Literary writing game in inclusive language, which can be offered even for a few minutes, in all types of settings and for all ages.
Inclusive language is not a consensus at all. And yet, trying to practice it really makes you think about questions of domination, by destabilizing the habits that it arouses in everyone. Thus, proposing it as a literary game is a way to put movement out of any polemic. And it is indeed the object of an active feminism to advance equality, which is for the benefit of all, rather than to provoke tensions.
This game can be proposed in various ways. I propose, rather than a rule of the game, some axes that I think are productive to mobilize:
- The duration is free. It can be proposed, at the beginning of a meeting for example, for only five minutes. This is already a lot, and it will also have the effect of “breaking the ice”, as well as freeing and de-dramatizing the talk on the subject of feminism.
- You can propose to people not to “translate” a non-inclusive text into an inclusive one (which can be seen as academic and normative), but rather to propose to each person to write a short text on a known and shared subject, and then read it to each other. Some of them will have managed to get around the question by using non-gendered words, others will have searched a lot, others will not have done so... In short, the moment of reading will be a funny and playful moment. Joyful sharing is the best pedagogical dynamic.
- You can suggest that everyone does a search on the Internet and present to the others the different schools of inclusive language (because there is no consensus on how to practice it either) and to indicate what they think, allowing themselves to be critical. The interactions based on the opinions of each person, the possible controversies, will be much more educational than a professorial explanation, than a univocal expertise on the subject.
The idea is to propose a moment of creativity and then of sharing on inclusive language, very short or longer, allowing each person to have had a space to reflect on it, in his or her own way, and to have been able to receive the reflections of other people, in a horizontal way. This is conducive to constructing one’s own thoughts in a free way. Because it would be contradictory if feminism, whose object is to question systems of domination, were itself dictatorial and normative.
