'Inclusive language' And Why It Is Dangerous

Cardinal-elect Víctor Manuel Fernández was appointed by Pope Francis on July 1, 2023, to become the next prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. | Credit: Courtesy of Archdiocese of La Plata

By Julieta Villar, CNA Staff Mar 3, 2024

The move toward so-called inclusive language finds its origins in the feminist movement where activists considered sexist the generic masculine form of words, which has perennially been understood to include both men and women. 

In the past, for example, no one thought of challenging “for the good of mankind” as excluding women. However, the feminist movement drew heightened sensitivity to what activists considered the “patriarchal” nature of language.

Various publications started to use terms or forms of words that made it clear that a job could be performed by both men and women. Hence “fireman” became “firefighter” and “mankind” became “humankind,” etc.

While some of these changes are not that dramatic or noticeable in English, introducing inclusive wording in languages such as Spanish, where nouns are either grammatically masculine or feminine, becomes quite obvious due to the novel alteration of noun endings.

Gender-neutral language has similarly become an issue in Germany, as German nouns are also either masculine or feminine.

Inclusive language has also been identified as “one of the tools” of gender ideology, a school of thought that has been repeatedly criticized by the Catholic Church. 

Pope Francis has warned about this school of thought on several occasions. As recently as March 1, for example, the Holy Father pointed out that gender ideology “erases differences and makes everything the same; erasing differences is erasing humanity.”

What does inclusive language mean?

The Royal Spanish Academy, considered the definitive authority on what is correct Spanish, describes inclusive language as “a set of strategies that aim to avoid the generic use of the grammatical masculine.”

In addressing the issue, the academy has stated that the generic masculine is “firmly established in the language and does not imply any sexist discrimination” and that the recently invented artificial gender-neutral noun endings “that are supposedly gender inclusive are … unnecessary since the grammatical masculine already fulfills this function.” 

In a May 2022 article in the Argentine newspaper La Nación, Alicia María Zorrilla, president of the Argentine Academy of Letters, said that inclusive language is based on the error of taking literally the concept that, in language, the masculine [form of a word] always refers to the men only.”

Pushback

In a YouTube interview with Edgardo Litvinoff, Nobel Prize winner in literature Mario Vargas Llosa said that within feminism “there are some excesses” that he believes are “very important to combat,” for example, in the field of language.