The Sex of Language: Thinking Other-Wise

Gender Differences in Language

 Table of Contents

1. Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………

2. Le deuxième sexe ........................................................................................ 1

3. Relevance of Biological Differences between Men and Women to the
Construction of Gender in Language 3

3.1. Larynx 5
3.2. Brain Anatomy 10

4. Je, tu, nous 15

5. Le Rire de la Méduse …………………………………………………………….. 23
6. References ………………………………………………………………………………... 30
 Abstract

Sex and gender are under a grammatical category of the words in many languages,

which shows the discrimination presented in terms of masculinity, femininity or

neutrality. Sex is a biological categorization based primarily on reproductive

potential, whereas gender is the social elaboration of biological sex. In this paper,

firstly I will discuss biological differences between the two sexes and their

relevance, if any, to the construction of gender in language. Then regarding the

views of some prominent feminist theorists over the subject, an evaluation will be

carried out, the examples that have traces of gender category in terms of semantic

and lexical will be classified and ‘feminine writing’ will be proposed as a solution

– an alternative approach. As for ‘feminine writing’, the examples from the works

of some primary feminist linguists, theorists, poets and writers will be presented

to show how the techniques proposed by this new kind of writing such as

‘mimesis’, ‘de/ mistification’ and ‘writing the body’ are applied.

Key Words: sex, gender, femininity, feminism, female, language theory, biology,

grammatical gender, semantics, lexicon, feminine writing, other, secondary

Le deuxième sexe1

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Simone de Beauvoir (p.330)

Nietzsche declared the death of God, Freud dived into the depths of mind: it was

only a matter time; the end of ‘gender’, as we know it, has been announced. There

has left no metaphysical or ontological precedence that dictates the ideology of

gender. So, what happened to the ‘sex’ in course of this enlightenment? It still

remains to exert authority over gender. Sex, as Delphy (1993) suggests, is itself a

‘sign’ – its status is ‘symbolic.’ Certain bodies come to be marked as female, and

others come to be marked as male. The dichotomy, binary system of

categorization is, of course, in compliance with the heterosexist beliefs of the

dominant, western, advanced, late capitalist era. But this debate is far from what

we will discuss here. Before I begin, it seems practical to draw the lines through

which the argument of this paper abides: first, I will mention biology and its assets

and relevance to the construction of gender in language; then I will present some

fundamental feminist theories and examples related as for the gender

discrimination in language; and lastly as a solution – or an alternative way- I will

mention L’ecriture feminine meaning literally ‘feminine writing’. In this scope of

the content, I believe it is safer to give some basic definitions just to eliminate any

confusion.

1
Le deuxième sexe meaning Second Sex. Chapter title is taken from Beauvoir, S. (2009). The

Second Sex. C. Borde & S. Malovany-Chevallier (Trans.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Sex is a biological categorization based primarily on reproductive potential,

whereas gender is the social elaboration of biological sex. Gender is not

something we are born with, and not something we have, but something we do

(West & Zimmerman, 1987).

The ritual announcement at birth that it is in fact one or the other instantly

transforms an “it” into a “he” or a “she” (Butler 1993), standardly assigning it to a

lifetime as a male or as a female. If it were a natural process; if gender indeed

came out of the sex, we could expect the world to sit back and simply allow the

baby to become male or female. But sex determination sets the stage for a lifelong

process of gendering, as the child becomes, and learns how to be, male or female

(Rubin et al., 1974).

With these in mind, now we can safely pass on to our first subject: Relevance of

biological differences between men and women to the construction of gender in

language.
Relevance of Biological Differences between Men and Women to the

Construction of Gender in Language

Hence, in regard to that most difficult question, what are

the natural differences between the two sexes, a subject on
which it is impossible in the present state of society to
obtain complete and correct knowledge, while almost
everybody dogmatizes upon it, almost all neglect or make
light of the only means by which any partial insight can be
obtained into it. 
John Stuart Mill (p. 22)

In The Subjugation of Women, Mill approached the differences between the sexes

from a pure humanistic perspective by highlighting only political and

psychological sciences. Today, one and a half centuries later, we still focus on the

same subject in the light of liberal feminism claiming that in the absence of

equality in fields such as education, it is not possible to conclude whether male

and female species have an equal capacity for anything. But it seems to be a

matter of nature-nurture debates, and that is definitely not the aim of this paper to

talk about this false duality for whatsoever, since I do not wish to resuscitate the

long dead dichotomy of nature-nurture. Hence, with regard to the overall

philosophy of language as a scientific area, liberal feminists seem to be agnostic.

In the modern world that we live in with the advance technology and mostly

thanks to the evolution theories, one might think that feminist arguments on the

equality of sexes should have changed over the centuries. Have they not changed?

Of course, they have: there emerged a number of new thoughts described as

cultural feminism, radical feminism or eco-feminism concerning ethical, moral,

economic and nature relations of women to the social order – but this does not

necessarily mean that these new movements claim women have a different place

than men in nature; or they are superior to men. In this paper also, a feminist
manifesto is not intended to be dictated; but rather I will try to point out the role

that different, critically revitalized, conceptions of nature may play in the

understanding of each sex.

