will to change the language to make it less sexist towards female speakers and to reverse the historical discrimination that women have suffered. Since, generally, the defenders of this position belong to or are the same institutions, numerous decalogues, manuals, and good practice guides have been developed to make non-sexist use of Catalan. In these documents, they propose, for example, using the feminine plural as generic (‘All the female students in the second year of my institute have passed the selectivity exam’), using double forms (‘Young men and young women who exercise regularly rest better’), using epicene nouns, generic forms, and periphrases (such as ‘population’ instead of ‘inhabitants’, ‘notary office’ instead of ‘notary’ and ‘female notary’, and ‘the Majorcan population’ instead of ‘the Majorcans’) and changing the obsolete definitions in dictionaries (such as that of ‘mayoress’, which in DIEC2 was formerly only the ‘wife of the mayor’). The first three, from a linguistic point of view, exclude, promote binarism, and overload and depersonalize the discourse, respectively.

On the other hand, there are those who think – we think – that the world must be changed first, and then the language will change, based on the thesis that languages themselves are not discriminatory, but rather social structures are. All the confusion surrounding sexism in language stems from the confusion of the concepts of 'sex', 'gender', and 'grammatical gender', which should not be mixed. 'Grammatical gender', according to the DIEC2, is a "category that in some languages leads to the distribution of nouns into nominal classes", that is, an arbitrary decision that was established in the foundations of the language. Of categories, in any language, there are 'marked' and 'unmarked' ones. In Catalan, the masculine, the singular, and the present verb tense are the unmarked forms. What does this mean? That the 'masculine' form when referring to a collective is the unmarked one, because it has no gender mark. Nor is it marked from a semantic point of view regarding sex, as linguist Gabriel Bibiloni states.

The example at the beginning of the text makes this quite clear. When talking about Barça, or any football team, even those most committed to language, we imagine a group of players, not female players. It would be the unmarked form, which is why we must add the adjective 'feminine'. The fact that society considers male teams the 'unmarked' form is indeed a sexist construct, but this concept does not apply to language. However, it is true that we do not assimilate this concept from the very moment we start speaking and writing. When she was my tutor, Dr. Rosa Estopà explained to me that, years ago, she had wanted to create a children's scientific dictionary and that when she visited schools she had to specify that it was 'for boys and girls', because in Primary school classrooms they did not yet feel identified with the generic masculine. Not for ideological reasons, but because at such a young age we have not yet assimilated this mechanism.

Discrimination

There are ways to use Catalan in a less sexist way, but in some cases, the room for maneuver is limited. The fact that there are two grammatical genders, masculine (unmarked) and feminine, cannot be changed, just as in other languages like German, the fact that there are three (masculine, feminine, and neuter) cannot be modified. Around the world, there are languages with very diverse case systems, but that doesn't make them any less discriminatory towards women. Therefore, the debate needs to be shifted, and we must focus on other language-related issues that are indeed sexist.

The first, what words are related to women? And to men? Who do you associate 'reason' with and who with 'emotion', or 'thought' and 'feeling'? The second, in the workplace, the presence of women has increased; however, from the perspective of discourse analysis, if they have to intervene, for example in a meeting, at what point do they intervene? How much do they intervene? How do they intervene? Are they heard? And, above all, are they listened to? The third, what narratives are constructed around women? How does society and the media treat them, linguistically? If they speak to you of Francina and Margalida, perhaps you will think of a relative, friend, or acquaintance. However, if Bauzá, Antich, and Matas are mentioned, and then Francina and Margalida, they are no longer the same. The same happens with Soraya, Hillary, and Kamala (and their counterparts: Rajoy, Clinton, and Trump) and with Arantxa (and Nadal), Alexia, and Aitana (and Messi and Piqué).

In short, until now, non-sexist language has been presented to us as the panacea for gender inequalities that 'language perpetuates,' which has distanced us from the real problem: language is not sexist, but speakers are. Thus, we need to rethink how we use language and what we can do ourselves in this case to bring about change. As the linguist Carme Junyent said, "if the world changes, don't worry, language will reflect it." You know we still have work to do.