Why is there so much debate about feminitives?

What are feminitives for?

Feminitives are feminine nouns, most often paired or similar to masculine. They designate nationality, citizenship or place of residence (Japanese, Muscovite), profession (journalist, teacher), and so on.

Feminitives are not an innovation or a product of fempables. They have always existed Feminatives in the Russian language: the historical aspect, and many of them were formed without any connection with the "masculine" names of the profession. For example, there is no corresponding pair for the word "spinner", it was formed directly from the verb "spin".

Now feminists, including those that are not yet in dictionaries, have begun to actively use feminists. Many kilometers of discussions in social networks often flare up around unusual words. Although it would be a mistake to say that all this is happening only now - at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, "female students", "lecturers", "paramedics" and "aviators" also met with resistance. It is interesting that the same "student" and "paramedic" who were once considered "newfangled" have taken root in the Russian literary language, they can be found in dictionaries.

Supporters of the introduction of feminitives reason something like this. Debates about what is primary - language or thinking - have been going on since the time of Plato. In 1941, Benjamin Lee Whorf published an article "Language, Thinking and Reality", in which he formulated the theory of linguistic relativity and said that the worldview of different peoples depends on the language they speak. The hypothesis was not confirmed or refuted, but many scientists agree that language not only reflects our attitude to the world, but also shapes it. This idea was reflected in the literature: remember at least "1984" by George Orwell, where by means of substitution of concepts ("War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is power"), the authorities controlled the minds of people.

The way we speak, what words we use, not only describes the existing reality, but in a sense also predicts the future. The Russian language is androcentric, that is, oriented towards a man, especially as regards the designation of professions. The "pilot" appeared in a pair with the "pilot", the "revolutionary" - with the "revolutionary" and so on. It would be quite logical if we lived in the 18th century - when there were simply no women professors, and no one took women authors seriously. If there is no phenomenon, there is no word. But now women can master - and do - any profession, except, perhaps, those that are included in the list of 456 prohibited.

Calling a tractor driver a tractor driver, a writer a writer, a teacher a teacher, we kind of erase these women, deny their contribution. According to well-established literary norms, masculine words in the designation of professions can be applied to both men and women, especially in official documentation, in textbooks, in the media. “Director Ivanova” is possible, “director Ivanov” is categorically impossible, “director Ivanova” is debatable. From childhood we get used to the fact that the director, deputy, president is as if it is always a man. And the laundresses, nannies and cleaning ladies are women. As a result, the already irrelevant attitude continues to live: women are not capable of science, art, governing the country, piloting airplanes. An attitude that is harmful not only for girls, who then find it very difficult to overcome uncertainty and decide to prove themselves in these "non-feminine" affairs, but also for the whole society, which thus loses good specialists.

A recent one with Channel One and BlaBlaCar CEO Irina Raider perfectly illustrates both misconceptions about women and how rejection of feminitives can lead to misunderstandings. In short, the editor of Channel One invited the CEO as an expert. And when it turned out that the director was a woman, the invitation was withdrawn because "the viewer has stereotypes."

Not everyone agrees with this point of view. A conversation on this topic will inevitably lead to a dispute about equality, about the fact that it is not at all necessary to emphasize the gender of a professional, and about the fact that feminitives hurt the ear and contradict the rules of the Russian language.

Are feminitives by the rules?

There is no complete clarity on this issue. Conventionally, feminitives can be divided into those that have already taken root in the language (student, teacher, artist) and relatively new (for example, a scientist, psychologist and everyone's “favorite” author, president, editor, deputy). Well-established feminitives can be found in, they have been used for a long time, although not always - for example, in a school where only women work, they will still celebrate Teacher's Day.

"Author" and "philologist" in dictionaries, for example, can not be found. It may seem that they should not be consumed. But dictionaries do not keep up and cannot keep up with the additions in the language. The words "bullying", "longread" and "account-manager" are not in the spelling dictionary either, but there has never been a single case when people, because of these neologisms, started a multi-page discussion with mutual insults. There was a lot of controversy over the word “student”, which is now difficult to surprise anyone, at the end of the 19th century, while women had not yet won the right to receive knowledge in higher educational institutions.

At the same time in "" you can find unusual "deputy" and "delegate". And in "" - even "president".

The lack of feminitives in dictionaries is not the only problem. "The author", "editor" and "blogger" cut the ear for many, because they contradict the prevailing patterns of word formation. The suffix "-ka" goes well with the stem, in which the last syllable is stressed: student - student, Bolshevik - Bolshevik, journalist - journalist. In the words "blogger" and "editor" the emphasis is not on the last syllable, so the feminitives formed through the "-ka" sound unusual.

At the same time, there is no prohibition on the use of such tokens either. Academic "Russian grammar" says that you can not use feminitives in relation to a male person, and in relation to women, you can use the names of the masculine and feminine gender. That is, there are no grammatical rules prohibiting feminitives as a phenomenon. But in the "Handbook of Spelling and Stylistics" by D. E. Rosenthal, the so-called words without paired formations are mentioned, which retain their form even if applied to women. These include "attorney", "associate professor", "author" and so on. In general, everything is very confusing.