In tradition, within feminist discourse and politics, nature has always been seen as

an obstacle that women have to overcome. Evolutionary biology has been marked

as an ‘enemy’ by many feminist writers, philosophers and artists; Darwinian

perspectives have been eliminated while Spinoza, Heidegger, Derrida, and Lacan

have been placed at the heart of feminist thought as the exemplary male thinkers

in favor of women. But there seems to a futility in rejecting Darwin’s scientific

contributions, which basically mean the notion of nature, or biology itself. If we

are what our biologies say we are, why do we ignore the nature? If our biologies –

referring to human genitals- are what classify us as some ones, then how can we

possibly pretend that evolution has no role in feminist discourse? One of the

feminist theorists Janet Sayers (1982) suggests that the species characters are not

fixed but change as the effect of chance variation and of selection of those

variations that prove relatively well adapted to prevailing environmental

conditions (p. 55). What Sayers implies then is the fact that Darwin’s theory of

evolution may actually be helpful in feminist struggles to transform existing social

relations and their concomitant value systems (Grosz, 1999). Evolutionary biology

is somewhat a complex field; its entities as to social sciences, i.e. sociolinguistics,

psychology, political science, are subjects of a wider scale study. My intention in

making a mention of these debates is simply to give the reasons why biological

differences matter/ should matter as for the subject of the sex of language since

everything should be interpreted in a new perspective, if at all an attempt should

be made. As Nietzsche puts it:

 … whatever exists, having somehow come into being, is again and again

reinterpreted to new ends, taken over, transformed and redirected by some power

superior to it; all events in the organic world are a subduing, a becoming master,

and all subduing and becoming master involve fresh interpretation, an adaptation

through which all previous ‘meaning’ and ‘purpose’ are necessarily obscured or

even obliterated. (Nietzsche, 1967, p. 77)

In this paper, I do not have the space or the proficiency to develop these claims

more convincingly, so I will only provide some basic examples of biological and

physical differences which seem directly relevant to language and cultural

construction of gender: one is with the larynx, and the other with the brain.

Larynx

Among the secondary sex characteristics in humans, there is a large difference in

the pitch of the voice, caused by the differences in the average size of the larynx.

This proportional larynx-size difference is about five to seven times larger than

the average difference between the sexes in height or in other linear dimensions. It

translates to a difference of about 70% in median pitch values, on average,

between adult females and adult males. This difference is about 4.5 times the

within-group standard deviation in such median values, which is a large enough

effect that median pitch alone (for comparable speech samples) can be used to

classify the sex of human adults quite accurately (Liberman, 2013).

Human males and females differ little in stature before puberty, but post-

pubescent males are about 8-9% taller. According to National Institute of

Standards and Technology (NIST), the male children in their sample averaged

about 3% taller at age 2, and less than 1% taller at age 10, whereas males average

about 9% taller at age 18 (1977). According to the data from NIST at age 2, the
50th percentiles for males and females are identical; at age 10, girls are 6% taller

(in the 50th percentile), and at age 18, males are about 8% taller. With respect to

the length of the vocal folds, this overall difference between the sexes is

magnified by approximately a factor of seven: the vocal folds of post-pubescent

males’ average about 50- 60% longer than those of females’ of the same age. The

length of the overall glottis or the length of the anterior glottis can be seen in the

figure 1 and table 1 below.

Figure 1. The Length of Overall and Anterior Glottis (Hirano, Sato & Yukizane, 1997).

(AC for anterior commissure; VP for tip of vocal process; AnAC for angle of bilateral

vocal folds at AC; GWP for glottic width at vocal process level; LEG for length of entire

glottis; LAG for length of anterior glottis; LPG for length of posterior glottis; LMF for

length of membranous vocal fold)

Table 1

The Length of Overall and Anterior Glottis

Male Female Ratio M/F

AnAC in degrees 16 25
LMF in mm 15.4 9.8 1.57
GWP in mm 4.3 4.2 1.02
LAG in mm 15.1 9.5 1.59
LPG in mm 9.5 6.8 1.40
LEG in mm 24.5 16.3 1.50

Note. The study involved excised larynges from 10 males and 10 females, average age 58

for the males and 66 for the females. This table is adapted from Hirano, M., Sato, K. &

Yukizane, K. (1997). Male-female difference in anterior commisure angle. S. Kiritani, H.

Hirose & H. Fujisaki, (Eds.). Speech Production and Language (pp. 1-11). Berlin:

Mouton de Gruyter.

As a consequence of these hormone-induced laryngeal changes, voices of adult

human males are substantially lower than of females without any relation to small

differences in average height. Even though the pitch of voice may depend on

circumstances, adult human female voice is likely to show pitches roughly 70-

75% higher those of male voice under comparable conditions. This difference

reflects not only the difference in vocal cord length, but also a difference in vocal

cord mass — and perhaps some socially-conditioned factors as well. A graph

showing data from various studies is presented below.

