Content area
Full Text
L'auteure souhaite un retour au langage non sexiste ou plus spécifiquement aux pronoms qui reconnaissent et permettent un plus large éventail d'expressions sexuelles /genres. Elle soutient que l'utilisation des pronoms neutres serait le prochain pas dans le combat pour créer un langage non discriminatoire.
The general use of diminutive feminine endings has only recently faded from our cultural memory. Today, one would wonder at the use of manageress, suffragette, or ancestress when manager, suffragist, or ancestor would do. This shift from a diminutive to a more gender-neutral linguistic model is due to efforts of second wave feminists who, in the span of one generation, accomplished the formidable feat of establishing a standard of non-sexist language usage throughout Canada and the U.S., from legislation to the workplace to cultural productions. From the start of the liberation movement feminists coined new terms such as the title Ms., which functioned to displace marriage as a primary indicator of women's social status, then moved on to introduce gender-neutral occupational categories such as postal worker and fire fighter in the interests of employment equity.1 By 1983, the Canadian government had started to issue guidelines for the use of non-sexist language and for the elimination of sex-role stereotypes (see, for example, Employment and Immigration Canada; Emploi et Immigration Canada). Although this new standard initially met with resistance and derision, particularly in the mass media, the froth of androcentric dissent gradually receded from the front page of the newspapers to the back rooms of the office and the shift toward non-sexist language usage over the next decade became the preferred mode of communication throughout the public sphere.2
More recently, some transgender activists such as Leslie Feinberg have advocated a turn toward non-sexed language; language, or more specifically pronouns, that acknowledges and allows for a broader range of sex/ gender and sexual expression. Critiquing gender assumptions, founding director of the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition (Gender-PAC), Riki Wilchins pointedly asks "what does gender identification mean if it doesn't tell us about a person's body, gender expression, and sexual orientation?" (2004: 131, my emphasis).3 Pronouns such as "he" assume exactly such meaning; that "he" is physically male, presents as masculine, and is the natural heterosexual counterpart to "she." At their most fundamental level, the meaning...