Bonjour! And welcome to The French Connection, the SF State podcast for all things French. For our inaugural episode, hosts Camille Cohen, Eloise Kelsey and Jess Magill discuss the French language’s complicated relationship with gender, with help from SF State assistant French professor, Blanca Missé.

In an interview with Camille, Blanca explains the history, constraints and issues with French as a gendered language at a time when traditional gender norms are being broken down in France and across the world. But is strictly gendered grammar an impediment to this progress? Find out in The French Connection Episode I: Language & Gender.

Episode Transcript

Eloise Kelsey 

Bonjour, Bienvenue, Coucou, um hello everybody welcome to The French Connection. We are three journalism students with French backgrounds and are here to make fun of little trivialities of French culture, but also bring to light the big issues faced by both the US and France. Hi, I’m Eloise.

Camille Cohen 

I’m Camille.

Jess Magill  

I’m Jess.

Camille Cohen   

And for today’s episode, which happens to be our very first, we’ll be on the subject of language and gender, for some background, the French language like many romance languages, requires a speaker to gender everything, tables, chairs, fruit boats, bats, all of them fall into a masculine or feminine category. And I was thinking about this and how it might affect the struggle for trans rights in France. 

As a cis individuals, we cannot understand the experience of being excluded from language. Blanca Misse, Assistant Professor of French at SF State, is looking to develop a course on gender within the department.

We must do what we can to educate each other on how to make a more accepting environment for everyone. It is important to us at Xpress to make space for non-binary and trans individuals to talk about these issues, and If you would like to speak on your experience, please reach out. 

Blanca Missé

My name is Blanca Misse. I am Assistant Professor of French at San Francisco State, and you can use she/her. When I was a kid, I spoke and I continue to speak Catalan and Spanish. Catalan was my dad, and Spanish was my mom. And then I went to French school since I was four years old. So almost like a maternal language to me, too. And then I learned English when I came to the US. I do have some expertise in the language as a French instructor, who, who cares about the question of gender liberation, and who wants to fight all forms of oppression through education, one of them being, you know, the oppression of gender bodies and the binary system.

Camille Cohen  

Could you give some context about the French relationship to their language? Because I feel like it’s an interesting relationship.

Blanca Missé  

First, we should start by saying that the majority of Francophone people do not live in France, right? The largest number of Francophone speakers are is the Congo for example. But in France, where the language originated, we have a relation with a language that is an identification between speaking properly French and being a good citizen. And so any mistakes you might do in speaking the language will also be markers of your degree of French-ness. There is a relation with a French language in which you need to know a little bit of the history of the language in order to be good speller and, and not make mistakes, which means that you have to have gone to a very good school, maybe taking some Latin classes, etc, etc. Right. So of course, there is a class component. To change the language for French is also to change their own history. And this is why they’re so reticent to make any of the changes people have been asking in relation to gender.

Jess Magill  

So, you know, kind of like how Professor Misse said, the basis of the French language really is rooted in the the sort of gendered language right. I think, just generally, culturally speaking, French people are very inclined to have strict sets of rules that they abide by in regards to language. And this goes for gender, just as much as it does for you know, certain honorifics like Moisiour, Madame , Madamoiselle or as it does with pronouns as in Vous voyez, which is the respectful way to refer to someone.

Eloise Kelsey  

It made me think of this quote by Albert Camus, where he says my homeland is the French language. And I think that’s very prominent for a lot of French people who also kind of have this idea that for them, to change the French language would be to disrespect France. And I remember when I moved to France at a young age, I had only been there for a few months. You know, previously, I had always been in an American school, I would go over to some friends houses and when I would speak to their parents, I would get extremely nervous just because I felt like if I made a mistake in French, that was an indication that I was disrespecting them.

Jess Magill  

All right. I mean, you don’t want to get on your friend’s parents’ bad side, right? Even if they’re close like that, they will people will get upset if you don’t if you don’t use the the more, you know formal pronouns.

Camille Cohen  

– or if you don’t bring a bottle of wine to dinner.

Jess Magill

– or if you don’t bring a bottle of wine to dinner. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of relics of French history that remain in its spelling, which often leads to a lot of those cases where something is spelled in a way that makes absolutely no sense phonetically speaking. And if French people are so stuck on something as arbitrary as these just completely antiquated forms of spelling, you know, it’s just hard for me to see them having much interest in changing you know, their language or how they approach language on something as fundamental as gender.