Figure 2.  Laryngeal changes of Voice in Adult Males and Females. Taken from Kent, R.

D. (1994). Reference manual for communicative sciences and disorders. San Diego, CA:

Singular Publishing Group.

It is important to point out the fact that pitch of voice does not necessarily indicate

specific limitations to each sex; individuals can and do vary their pitches under a

number of different circumstances. One can imitate a younger or smaller person;

or an elder or a larger person; or a boy can vary his pitch of voice to a ‘girlish’

way. And that is the exact problem we are talking about: it is true that over some

historical period of hominine evolution, it might have been advantageous for

males to give the vocal impression of being bigger than their actual size; and this

behavioral delusion might have been repeated enough times to drive a genetic

change. But Homo sapiens are the only species that give vocal displays a central

role in interaction-wise. None of the other species of apes shows a similar sexual

dimorphism, neither in larynx size nor in larynx position that is; male apes do not

sound that much different in pitch than female apes when signaling of a coming

danger, for instance. Thus, this leaves us with the question: is it us continuing to
emphasize and exaggerate the biological dimorphism in vocal-tract anatomy? If

the answer is yes, then is it a social habit or an individual choice? Or even worse;

could it be the patriarchal tradition behind these unconscious tendencies implying

the obligation of manipulating the voice pitch? Let us think on some specific

examples: In 1963, Martin Luther King gave his famous ‘’I Have a Dream’’

speech at the Lincoln Memorial. The part of the transcript recorded is below.

 In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful

deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of

bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of

dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into

physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting

physical force with soul force. (Archive org, n.d.)

In 1967, King sat down for an interview on "The Mike Douglas Show," speaking

about his opposition to the Vietnam War:

I don't think [African Americans'] loyalty to the country should be measured by our

ability to kill. I think our loyalties to the country should be measured by our ability

to lead the nation to higher heights of democracy and the great dream of justice and

humanity," he told Douglas. He then advocated pulling out of the war. (Zakarin,

2012)

In the interview, his median pitch is 92 Hz while in the record of his speech, the

median pitch is 256 Hz which is almost at the top of the female range as seen in

figure 2. This pitch difference obviously does not mean that King tried to perform

his speech in the voice of a little girl, but he was preaching in a style that was

originally developed to reach crowds in the days before amplification; he was

trying to be persuasive and gentle. Thus, one might easily conclude; artificial high
pitch of voice is plausible and indicates ‘surrender’ – it is like an individual using

high pitch is almost always pleading or making an effort to get something, or

convincing; while low pitch of voice sounds authoritative. Lake Bell, an

American actress, writer and director, in her interview with Katherine Monk

(2013) summarizes it all:

There is one statement in this film and I am vocal about it: There is a vocal plague

going on that I call the sexy baby plague, where very smart women have taken on

this affectation that evokes submission and sexual titillation to the male species.

This voice says ‘I’m not that smart,’ and ‘don’t feel threatened’ and ‘don’t worry, I

don’t want to take charge,’ which is a problem for me because it’s telling women to

take on this bimbo persona in order to please a man.

Brain Anatomy

The only documented difference between male and female species in

neuroanatomy concerns the corpus callosum1. The first post-mortem reports of sex

differences in corpus callosum shape or size suggested that women may have a

wider and more bulbous splenium than men (Holloway et al., 1993), and that even

the overall size of the corpus callosum may be absolutely larger in women

(Holloway & de Lacoste, 1986). Such differences suggest that interhemispheric

communication may differ between the sexes. But one point is to be stressed: as

for neuroanatomy, individual variations are also very important. Actually, there

seems to be more similarities than differences.

1
Corpus callosum. (n.d). In Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary. Retrieved May 22, 2015, from

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corpus%20callosum
A study (Shucard et al., 1987) shows large and striking differences in

lateralization of language-related functions between male and female infants at

three and six months of age. In this study measurements of Auditory Evoked

Potentials (AEP) were used to record the signals on both the right and the left side

of the head. These signals followed by hearing a sound like a tone-pip indicates

real sex differences in developmental lateralization of brain functions. What

makes this study so important is the fact that these sex and language differences in

3- and 6-month-old infants are much larger than anything that can be measured in

adults. The figure below shows the AEP recordings of a 3-month-old male infant.

Figure 3. AEP recordings of a 3-month-old male infant. (P1, P2, P3, N1 and N2 are the
scalp electrodes) Taken from Shucard, D. W., Shucard, L. L., & Thomas, D. G.
(1987). Sex differences inelectrophysiological activity in infancy: Possible implications
for language development. In S. U. Philips, S. Steele, & C. Tanz (Eds.), 
Language, gender, and sex in a comparative perspective. (pp. 278-295). Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
As can be seen in the figure, the signals from the left-side electrodes are smaller

than the signals from the right-side electrodes. But for the female three-month-

olds, the situation is reversed: they show higher activity in the left-side electrodes,

regardless of the conditions:

Figure 4. Contrastive AEP recordings of 3-month-old male and female infants under

different background conditions – verbal, music.

