French President Emmanuel Macron supports ban on gender-inclusive language

In a speech earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron stated his support for a bill to ban inclusive language – or a way of writing in French that uses both masculine and feminine forms for certain words – in public education and government documents.

“In our language, the masculine acts as the neutral,” Macron said in a speech at the inauguration of French language center in Aisne on Monday. “There is no need to add dots in the middle of words, or dashes, or anything that makes the text unreadable.”

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At issue is what’s known in French as langage inclusif, or inclusive language, the practice of de-centering the masculine by not using it as a neutral form to refer to people of all genders. This can be accomplished by writing out both the masculine and feminine forms of a word, avoiding gendered terms when possible, and using dots or dashes to include the feminine and masculine forms in the same word.

For example, the word commerçant refers to a male shopkeeper and commerçante refers to a female shopkeeper. If someone were writing about shopkeepers in general – of any gender – they might write commerçant.e or commerçant-e, or commerçant.e.s or commerçant-e-s in the plural, if using inclusive language. Standard French, though, calls for just the masculine form to be used unless referring to one or many specific shopkeepers who are known to be women.

Responding to Macron, the group Tract des Linguistes said, “The expression ‘The masculine acts as the neutral’ is contradicted by numerous scientific works that show, with data and experimentation, that the first meaning of the masculine for human beings is to refer to men, and that the so-called general use is a source of ambiguity. Fewer women respond to employment offers that are written in only the masculine form, for example. All of this is documented.”

The French Senate passed the bill banning inclusive language in a 221-82 vote, with many on the left opposing it.

“Rightwing senators are imposing their retrograde and reactionary whims on us,” French Sen. Yan Chantrel (Socialist Party) said. “Attempts to freeze the language will lead to its death.”

Going beyond the dots and dashes that Macron referred to, the bill bans nonbinary pronouns like iel, made from combining il (he) and elle (she). It’s unclear if the bill would also ban using words or phrasing that avoids using gendered pronouns and nouns altogether, which is another aspect of inclusive language.

Proponents of the bill claim that inclusive language makes writing “unreadable” to dyslexic people. Writing for 24 heures, dyslexic feminist Géraldine Dubuis said, “Some dyslexia organizations are going to say that the language adds a new difficulty, but I think it’s not in and of itself insurmountable. They are more rules to integrate into our language. Moreover, we don’t have any studies on the topic.”

“There is no reason to automatically disqualify inclusive writing just for the benefit of dyslexic people. On the other hand, numerous studies have shown that writing in an inclusive manner permits everyone to feel concerned by what is being said.”

The bill now goes to the National Assembly, which has not yet scheduled a vote on it.