Quote: "We are robbed of our female being by the masculine plural. Language is the male discourse."
Question: In the Spanish language there are examples of what could be considered to 'rob' our female identities. Are there examples of this in the English language? For every language, is there a way that we as a society could prevent these characteristics from robbing females of their identities?
Spanish, just like the english language is mostly catered to men when addressing multiple individuals. This being said, Spanish has one detail that english does not - it has male and female associations with the words. (ex: bueno - male / buena - female.) Spanish caters more towards the individual, but falls short in the same respect as English in the way that it addresses groups in the male plural form.
ReplyDeleteAs for preventing this aspect, it would be very difficult to rewrite our language that is so deeply engrained into our everyday lives and histories. We are advancing as a society to acknowledge what language can be used to properly represent individuals and hopefully this grow to a new level where groups of individuals can be represented for the identity they signify with.