When, on the other hand, infants are tested at the age of six months, the situation

is different. The male six-month-olds still show the same pattern of greater right-

side response regardless of background conditions. But the female six-month-olds

show no significant lateralization for the baseline condition, and show the verbal

condition with more activity on the left side, while the music condition shows

more activity on the right side. This is the pattern expected for adult subjects. 
Figure 5. AEP recordings of 6-month-old male and female infants under different

background conditions – verbal, music.

Except the fact that there are some apparent differences in the lateral development

of brain functions, neurophysists have not found any further meaning yet. Another

study (1995) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), found that in

phonological tasks, in males, brain activation is localized to left inferior frontal

gyrus (IFG) regions; in females the pattern of activation is very different,

engaging more diffuse neural systems involving both left and right IFG regions

(Shaywitz et al., 1995). In other words, this particular type of phonological

processing was more strongly lateralized in males than in females.

It is not known why these differences in larynx size, corpus callosum or left/right

hemispheres between sexes exist or whether they have any function at all. From

evolutionary biology perspective, it is assumed that they all are a part of the

process called ‘natural selection’ – in our case ‘sexual selection’ would be more

appropriate. It can be understood that the changes in the larynx size are the result

of a competition between Paleolithic males; a deeper voice, sounding like it comes

from a larger person, might have been helpful in impressing potential mates or

intimidating potential rivals while it is less clear that there is any story of this kind

about the differences in brain anatomy and physiology. While keeping these

issues in mind, it is much more important to remember that the average

differences in various skills between men and women are fairly small, and that

there is a great deal of variation among individuals of either sex. Today what we

know about neurophysics and neuroanatomy, which seems pretty limited for the

time being, indicates that we should look somewhere else if we want to get more

concrete results or explanations as to gender differences in language. And that

somewhere is an abstraction: gender in grammar and in lexicon. Grammatical

gender is an artificial notion and yet, we can grasp it in a way that it actually hurts.

In the following chapter, this agonizing aspect of language will be discussed in

detail; at least an attempt to discuss it in detail will be made.

je, tu, nous2

Why only one song, one speech, one text at a time?

Luce Irigaray (p. 209)

In this chapter, I will try to examine the complex relationship between gender and

language and their troubled relation to each other in terms of common-sense

nature of each. Since the transcendental nature of both terms makes it highly

difficult to embody them, I will give examples of conversation, speech, lexical

usage, and grammatical categories. In consideration of some prominent feminist

language theories, the given examples and their representations in social

constructions will be interrelated, if it is ever possible.

The most apparent and acknowledged reflection of discrimination in language is

seen in the construction of grammatical categories such as gender-neutral ones.

Much of the feminist concern over the supposedly gender-neutral use of terms has

been greatly on the two words: he and man. It is commonly said that these terms

have both gender-specific meanings, as in sentences (1) and (2), and gender-

neutral ones, as in sentences (3) and (4).

1. He drank the wine.

2. A man went into a bar.

3. When a student comes into the room, he should pick up a handout.

4. Man is a primate. (Saul, 2012)

2
Je, tu, nous meaning I, you, we. Chapter title is taken from Irigaray, L. (1993). je, tu, nous:

Toward a Culture of Difference. (A. Martin, Trans.). New York, NY: Routledge. (Original work

published in 1990)
Feminist theorists however claim that these quasi neutral terms cannot be gender-

neutral since their abstractions cannot possibly give the intended meaning; that

meaning is impossible, unavailable as can be seen in the statements below:

5. Man has two sexes; some men are female.

6. Men breastfeeds his young.

7. Ask the candidate about his husband or wife. (Moulton, 1981, p. 113)

Mercier (1995) suggests, for example, that we should understand the ‘gender-

neutral’ use of ‘man’ as referring to either (a) a person or persons of unknown sex;

or (b) males or a combination of males and females. Otherwise, the meanings will

be puzzled and unavailable.

Another problematic issue is the use of indefinite pronouns such as anyone and

everyone. What procreates the problem here is that even though these pronouns

refer to both sexes, the pronoun ‘he’, coined by prescriptivists, is used after these

indefinite pronouns in the sentences. In the statement below, for example,

‘everyone’ and ‘his’ refer to both men and women, supposedly.

8. Everyone left his seats after the bomb denouncement.

English is a language with a vocabulary so large that every word in it seems to

have a dozen synonyms, and yet this particular semantic black hole remains

unfilled. So, what should be done? Wordsmiths have been coining gender-neutral

pronouns for a century and a half, all to no avail. Coiners of these new words

insist that the gender-neutral pronoun is indispensable, but users of English reject,

ridicule, or just ignore their proposals. Guardian columnist Lucy Mangan states

this frustrating impossibility of English language:

 The whole pronouns-must-agree-with-antecedents thing causes me utter agony. Do

you know how many paragraphs I've had to tear down and rebuild because you can't

say, "Somebody left their cheese in the fridge", so you say, “Somebody left his/her

cheese in the fridge”, but then you need to refer to his/her cheese several times

thereafter and your writing ends up looking like an explosion in a pedants' factory? .