What's wrong with them?

It turns out that feminitives are a very interesting subject. It seems that the rules are not unambiguously prohibited, and even philologists are loyal to them. But at the same time, discussions of feminitives are almost as explosive as arguments between believers and atheists or Samsung owners with Apple followers. At the end of 2018, a schoolgirl received a score for using the word "intern" on a mock exam in Russian. A deputy from the Leningrad region to fine the media for "author" and "doctor". And the writer Tatiana Tolstaya says that "feminitives are disgusting." So why do they cause such rejection?

Russian language resists innovation

Take, for example, the suffixes that are used to form feminitives. The suffix "-ka", besides being better suited for stems with a stressed last syllable, in some cases has a dismissive connotation. Marinka is a chemist or, as in the recent Modulbank, an entrepreneur.
A similar story is with the "-ha" suffix. For example, no one will be called a doctor with good intentions (Efremova's explanatory dictionary classifies the word as colloquial). In addition, this suffix was used to designate wives by the specialty or rank of their husbands - miller, blacksmith.
The same is with the suffix "-sha": the general's and the major are the wives of the general and the major. Although philologists refute this thesis - Irina Fufayeva from the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State University for the Humanities writes that the suffix "-sha" was not always a "wife's suffix" before, and in the modern world it has even lost such a semantic load.
Remains the ancient Russian word-formation units "-inya", "-itsa" (tsarina, reaper, princess, goddess, youth) and the borrowed Latin element "-ess" / "-is". It is with their help that most of the established feminitives are formed - a teacher, artist, flight attendant, headmistress. But even with these suffixes, it is not always possible to form a harmonious lexeme, they make some words cumbersome and clumsy: philologist, psychologist, authorist, politician.

Besides suffixes, there are other complications. For example, plural. How do you define a group of people that consists of men and women? “Directors gathered for a meeting …” - it may seem that only male directors have gathered. “The directors and headmistresses have gathered for a meeting …” is correct in relation to the women present, but it makes the text heavier, few will agree to use this option.

On the other hand, monsters like "Our new author Ivanova wrote in the last article …" or "to arrange maternity leave for student Petrova" look no less awful.

Intersectional feminists (they talk not only about gender discrimination, but also about the system of oppression and privileges in general, that is, they raise the problems of racism, classism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination) in an attempt to make the language gender neutral, use gender gaps (gender gap - gender gap) - an underscore that turns masculine and feminine words into "common": "journalist_ka" includes both a journalist and a journalist, so no one will be offended. Gendergaps, which are used mainly in German, and have recently migrated to Russian, are, of course, subject to fierceness.

Isn't the time for feminitives yet?

There is an opinion that supporters (or, let's be honest, supporters) of feminitives, especially new ones, like the long-suffering "author", are running ahead of the locomotive. That is, ahead of social changes that could lead to the fact that the widespread use of feminitives would become an established linguistic norm. In 2016, they presented at the World Economic Forum. In this rating, Russia occupies 71st place, which means that we are still very far from legislative and de facto equality between men and women. It turns out that we are talking about changing language norms in a country where women are not protected in any way, for example, from domestic violence. If we consider language solely as a mirror of historical and sociocultural reality and deny that it affects the worldview of people, the introduction of feminitives may seem premature. When de facto equality has been achieved, these words will naturally become the linguistic norm.

Women take offense at the "editor" and "author"

It will not do without textbook examples: Marina Tsvetaeva wanted to be called a poet, not a poetess, thus emphasizing that she could write poetry no worse than men. Anna Akhmatova shared this position. "Alas! A lyric poet must be a man …”, she wrote. A century later, many women still believe that a "teacher" sounds less professional than a "teacher", and they may even be offended by the "author" with the "editor". Perhaps that is why “deputy”, “delegate” and other feminitives that were used in Soviet times have gone out of use. And according to Doctor of Philology Maxim Krongauz, feminitives of the 20th century are no longer used, because gender inequality is now higher than then.

How to be? Should you use feminitives?

France recently allowed the use of feminitives in official documents. We have no law to approve or prohibit them. Feminitives are optional. But if you want and this is required by common sense - why not. Especially when it comes to established vocabulary feminitives - they certainly do not contradict the rules and should not disturb the fighters for the invariability of the Russian language.

With those feminitives that are not in dictionaries, everything is a little more complicated. You have to consider where you want to use the word and in what context. In an official business style, you have to do without feminitives for now. But they can be found in fiction - for example, in the novel by Ivan Efremov, published back in 1959 ("geologist", "chauffeur", "agronomine"), and in some media ("Afisha", Wonderzine). In any case, language is a mobile, plastic substance, it will inevitably change, reflecting historical and cultural changes. Only dead languages do not change. Perhaps society will one day get used to the idea that authors are no worse than authors, and these words will no longer cause confusion or grin.