Regulating the "wayward drift of so-called 'inclusive' writing" was the subject of the bill put to the Senate on Monday, October 30. The debate seemed to have even caught French President Emmanuel Macron's attention, who alluded to it in a speech a few hours earlier when he was inaugurating a new museum dedicated to the French language, the Cité Internationale de la Langue Française in Villers-Cotterêts, Aisne. "In this language, a masculine noun acts as the neutral form. There's no need to add dots or hyphens in the middle of words," he said, advocating "not giving in to the zeitgeist."

"Inclusive writing," or écriture inclusive, adds the feminine ending to a noun, so rather than the masculine form standing in for both male and female, both genders are represented. For example, "senators" would be senateur·ice·s, combining the male sénateurs and the female sénatrices.

Pascale Gruny, Les Républicains (LR) senator for the Aisne department, who refuses to use the term "sénatrice" and who initiated the bill, is taking it one step further. In her view, the Académie Française, France's institution responsible for safeguarding the French language, was justified in saying that these lexical and typographical changes present a "mortal peril", which aim to allow the feminine spelling instead of just using the generic masculine. She argues that it not only risks making the language less accessible to people who have problems with literacy or have disabilities, but also presents an "ideology that jeopardizes the clarity of our language."

The Socialist and ecologist opposition in the Sénat says that it is a subtle, moral and ideological crusade. "This is the ninth bill about this since 2018," said Senator Yan Chantrel (Socialist), who represents French nationals living abroad. "It may seem insignificant, but it's not. It's an attack by the conservative camp on the feminization of names, and by the same token, on gender equality."

Although the High Council for Gender Equality, an independent advisory organization tasked with guiding government policy, has supported inclusive writing since 2015, many senators are skeptical about its efficacy. "And yet we know that women are more inclined to apply for a job when the offer is written using inclusive language," said Green Senator Mathilde Ollivier. "We're in favor of inclusive writing, not out of dogmatism, but because it's essential for inclusion," she said, pointing out that there are "no studies" linking inclusive writing to additional difficulties for dyslexic people.

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