. . I crave a non-risible gender-neutral (not "it") third person sing pronoun in the

way normal women my age crave babies. (2010, p.70)

From bits and pieces, now we will pass on to another and even more fossilized,

hard to recover subject: lexicon. In English language, there are many words,

which are clearly male-orientated in that they contain the element “- man” while

they can in fact apply to both sexes, examples are endless: chairman,

congressman, councilman, newsman, foreman, freshman, policeman, salesman,

mailman etc. When feminist linguists are concerned about obscuring of women’s

presence, pop-culture comes up with a solution; gender-specific occupational

terms like ‘manageress’ or ‘lady doctor’. These terms certainly do not contribute

to the invisibility of women. Instead, they call attention to the presence of women.

Moreover, they call attention to women's presence in positions of authority like in

the case of being a doctor or a manager. Nonetheless, most feminists who think

about language find these terms objectionable. Why is this the case? How come

feminists never are pleased? The obvious reason for objecting in use of these

terms is that it seems premised on the idea that maleness is the norm, and that

women filling these jobs are somehow deviant versions of doctors and managers;

it is a sort of symbolic insult to women. Horn and Kleinedler (2000) have disputed

the details of these, noting that ‘man’ did not begin its life as gender-specific and

then get extended to cover both women and men. Rather, ‘man’ actually began its
life as ‘mann’, a gender-neutral term, which only later acquired a gender-specific

meaning.

At a lexical level, meanings attributed to some words seem quite problematic;

female words have less favorable meanings. Again, it is a never-ending list, but

below are some very familiar examples (Lei, 2006):

9. The word “master” means “host” while the feminine word “mistress” has the

surface meaning “hostess”. But actually its connotative meaning is “lover”,

“woman who depends on man” In the following sentence “He grew tired of

his wife and went out for a mistress” Here we will sure know that “mistress

“cannot be his wife.

10. The word “governor” refers to “a person appointed to govern a province or

state, whereas the word “governess” just means ‘nurse maid”.

11. The word “professional” refers to a person qualified or employed in one of

the professions. When we say “he is a professional”, he may be thought to be

a boxer, whereas when we say “she is a professional”, she is likely a

prostitute.

12. When “tramp” refers to male, it means that the man is homeless; he goes

from place to place and does no regular work. While when it refers to a

female, it also indicates that she is a prostitute.

13. The word shrew taken from the name of a small but especially vicious

animal is defined in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary as a “bad-

tempered, scolding woman,” but the word shrewd taken from the same root

is defined as “having, showing, sound judgment and common sense.” and

illustrated with the phrase “a shrewd businessman.”

 14. “The man in the street” and “The woman in the street” is in the same

situation, yet the former one just shows that the man is an ordinary person,

the latter one can indicates that she is a prostitute.

And moreover, the deragotary words generally allude to women. Fromkin and

Rodman and Wardhaugh (as cited in Yelkenac, 2007) give examples of the

pejorative words existing in language for women and having no male equivalents,

some of them are: "tomato, dish, piece, piece of ass, chick, piece of tail, bunny,

pussy, pussy cat, bitch, doll, slut cow, effeminate, emasculated, divorcée and hen-

packed". In addition Wardhaugh implies that a few words belonged to females are

used to describe unpleasant objects such as feminine (for a man to insult him),

black widow spider, Black Maria, iron maiden, Venus fly trap, Hurricane Betsy.

In Turkish language, there are many examples of this kind of usage; kız kurusu,

karafatma, eksik etek, kaldırım yosması, müsait, kız nuri etc.

Early feminist language research in the 1970s focused on the question of male

dominance and female deference in conversation (Spender, 1980). These studies

criticized the patriarchal social system forcing women to speak in a secondary

manner and they also saw individual males as the violators of the rights of their

female counterparts. This subordinated status was displayed in the language

patterns which Lakoff describes as ‘talking like a lady’ (Lakoff, 1975). Below are

the two statements which, she suggests, characterize the difference between

women’s subordinated language and men’s dominant language:

15. Oh dear, you’ve put the peanut butter in the refrigerator again.

16. Shit, you’ve put the peanut butter in the refrigerator again.
Lakoff makes the distinction on the basis of two perceptions: politeness and less

challenging on the behalf of the interlocutor. As she (1975) suggests:

[I]f someone is allowed to show emotions, and consequently does, others may well

view him as a real individual in his own right, as they could not if he never showed

emotion . . . the behavior a woman learns as ‘correct’ prevents her from being taken

seriously as an individual, and further is considered ‘correct’ and necessary for a

woman precisely because society does not consider her seriously as an individual.

