I challenged myself with this. Nicole gave us a task to give critique to this Hector Abad Faciolince's article about inclusive language. It came out as an unreal text from me, I usually don't write like this, so this was a huge surprise. Here it is:
Tracing the line. Inclusive language as a proper visibilization of problems.
A critique to Hector Abad Faciolince’s Semana article “Colombianos y colombianas, ridículos y ridículas?
After reading Hector Abad Faciolince’s article where he challenges feminist Florence Thomas’ proposal of the use of an inclusive language there are a few assertions to take into account. The first thing that Faciolince exposes in his article is how ‘alergic’ he is to this type of language and how to be inclusive in expressions that are commonly used in masculine plural ( “Los”, “Ellos”, etc. to group men and women) is not effective due to tradition and “language economy”. This assumption is coming from a man; a man that is inserted by default in the top of the gender power scale. If the things were the other way around and we used traditionally “Ellas” or “las” to describe a group of people, men, women or people that don’t relate to any of these genders the discussion will be another one. On another part of the article, he explains that women should not feel bad if they are being excluded of the plural when all of the bad words and pejorative adjectives commonly used are masculine word form. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth? This is not a consolation price in linguistic terms. What happens when the worst insult for a man is being called “girl”? And for women the worst are words exclusively related to their gender? Meaning, when you call a woman “man” or “boy” would she take it as an insult? Faciolince is right to say that gender is a grammatical category that is not always related to sex, but is it really that way when is conducted in actual discursive practices?
Later on, Faciolince says: “I think that in this debate there is an excess of susceptibility of some women. I know not all of them feel excluded when the male gender is used for the plural form, it’s for mere economy not to discriminate”. For this reason is obvious to think that the use of inclusive language is not efficient, is boring and it lengthens what is tried to been said taking away the message essence. This is a very debatable argument. There are indeed women that don’t feel excluded when the plural form is always used in masculine terms, but it is important to state, that these women are the ones that are submerged in the oppression, the ones that are used to it. They are been paid less, they are discriminated for being women, well, in language they are treated as less too, what is new about that? What Faciolince does not take into account is that the revolution or debate that Thomas proposes starts from the foundation of culture. Women won’t be treated equally if there are not paths to visibilize this desire, and the best way to face the challenge of oppression is to change the habits. Therefore, Linguistic habits that are by tradition used by everyone should be viewed in a different way. Will it harm the language if there are one or two extra words? Is the message really being diminished or is the proper acknowledgment of all of the participants making an argument stronger and inclusive?