Adela Cortina said that what is not named does not cease to exist; rather, it is not seen, it is ignored and it is hidden, but it certainly does exist.
Ana de Miguel, for her part, comments on the decisive importance of words as channels through which the value recognised in people is expressed. Her idea of recognition, based on the philosophical concept of the term, is related to justice and to the need to recognise ourselves as equals, and she cites words as the main channel for expressing that recognition.
The use of language, communication itself, hides realities so that we don't have to see them. One of the aims of non-sexist language and communication is precisely that: to make visible and explicit what is excluded and absent. For many years of history, we women have been the absent, the excluded, the unrecognised, the unnamed.
To address the dangers, or rather the consequences, of sexist communication, I would like to take three approaches: language and sexism; language and politics; and language and thought.
First, we are tired of hearing demands such as the feminisation of language dismissed with the argument that the language is not sexist, and they have a point. Language itself, the Spanish language itself, is not sexist; the use we make of it is. Teresa Meana speaks of language as something living, changing, flexible and broad. Through its agents, people, language evolves with societies. People, as the creators of language, use it and shape it as they wish, following the evolution (or regression) of their societies. In the end, language and words convey human thoughts and feelings. Language is nothing more than a vehicle.
Mercedes Bengoechea argues that, just as our society is built on structures that create hierarchies and discriminate, it is normal for our way of communicating to aim to preserve those hierarchies and for our belief systems to make elements that may be unjust seem normal, because our conceptual frameworks are based on inequality. Here lies the most dangerous element: the power of words to change aspects of our minds such as reasoning or decisions but, above all, and this is what concerns us today, they can change beliefs and ideas.
So is language sexist? No. Does its use create sexist communication and a sexist society? Yes, insofar as it reflects a reality.
Second, we cannot deny that this is also a political issue, because language is political, societies are ideological and the way communication is used is deliberately political. The very etymology of words bears this out. Etymologically, politics means "life in the polis"/"public life". Who has historically taken part in life in the polis , and who stayed at home? Who, then, was named, and who was not? This, and I think we will all agree, has changed. We are in public life, in political life, and have been for a long time, and language has to recognise us as such. What are the consequences in everyday life of not naming women? The most obvious, in my view, is a generalised and exclusionary masculine form in every field and every profession, which creates stereotyped role models.
Finally, let's look at how language, or its use, can shape the way we think. Lera Boroditsky has asked this question in her research as a neuroscientist, and concludes that language does indeed shape the way we think, giving a series of examples to show it. In languages such as Spanish or German, where every noun, everything that can be named, has a masculine or feminine grammatical gender, this can have consequences such as the following: the moon in Spanish is grammatically feminine, and in our conceptual framework it is closely linked to femininity; in children's stories it is even drawn with eyelashes (as if men had none). In German, on the contrary, the sun is grammatically feminine and the moon masculine. Boroditsky's experiments conclude that a German speaker would describe the sun with adjectives associated with femininity, and a Spanish speaker the other way round. How dangerous is it that everything that can be named has a grammatical gender, masculine or feminine, with its connotations and stereotypes?
We tend to think our minds are much more rigid than they really are. The human mind is highly malleable and, surprising as it may seem, we keep the same capacity to learn throughout our lives as we had in childhood. We find this idea of building beliefs about what we cannot be in the gender stereotypes passed on through language at every stage of our lives. Words can create stigmas. A very clear example is a psychological experiment carried out to show gender socialisation in La Mente en Pañales. It was very simple: a baby was dressed in pink and then in blue, and adults who did not know the baby's sex were asked to interact with it. The difference in how they spoke to the baby dressed in pink and the baby dressed in blue shows us the importance of inclusive speech and communication in eliminating gender stereotypes. The baby dressed in blue was spoken to with more traditionally masculine adjectives such as "strong", "big", "clever"; and the baby dressed in pink with feminine adjectives such as "pretty", "sweet", "delicate". How dangerous, isn't it?
This same idea is also found in what is not named. One of the most important problems of exclusionary communication is the failure to create role models for women and men. The constant use of a generic masculine, among other things, makes us picture a masculinised and stereotyped society where, for example, there are only male doctors, lawyers, judges or magistrates, and only female nurses, housewives or cleaners. One example is the riddle of "the father, the son and the eminent surgeon", where it seems impossible to imagine that the eminent surgeon is the boy's mother. Without inclusive communication, we cannot create role models that make us think of women as, for example, experts in something.
The UN defines non-sexist language as speaking and writing in a way that does not discriminate against a particular sex, social gender or gender identity, and does not perpetuate gender stereotypes. Given the key role of language in shaping cultural and social attitudes, using gender-inclusive language is a powerful way to promote gender equality and eradicate gender bias.
Finally, I would like to highlight Teresa Meana's words when she says that the sexism and androcentrism of language would only be definitively solved if the social structures and conceptual frameworks that encourage sexist use of language were to change. To bring about this change, we demand that women be named in their private and public lives, and that language be changed, since it is a living thing, so as to reshape the mindset of the people who use it.
This will not fall from the sky: we need training in inclusive use of language, in learning all the alternatives that our rich language offers. To learn, change and evolve towards a society that names, and recognises, everyone who lives in it.
Author: Nuria de Pablo Sánchez