In 1980s and 1990s, feminist linguists have changed their perspectives; they

turned to an analysis of socially constructed differences rather than analyzing

dominance of the sexes in the language. Tannen (1991) argued that women are

concerned, in the main, to establish rapport between members of a group and to

ensure that conversations go smoothly (rapport talk), whilst men are concerned to

establish their place in the pecking order and use the production of information as

a tool to move up the hierarchy (report talk). But this view has been criticized

heavily since it seems political; it is not true that women and men grow up in

separate linguistic communities – acknowledging such an absurd division is

indeed the closure of all the debates in feminist discourse. Bing and Bergvall

(1996) remark:

It would be ironic if feminists interested in language and gender inadvertently

reinforced gender polarisation and the myths of essential female–male difference.

By accepting a biological female–male dichotomy, and by emphasising language

which reflects the two categories, linguists may be reinforcing biological

essentialism, even if they emphasise that language, like gender, is learned

behaviour.
In the last decade, gender studies have gone beyond binary thinking and accepted

gender as something that performed intentionally by individuals and thus

something can be overcome. That includes not only the eradication of the division

between female and male but also recognition of the variety of sexual

identifications such as hermaphrodite, trans-gendered and many more. What is

important about this contemporary, or post-modernist perspective is that

dichotomy by tradition is not an experiential but it is a normative social

construction. The materiality of sex is constructed through a ritualised repetition

of norms (Butler, 1993). Thus, gender is not a given, a possession, but rather a

process which one constantly has to perform. And again this view is not without

problems. The very notion of gender does not eliminate the category of gender; no

one can say that there is no such a thing as gender difference. As Freed (1996) has

argued, for example, the fact that the category ‘woman’ is not one which is

coherent does not prevent people classifying you as a woman and making

judgments about you on the basis of that classification.

This confusion and impossibility leads us to the question: does gender itself exist

in isolation? Or does it exist as a raced and classed category? The answer will

inevitably end in the debates of power relations in language. Early studies were

constrained to the language usage of white, middle-class women and

generalizations on that discourse were made. Much came from that class and the

power relationships within those communities; there was a more or less simple

correlation between males and power and females and powerlessness. To

overcome this, we need to think through power relations in a more complex

manner to avoid such a simple binary opposition. And to do that we need

something like Foucault’s notion of dispersion of power – that is, the spread of
power throughout a society, rather than the holding and withholding of power by

individuals (Foucault, 1978). O’Barr and Atkins (1980) argue that there is a

confusion between the language features that are determined by gender and those

determined by a position of lesser power. Through their analysis of the type of

speech that is produced by female and male witnesses in a court-room setting,

they suggest that powerless men seem to produce speech which exhibits the same

features that women in general use. They also show that not all women use those

features to the same degree. Thus, they argue that ‘so-called “women’s language”

is neither characteristic of all women nor limited only to women’ (1980, p. 102).

Women’s position has changed intensely, especially in Western societies, - some

might say it is still not enough, and that is true; but it does not mean we should not

recognize these great changes due to the campaigns by feminists on a wide variety

of issues. And what is more is that these issues expand to the common-sense

expectations of many women who would not describe themselves as feminists.

We may not feel or see the practical success of these attempts because of our

geographical position; in Turkey there are more to be done than already have been

done. As stated above much of this change happened in Western societies, so it is

a matter of time when we will live the change, hopefully. We are no longer able to

make generalizations about the way women or men speak, nor are we able to

assume that stereotypes work in the same way in all situations. In the following

chapter, now we will pass on to written discourse, literature; we will evaluate

some problematic issues and proposed solutions. I will mention an innovative,

eccentric and a hard to resist proposal: L’ecriture feminine.

Le Rire de la Méduse3

And why don't you write? Write!

Writing is for you, you are for you;
your body is yours, take it.

Hélène Cixous (p. 16)

Can we name Virginia Woolf as a feminist? Or can we entitle former British

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a heroine of feminism? Is a female writing –

a writing by women- necessarily be a feminist one? Take Thatcher, for instance, it

is obvious today that she produced feminist effects, unwillingly as she was also to

blame for many anti-feminist policies at the time. By definition then, she was not

a feminist. In the post-modern era, feminists have used these terms, ‘feminist’,

‘female’, and ‘feminine’, in a variety of ways. Writing in 1986 an essay on

feminist literary theory, Toril Moi concludes:

We can now define as female, writing by women, bearing in mind that this label

does not say anything at all about the nature of that writing; as feminist, writing

which takes a discernible anti-patriarchal and antisexist position; and as feminine,

writing which seems to be marginalised (repressed, silenced) by the ruling

social/linguistic order. (1986, p. 220)

So, by definition we could say; feminism is a political position, femaleness is a

matter of biology and femininity is a set of culturally defined characteristics. But

what does it have to do with what we are doing here?

3
Le Rire de la Méduse meaning the Laugh of Medusa. Chapter title is taken from Cixous, H.

(1994). The Laugh of Medusa. S. Sellers (ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

We are talking about gender differences, the sex of language, and the harsh

discrimination between the sexes in language; literature, or feminine writing, is

out of question; it is a kind of art, another consideration for another time. Or is it?

