(Note my avoidance of F-words!)
This past week, on "Giving Tuesday", I donated to the Ottawa Art Gallery in support of their acquisition of They, an art installation by gender-diverse artist Cara Tierney. From the OAG website, you can view an 8-minute video in which they discuss their work:
https://oaggao.ca/they-fundraiser-main
Something I wondered about when "they" began to gain popularity as a gender-neutral singular pronoun was: what do gender-diverse francophones generally prefer as their French-language pronouns? And in a language where even inanimate objects must be designated as either masculine or feminine (although I seem to recall there may be a handful of them that swing both ways), to what extent does it matter? Isn't the French Academy totally focused on keeping the French language "pure laine"? Or should that be "laine pure"?
I got a partial answer to my question when I read that that the editors of that illustrious reference tome Le Robert have added the pronoun "iel" to the dictionary:
https://www.pressherald.com/2021/11/18/a-french-dictionary-added-a-gender-neutral-pronoun-opponents-say-its-too-woke/
What does this all mean for the future of the French language or, for that matter, other languages on the grammatical gender binary or trinitary? Will Bescherelle be put out of business? Will dicté(es) become relics of the past?
This post is a celebration both of the Ottawa Art Gallery (which unlike other major galleries and museums in the area, retains a policy of free admission) and of the ready acceptance of gender diversity, an issue dear to my heart. So before signing off here, I would invite you to explore the site of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity:
https://ccgsd-ccdgs.org/
This past week, on "Giving Tuesday", I donated to the Ottawa Art Gallery in support of their acquisition of They, an art installation by gender-diverse artist Cara Tierney. From the OAG website, you can view an 8-minute video in which they discuss their work:
https://oaggao.ca/they-fundraiser-main
Something I wondered about when "they" began to gain popularity as a gender-neutral singular pronoun was: what do gender-diverse francophones generally prefer as their French-language pronouns? And in a language where even inanimate objects must be designated as either masculine or feminine (although I seem to recall there may be a handful of them that swing both ways), to what extent does it matter? Isn't the French Academy totally focused on keeping the French language "pure laine"? Or should that be "laine pure"?
I got a partial answer to my question when I read that that the editors of that illustrious reference tome Le Robert have added the pronoun "iel" to the dictionary:
https://www.pressherald.com/2021/11/18/a-french-dictionary-added-a-gender-neutral-pronoun-opponents-say-its-too-woke/
What does this all mean for the future of the French language or, for that matter, other languages on the grammatical gender binary or trinitary? Will Bescherelle be put out of business? Will dicté(es) become relics of the past?
This post is a celebration both of the Ottawa Art Gallery (which unlike other major galleries and museums in the area, retains a policy of free admission) and of the ready acceptance of gender diversity, an issue dear to my heart. So before signing off here, I would invite you to explore the site of the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity:
https://ccgsd-ccdgs.org/