Inclusive writing: a strange authoritarianism

Inclusive writing: a strange authoritarianism

Until recently, inclusive writing was still just a new form of activist writing, cultivated in a few feminist or progressive circles. Since then, it has taken root in many institutions, including the federal administration, universities and CEGEPs, thereby changing its nature.

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Inclusive writing: a strange authoritarianism

Until recently, inclusive writing was still just a new form of activist writing, cultivated in a few feminist or progressive circles and which allowed some to display their political or societal commitment by ostentatiously using doublets and midpoints. Since then, it has become established in many institutions, notably the federal administration, universities and CEGEPs, thereby changing its nature.

Inclusive writing guides are multiplying, with their procession of recommendations generally formulated in the mode: do not write anymore / write instead. Do not write "students", "teachers", but rather write "students", "teachers" or "teachers". Avoid "adjectives and past participles", or even "passive turns of phrase" (which make gender agreements inevitable), etc.

In principle, these are simple recommendations: these guides are supposed to help "anyone who wishes to write, revise or translate inclusively in French" and "serve as a source of inspiration" (as the preamble to L'Inclusionnaire, this collection of "inclusive solutions" that appears on the Language Portal of Canada website, so nicely puts it). In practice, these recommendations coming from your employer or the State have an obvious prescriptive nature.

This is why, by the way, it is always amusing to hear some people defend this so-called "inclusive" writing by claiming that spelling, like language, evolves and that usage changes. This is obviously not a question of usage spreading freely within a given linguistic community, but of the authoritarian imposition of a newspeak. The two phenomena should not be confused under any circumstances. (Unlike terms or expressions that have passed into common usage, newspeaks disappear and cease to be used as soon as the coercion that imposed them disappears.)

If you reject these new practices, you are considered, without having expressed the slightest opinion on the subject, to be horrible misogynists or nasty transphobes.

In this regard, it is also rather ironic that people who only have the expression "power relations" on their lips do not realize that, as soon as an employer imposes such newspeak on its employees, it is an abuse of power. Because, on the one hand, language belongs to all its users and inventing a new grammar like a new spelling is not the responsibility of university or college administrations, or even of the federal government; in Quebec, this power of "linguistic officialization" belongs to the Office de la langue française. And on the other hand, because, in doing so, the said employer also imposes on its employees an ideological conception of their own language, its history, its grammatical genders, its grammar, which – to simplify – would all be the fruit of exclusion and of secular sexism (otherwise why would it be necessary to make them inclusive at all costs?), which is a conception that is at the very least biased and limited of what a language is (or for that matter a grammatical gender) and of the way in which it evolves.

At this point in my argument, it may also be useful to recall that the political regimes that have, in the recent past, dared to impose such radical changes to the language used by the populations under their tutelage were not exactly democratic regimes. And even then, they generally only attacked the vocabulary and the greeting formulas, leaving more or less unscathed the grammar, syntax or pronominal system of Russian or German.

In the name of this supposed inclusion, a strange authoritarianism is imposed, which goes so far as to demand that we renounce "passive turns of phrase" or the use of adjectives and past participles!

However, if you refuse these new uses, you are considered, without having expressed the slightest opinion on the subject, to be horrible misogynists or nasty transphobes. In other words, this writing that claims to be "inclusive" is above all a machine designed to exclude all those who, for various reasons, refuse to give in to this new fashion. If it does indeed "include", it is therefore primarily within a group that now sees itself defined by this new conformity which is in reality a stepping into line. It is in fact imposed by mimicry, each person fearing the judgment of their colleagues, especially their superiors, if they do not use it like them.

However, as the proponents of this newspeak invent ways of saying things that are increasingly confusing for the majority (such as "person giving birth" or "person with a penis"), the majority increasingly rebels against these new uses that are intended to be imposed on them. It hardly takes a great scholar to guess that this will arouse increasingly virulent opposition in the future.

In order to prevent such a linguistic conflict from becoming even more serious, the Quebec government should probably take responsibility and rule on these new standards that are imposed by managers of institutions who spend a lot of public money for this purpose. Unless the courts find themselves having to decide the thorny issue of the right of an employer to authoritatively impose on its employees new speech or writing methods that are not part of any custom.

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