The relations between feminist and feminine, and female and feminine, are as

uncertain as those meaning relations between female and feminist. In Thinking

About Women, Mary Ellmann (1968) lists the following as common feminine

stereotypes: ‘formlessness, passivity, instability, confinement, piety, materiality,

spirituality, irrationality, compliancy’ and names ‘two incorrigible figures: the

shrew and the witch’ (p. 55). In The Newly Born Woman, Hélène Cixous notes

similarly: ‘passivity, moon, nature, night, mother, emotions, sensitive, pathos’

(1986, p. 63). In patriarchal thinking there is an unquestioned linkage between

‘female’ and ‘feminine’. As stated in the former chapters, the notions as to female,

feminine, women, are bounded within the patriarchal interpretations of each. It is

a vicious circle that we, as women, are so desperately trying to break. Prescriptive

languages – their practitioners- have been denying coining new terms which

feminist theorists propose for decades; they overlook the black holes of grammar,

discourse and even more of ‘thought’. Feminine writing then does not mean a
writing coming out of the hands of a feminist. It is a discourse, a reflection of

thought. It is where the unraveling starts; when the world finds its course in

disillusionment. It is to write - the act that will 'realise' the un-censored

relationship of woman to her sexuality, to her woman-being giving her back

access to her own forces; that will return her goods, her pleasures, her organs, her

vast bodily territories kept under seal; that will tear her out of the superegoed,

over-Mosesed structure where the same position of guilt is always reserved for her

(guilty of everything, every time; of having desires, of not having any; of being

frigid, of being 'too’ hot; of not being both at once; of being too much of a mother

and not enough; of nurturing and of not nurturing ...) (Moore & Belsey, 1997).

L’ecriture feminine is a literary term coined by Hélène Cixous, in The Laugh of

the Medusa (1976), meaning literally feminine writing. Fundamentally, feminine

writing is based on Lacanian theory – that is considers human beings as solely

‘subjects’. As Rose (1986) states the subject is not the same as the individual and

is not determined by its body precisely because the psycho-symbolic subject is

split, sexed and speaking. The subject is split because we are divided by the

unconscious, which itself determines much of what we do and say without our

ever knowing it. We are ‘sexed’. Cixous argues that the subject position of woman

or the feminine is on the margins of the symbolic, and so it is less firmly anchored

and controlled by the Phallus. She sees it through the psychoanalytic concept -

that is woman is constituted by and as “lack” because of the lack of a penis. As a

consequence of this, Freud states that the female unconscious is less

repressed, less radically separated from the consciousness because there is no fear

of castration. Cixous takes it all and concludes: woman has always been in a

position of otherness in this phallogocentric culture by tradition. And thus she

does her magic by relating it with Derrida’s idea of play. She claims that if

woman is de-centered in the male world, then she is freer to go beyond, to create.

If woman is the ‘’dark continent’’ as Freud calls it, if she is less rational, less

moral, then she is lack of control and she should celebrate it (here Cixous uses

metaphor to reverse this kind of defined slavery/ liberty of woman). Cixous also

argues that feminine writing does not belong exclusively to females since it comes

from the female body; men can write from that position as well. It makes perfect

sense because refusing to define or encode writing liberates it from the logic of

phallogocentric rationalism.

Feminine writing is the one that is hard to digest at first; one should read and write

and read and write… and feel and live and die and born... to die. One should be in

the light and also in the dark; one should order and tear it apart; one should lead

the canon and the chaos. One should be a female and a male; one should be the

‘both’. There is not much to tell about l’ecriture feminine; so we might and should

read.

No one dares to define Virginia Woolf as a feminist. Her questions about unequal

access to literary production and consumption are still demanding a remedy. I

believe she manifests herself in her writing. Below is from A Room of One’s Own:

the materiality of spaces is clearly tied to imagination, when Woolf is refused

entry to Cambridge’s gravel path, library, and chapel, which are reserved for men

only.

I thought of the organ booming in the chapel and of the shut doors of the library;

and I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse

perhaps to be locked in; and, thinking of the safety and prosperity of the one sex
 and of the poverty and insecurity of the other and the effect of tradition and of the

lack of tradition upon the mind of a writer…. (Woolf, 2000, p.26)

Bliss (1924) is Mansfield’s best known exposition of female sexuality. In a scene

where Bertha and Pearl stand at the window of the drawing room together, Bertha

experiences a sense of silent, intimate communion with Pearl:

How long did they stand there? Both, as it were, caught in that circle of unearthly

light, understanding each other perfectly, creatures of another world, and wondering

what they were to do in this one with all this blissful treasure that burned in their

bosoms and dropped, in silver flowers, from their hair and hands? (Mansfield, 1924,

p.131)

In Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Kristeva makes her great

contribution to feminine writing by exploring the term ‘abject’ with a ‘talking

body’, which is the embodiment of thought in its extreme limits.

Abject. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does

not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it

beckons to us and ends up engulfing us. It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health

that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not

respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.