Camille Cohen  

Who is it that’s deciding on the changes that can or can’t be made?

Blanca Missé  

So in France, it is a little bit of a paradoxical situation, because you have the academie Francaise, the French Academy, which in theory are the gatekeepers of the language, and those who will establish new rules and norms. Now, I said, there is a paradox, because academic process is tremendously slow in its work. So it reviews one letter of the alphabet every year. And there is just like, a disconnect and a sense that it will be a waste of time to try to convince the state authorities of who are so far, far away from their practice of gender and sexuality, that they just say, whatever, we’ll keep doing our things, we don’t need them. Now, that is a problem. Because when you quote unquote grow up, and you want to have a family or you want to adopt kids, or you have things that you need the law to be there, just to make your life a little bit easier, right? Or you want to transition from one gender to another. But there is a, you know, a cultural change. And I think around sexuality and gender, people are in the understanding that we need first to change how we relate to each other. So then, when we propose a new law or a legal change, it is kind of like obvious, is less polarizing, because it’s more like ratifying a change that has already occurred in everyday life and in the social space.

Jess Magill

Misse’s takes on the academy are great, honestly, she’s, uh, yeah, I think she’s on the right side of history on this one.

Camille Cohen  

They truly believe that gender neutral language is putting French society in mortal danger. And that’s a direct quote from their website. They call themselves the immortals. 

Eloise Kelsey  

I mean..

Jess Magill  

Honestly, the whole culture at the Academie Francaise is really insular and kind of culty. I mean, you mentioned them referring to themselves as immortals, which is some straight up Illuminati shit to begin with, but the average age of a member of the deliberative body, so the average age of one of those immortel is 78. It’s 78. These people, on average, are pretty old..

Camille Cohen  

– and far removed from pop culture. And you know what, what the kids are saying in the high schools and between each other, and that’s the direction that language will go once those people once those Immortals are no longer with us.

Bianca Missé  

The big debate in the French language is around two things. One is that certain professions, specifically prestigious professions, and titles only existed in the masculine and even if a woman which it was very rare were to inhabit that profession, for example, being president we always say, Mr. President, or being a lawyer, Mr. l’avocat, or a writer, even if a woman were to have this title, you will still use a masculine title. And that specific fight only is specific to the French language. The rest of romance languages have no problem feminizing professions names because you can do it very easily in language, there is no linguistic problem to do it. So there you have some kind of like, a Frenchness attachment to identify things that have symbolic power and the universal to the masculine. 

Jess Magill  

I think that just goes to show sort of the elevated status, you know, French might be a gendered language, but I think even in its language, the genders are not equal.

Bianca Missé

And the second fight that is ongoing, has to do with the question of plurals, when you have groups of people, you need to do agreements and you need to pick a plural pronoun and you have to plural pronouns are masculine or feminine. And so, and that is also something common to all the Latin languages and romance languages, if you have one masculine, identified subject in the group, then it takes over and you know, the whole is treated as a masculine plural that is also something common to all of the Rome, the Romance languages. 

Eloise Kelsey  

So, when you’re talking about going out with friends, you have to indicate whether they’re female, or they’re male, you know, like mes copines/mes copines. And I feel like that’s hindering for  non binary and trans people because what can they identify themselves as if there isn’t a word that exists for them? If there isn’t a gender neutral term?

Bianca Missé

Those specific things are being challenged today in the Spanish language, right, especially since the new wave of a women’s mobilization and this new iteration of feminism to start in, in Argentina in 2016, with Nuna, Manos etc. For example, in Argentina, there is a radically different practice of the Spanish language around gender and is a practice that is trying to undo the gendering of subjects, which is very radical, right? So there is a new pronoun is not “el” or “ella”, it’s “elle”, there is a vowel, right? That is kind of a neutral vowel. That is completely unimaginable to happen in France right now. Right? Like even the discussion of feminization of nouns of profession took 10 years, you know, and it was a battle. 

I mean, it took like many, many, many years to France to even gave like the right of marriage to gay couples, you know, any there were massive mobilizations and demonstrations in the streets against it. So France is kind of… quite behind on gender things and on queer things. 

