Jun
23
Is Spanish inherently sexist and machista?
Consider the evidence:
perro: Man’s best friend
perra: a bitch
zorro: an extremely astute and crafty man
zorra: a whore, a prostitute
golfo: a gulf (like the Gulf of Mexico), or a human male rascal, jerk or lazybones
golfa: a slut, a prostitute
And the list goes on. The Plataforma Andaluza de Apoyo al Lobby Europeo de Mujeres believes that sexist language is a form of verbal violence and has an ongoing public service campaign to sensitize the Spanish-speaking public about the issue. (See one ad below.)
Another campaign of theirs is to get the Real Academia Española to admit feminine versions of Spanish words. If the RAE can add non-Spanish words like overbooking to the Spanish lexicon, why not words like miembra and jóvena, said Rafaela Pastor, a leader of the Andulucian feminist group, in a news interview earlier this year. Spanish evolved from Latin, a patriarchial language. Pastor believes that the legacy and influence of Latin is holding Spanish back and preventing it from adapting to modern times. Women, she notes, were second-class citizens in Roman times, so the same linguistic rules should no longer apply in the 21st century.
“La lengua es algo vivo y la Real Academia admite que se integren nuevos términos, aunque parece que se sienten más cómodos con las palabras anglosajonas”, añadió la presidenta de la plataforma. “Si tenemos que destrozar el lenguaje para que tengamos espacios de igualdad se deberá hacer”, indicó.
Maybe it’s because I’m an angloparlante, but I see nothing inherently sexist with words like miembro or joven. Using the Spanish article “la” is enough to distinguish that the person being referred to is a female. The other stuff, like the feminine forms of some nouns having pejorative meanings, that’s been with us for time immemorial. Until mankind (or should that be man-and-womankind?) come up with new ways to insult one another with terms that don’t have to do with gender (or race/ethnicity), I’m afraid we’re stuck with the insults we have. Personally, I think Spanish feminists have bigger fish to fry, [whoa, is saying that sexist too?] such as age and sex descrimination in the workforce and battling against the cult of beauty that is so pervasive.
What do you guys think? Is the sexism/machismo ingrained in Spanish inherently harmful to women?
Interesting question. Do Spanish speaking women honestly feel oppressed and discriminated against by referring to mixed company as “nosotros?” Are Spanish speaking men really offended or confused by referring to themselves as “las personas” or “las víctimas,” and somehow feel less manly? Is “el azúcar” more like men and “la sal” more women?
I was taught that noun gender was a fairly arbitrary thing in language, be it Spanish, Arabic, German or some other language. Will people stop speaking poorly of women if “jóvena” and “miembra” become official words due to feminist lobbying? Probably not.
Ryan’s first point is very interesting and I wonder if this is something Spanish speakers even notice. (I’d really love to know the answer to that btw.)
It was the one thing that really struck me as strange when I first started to learn Spanish. The fact that women and girls virtually disappear if they are being talked about when they are in male company. Words like ‘Padres’ for ‘parents’, ‘hijos’ for ‘children’, etc. and 500+ women and one man being correctly referred to as ‘ellos’.
The examples you quoted above seem to be more rooted in people’s attitudes than the structure of the language and these attitudes seem very similar to those in English speaking countries. A woman doing something morally questionable is generally judged much more harshly than a man.
As to using words like ‘miembra’ I guess it all depends on whether women actually feel demeaned by being referred to by the original masculine term.
A question for you, if you had a female doctor, would you refer to her as ‘doctor’ or ‘doctora’?
@Ryan: “Will people stop speaking poorly of women if “jóvena” and “miembra” become official words due to feminist lobbying? Probably not.”
Amen, brother. Truer words could not be spoken.
@Sereda: Yeah, that’s the thing…there are certain words where it is totally fine to use the feminine version like doctora, directora, abogada, etc. But then there are other nouns that are seemingly intocable like miembro.
Your examples about “padres” and “hijos” reminds me of a very common mistake many Spaniards make when speaking English. They will say “fathers” instead of parents or “sons” when referring to sons and daughters or “brothers” when they mean brothers and sisters. Some of my students will say that they’ve got 2 brothers and then when you ask them what their brothers’ names are, they will say “Carmen and Jesús,” not realizing that “brothers” is only for men, not men and women.
I remember seeing a YouTube video of Prince Felipe giving the commencement address at his alma mater Georgetown University in Washington D.C., and I was listening to him thinking, gosh, his English is really excellent, until he said, in his speech, that he and his wife were about to “become fathers.”