The traitor, the liar, the criminal with a good conscience, the shameless rapist, the

killer who claims he is a savior. . . . (Kristeva, 1982, p. 17)

Cixous defines her writing in the very beginning of her book The Laugh of

Medusa (1976):

I shall speak about women's writing: about what it will do. Woman must write

herself: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they
 have been driven away as violently as from their bodies-for the same reasons, by

the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text-as into

the world and into history-by her own movement.

In the search of understanding what feminine writing is/ is not, or could/could not,

it is better for one to seek meaning in her/ his own tongue since the

representations in another language might cause problems with regards to

terminology, intercultural literature and the scope of abstractions that one’s native

language could possibly provide. Moreover, in order to make sense and

experience this unusual kind of writing; to see the possibility of it in the mother

tongue, I believe one always let her/his language play. So, some examples in

Turkish language as to feminine writing will be presented without the need for

further explanation.

her gün merak ediyorum telaşla nasıl öleceğimi

her gün arıyorum kendimi elimde bir harita
…
yatağa yatıp kalkıyorum
yastığı sol kulağının üzerine koy
yastığı sol kulağımın üzerine koyuyorum
bir çimdik tuz dolmanın içine
her gün dişlerini fırçala saçlarını tara
ayaklarımı yıkıyor tırnaklarımı kesiyorum
ilk çağ uygarlıklarının en önemlisi Sümerlilerdir
anlat
anlat
anlat

çene altı tüylerini al

herkes yapıyor sen de erotik çamaşır al
yapamayacaklarını yaz yaz yaz
…
umuma açık yerlerde kaç ben çıkıp peşim sıra çelişkileriyle gelir

(Tarıman, 2009, p. 99)

Acıyı, kedere, neşeyi henüz ayrıştırmamıştım.

Hayattı; yekpareydi. Her şey, bir şeydi.
…
Mevsimler birinden öbürüne devrilirken, elimizi arı sokarken,
bisikletten düşüp dizlerimizi kanatırken canımıza bir şey
olurdu; hissederdim. Ama acıya dâhil değildi yine de bunlar.
Hayattı, yekpareydi işte.
Zaman, hayatı parçalara ayırıp “parça parça” görmeye
başladığımızda, acı, o yekpareliği yitirdiğimizde oluşacaktı.
Şimdilik, dünya geniş ve ılıktı.
Biz kendi ılık dünyamızın içinde salınan, uçuşan perilerdik.

(Keskin, 2007, p.37)

Kuşkusuz zamandan konuşacağız

Bir çocuğun dereyi geçerken taşıdığı yükün
Bir kız kardeş olmasından.
Ve küfürden Olmayan anneden Ölülerden.
Doğurmayan anneden konuşacağız
İnkârdan.

(Matur, 2008, p.17)

Bal rengi acı dokumuzdan sızan sonsuz. Bu parçaları, ruhuna bir Japonun ruhu

değmiş biri olarak size göndermekle göneniyorum. Okuyun, okuyun da anlayın

"Anlamak" nasıl bir şeydir bu dokusundan bal rengi sonsuz bir acı sızdıran yer

küredeki kusurlu varoluşumuzu...

Bu şen ve çılgın metincikler bende gülmek ve ağlamak arası bir duyum

yaratıyor; eğlenmekten ölüyorum… Siz ise korkarak ve kaçarak (bu yara

yalnızca benle ilgili yansıttıklarınıza bağlı değil!) daha ne kadar kıvırtacaksınız

bilemem ancak aynanın böylesine kutsal saydığı o ırktan (Japonlar) bir ruh size

dokunur da açılırsınız umarım (hem düz anlamda hem yan anlamda).

Şimdi hoş ve sağ kalmanızı dilerken bu saçma sözcüklerin size tiksinti

vermesinden kıvanç duyacağımı da eklerim. (Marmara, 1993, p.78)

On dört yaşındaydı ruhum bayım

Bir mermer masanın soğukluğunda yaşlandı.
Protez bacaklar taktılar ruhuma ince ve beyaz
Gıcırdaya gıcırdaya dolaştım şehri
Protez bacaklarıma bile ıslık çaldılar
O ara içimde çiçeklerden oluşmuş
bir silahsız kuvvet ablukaya alındı
Sinemalarda da "organzm gıcırtıları" oynuyordu.
Kaçmaya çalıştım. Olmadı.
Bu nedenle, çiçekli şiirler yazmayı
Ruhum açısından faydalı buluyorum bayım.
Neyse işte
Ben her filmi hatırlarım
Sinemaların hiç bitmeyen gecesine sığındığım çok oldu.
"Sofi'nin tercihini" seyrederken çok ağlamıştım.
Öpüşen Guramilerle ilgili bir film yapsalar
Onu da mutlaka hatırlardım.
İnsan içinde çevrilen bir çıkrığın sesini unutur mu?
Hem sonra ben hatırlamaya alışkınım
Bir "eşya toplayıcısıyım" bayım. (Madak, 2013)
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