Jess Magill  

I think that the way that French is constructed, probably makes it a little bit more difficult to adapt a gender neutral language than Spanish. Mostly because Spanish has such a simple way of expressing gender. Meanwhile, in French, if you’re looking at like job titles, right, you have all sorts of different endings that will tell you if it’s masculine or feminine. So like “Engieneur” ends in “-eur”, a “technicien” ends in “-ien,” “ensigniant” that ends in “-ant” and all of these are spelled and work very differently. Whereas in Spanish, all of those professions would just end in an “O”, if it’s a male doing it, and an “A”, if it’s a female doing it, or end in “E” if it’s, you know, a gender rebel doing it.

Eloise Kelsey  

I mean, I just think that there are so many different ways you can make the French language more inclusive. And some of those ways that are discussed, for example would be to use a “pointe mediane.” I think that would just be a “medium point” in English, which is an alternative. And it would mean at the ending of each word that is feminine or masculine, you would also put the feminine termination. So you would put for example, like, if you’re saying “un étudiant,” you would also say “.ante” to make it the female version. So, I mean, there’s so many tricks you can use in the language to be more inclusive, and to make more people feel like they are spoken about. And you know, they matter. 

Camille Cohen

The problem is just the general acceptance or recognition of that kind of little trick. Like if I said that to my French father, he would be like, What are you talking about? I mean, in 2017, France banned the use of gender neutral language in official documents. So as it’s tangled with the idea of class and the idea of history, it’s hard for me to imagine a future where France takes that approach graciously.

Eloise Kelsey  

The thing is like, even if the academic francaise dictates which changes are allowed, which clearly is basically none. Um, I do feel like other companies are taking it on to themselves to make that change, which is, like, very promising. For example, in 2016, Microsoft released their newest version of a platform, which included an inclusive writing option in French. And I know there was also a keyboard that is now adapted to this inclusive writing. So I feel like that’s a really promising point to hold on to. Even if the academic francaise isn’t like allowing these changes, there is a change in just the way the society operates now and like what the society wants.

Camille Cohen

How successful do you think that that change, just in dialect is in affecting social change for, say, trans people or people who don’t identify on the gender binary.

Bianca Missé

So on the one hand, it is clear that changing language is not changing the root social and material roots that, you know, reproduce, right? binary system, we’re always the women is oppressed and over exploited, and their lives don’t matter, etc. And I don’t think there is this illusion that just by changing language, we’re getting rid of all of these inequalities and forms of violence. But it does make them visible, it makes visible first that there was a binary system that was a hierarchical one, which is not a minor thing to visualize. And second, If you could just don’t have it in language, if you can address the other, just appealing to their humanity, and not having to gender them, that does not put any problem in communication. It shows that actually, these are social constructions that maybe are hurting us, but that we could also live without them.

Eloise Kelsey  

Wow, that is super interesting. And it reminds me of this study I was reading on how language shapes our economy. It found that having a gendered grammar system was actually associated with a lower female labor force participation rate compared to countries that don’t have gendered language. Then when I was looking into the Global Gender Gap report in 2020, France ranked 15th in the world, in terms of overall gender equality, but 65th in terms of economic participation and opportunity for women. And I feel like language might be a proponent to the difference in these rankings.

Jess Magill  

You have to wonder what trans acceptance rates look like in France, as opposed to maybe other European countries. 

Camille Cohen

I attempted to do that kind of research. But it’s difficult because in France, they don’t include non traditional gender options on their census. So it’s very difficult to quantify the amount of people that would be truly affected by a change.

Jess Magill  

You know, I really hope that linguistically speaking, we can come up with a solution to this, whether it be a new word, a new pronoun, but something is going to have to be made, because the existing French language simply is not equipped to, you know, move into the 21st century. 

Camille Cohen

It makes me feel like all the people who are complaining about how complicated it is to use ‘they’, when referring to a single person, could just look up how hard it is in French and then they might feel better about it.

Bianca Missé

You know, it’s a work in progress. The struggle for trans rights is a it’s now a worldwide struggle. And maybe one of the great things among all the horrible things about social media and all of that is that one one victory is won in one country, the repercussions impact the other countries.

Jess Magill  

There’s no reason that language has to stay the way it was, we’re not losing anything by changing language. And if it promotes overall human happiness, I mean, you know, what’s the issue?

Jess Magill

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