Instead of “amigos” or “amigas”, some Spanish speakers use “amigues”. Instead of “all” or “all”, write “all”. And certain signs that said “bienvenidos” now say “bienvenid@s”.
The changes, adopted informally by school teachers in Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, are a deliberate effort to include people who do not identify as male or female in a language in which many words are categorized as masculine or feminine.
Gender-neutral language is increasingly being adopted in Latin America, in Spanish or Portuguese, and also in places that use English or French, by supporters who say it helps create a more inclusive society. For some Spanish speakers, however, including academics and politicians, the changes degrade the language used by 500 million people worldwide.
In Argentina, the tension shifted from a war of public opinion to a political battle. Last month, the City of Buenos Aires banned teachers from using gender-neutral words during classes and in communications with parents. The local education secretary said that language violates Spanish rules and hinders students’ reading comprehension.
The policy, one of the first anywhere to specifically ban the use of gender-neutral language, provoked quick reactions. Education Minister Jaime Perczyk criticized the rule, and at least five organizations — a mix of LGBTQIA+ and civil rights groups — have filed lawsuits to overturn it.
Perczyk compared the measure to bans against left-handed writing under the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain. “They thought they were correcting something, but it goes much deeper,” she says, explaining that students use neutral language as a tool to combat sexist attitudes prevalent in Argentine culture.
In Romance languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, the debate over neutral terminology can be particularly fierce because all grammar is gender-based. This language scandalized linguistic purists: the Royal Spanish Academy, considered by many to be the guardian of the language, described the use of “e”, “@” and “x” in place of the final “o” or “a” as “alien to morphology”. of Spanish” in a 2020 report.
Last year, France’s education minister recommended avoiding inclusive writing in ministry communications and in schools, and a leading French dictionary sparked outrage in October by adding “iel,” a gender-neutral singular pronoun, to its words.
The debate has also become part of an emerging culture war in Latin America. In December, Uruguay’s public education agency issued a memorandum limiting the use of inclusive language, to be “in line with the rules of the Spanish language.”
Pressure for changes in Romance languages ​​originated among feminists, at least in the 1970s, who challenged the use of the generic masculine, a grammatical rule in which the masculine form takes precedence when one refers to a group of people if it includes at least one man. In Spanish, five girls are “las niñas”, but when a boy enters the group becomes “los niños”.
“In France, instead of using ‘chers étudiants’, the masculine form of ‘dear students,’ feminists promoted the use of dual forms that included the feminine version, such as ‘chers étudiants et chères étudiantes,'” says Heather Burnett, linguist from the French National Research Agency.
Today, a new wave of activists is reaching further. Many transgender people want to completely erase grammatical gender terms. Instead of using “dear students and dear students”, they prefer to use “querides alunes”.
The movement around language, according to some experts, is part of a broader contestation of the way society perceives gender. “With non-binary people, language is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Rodrigo Borba, a professor of applied linguistics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “What they’re questioning on a deeper ideological level is that gender isn’t connected to your genitals and that it doesn’t just exist in pairs.”
Argentina is a surprising place for such a heated debate over gender-neutral language, because the country has largely embraced the rights of trans people. In 2012, it became one of the first countries in the world to pass a law that allows women to change their gender in official documents without requiring the intervention of a doctor or psychotherapist.
Last year, the government adopted a measure requiring that 1% of all public sector jobs be reserved for transgender people. Anyone who identifies as non-binary can mark an “X” on official documents instead of male or female. Dyzhy, the president’s son, identifies as non-binary, and Alberto Fernández’s coalition has changed its logo to avoid using the masculine form — a sun has replaced the “o” in Frente de Todos.
In Buenos Aires, municipal education secretary Soledad Acuña says the new rule on inclusive language is not intended to be a ban. “Language itself is neither more nor less inclusive. It all depends on how people use it.”
On the same day the rule was adopted, she said, the secretariat published several guides on how to be inclusive using traditional grammar. They suggest, for example, writing “los/las estudiantes” or using neutral words like “personas”.
It’s not clear what influence, if any, gender-neutral language has on reading comprehension, according to Florencia Salvarezza, a neuroscientist who works with cognition, because little or no research has been done on the topic. But, she adds, it is plausible that neutral language can complicate learning. “There’s no way to make a syllable in Spanish with the ‘x’ or the ‘@’, because they’re not vowels. This can confuse young children,” she says.
Still, advocates believe that despite the rule, the use of gender-neutral language will continue to expand. “You can’t ban something that’s already used so much,” says Alexandra RodrÃguez, a volunteer at a community center. “Language is something that is always changing. It is alive because we are alive—and it will continue to change.”
