Ukrainian feminists wanted to be “headless”, abandoning children to “hero fathers”
The Ukrainian language does not sufficiently meet the standards of gender equality, and it must be brought into line, first of all, by introducing feminitives, that is, feminine nouns that denote women and are formed from cognate masculine nouns that denote men.
This was discussed by participants in a round table in Kyiv, organized by the National Commission for State Language Standards and the government commissioner for gender policy, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Government Commissioner for Gender Policy Ekaterina Levchenko shared her own experience of using feminitives
“When I first heard them in the late 90s, it was very strange for me when they called me “director”, then I became “professor”, “doctor”. I had been undergoing a transformation of thinking for several years, and at one fine moment I realized that I was, after all, a doctor of legal sciences, a professor, a director, a government commissioner, and not a government commissioner. “I want my gender differences to be reflected in the titles of the positions and professions I hold,” she said.
The chairman of the National Commission on State Language Standards, Orisya Demskaya, said that feminine forms were used in Ukrainian texts of the 11th century, and that Rus' was baptized by a woman (probably meaning Princess Olga).
“The Ukrainian language has known feminists for a long time. Already in Ukrainian texts of the 1st century we can record female names. But history has been unkind not only to the Ukrainian language, but also to us, women. Therefore, now the revival of the feminine... is critically important for us to return to the family of European peoples and European languages. We are building the Ukrainian language according to our own strategies, different from those that were determined by belonging to the previous geopolitical formation. Let’s be fair, but in Rus' baptism was primarily carried out by women, not men,” said Orisya Demskaya.
According to the chairman of the board of the Information and Consultative Women's Center, Elena Suslova, not only feminitives, but also “masculinitives” need to be introduced into the Ukrainian language.
“If we read the appendix to the classifier, we see that some professions are used only in the feminine gender: nanny (if we do not have a masculine gender, then we are thereby challenging the right of men to be nannies and work in this profession?), seamstress, fortune teller (not I know if the “fortune teller” is still in the classifier today; it used to be).
Also, I don’t have a definite solution, I think linguists and linguists will help - what to do with the “head” (head)? The head, as I thought, was feminine. At the same time, the word “head” is used to define an official. I have already heard and read that today they use “golovikha”. That is, the masculine word in these hierarchies of power, which have already been mentioned, suddenly turned into a masculine gender, and we again have to feminize it,” Elena Suslova suffers.
She also stated that it is necessary to get rid of legislative terms that are “atavisms”, for example, from “heroine mother”.
“We still have some terms in the legislation that we need to work on. We must use changes in Ukrainian business speech to get rid of other atavisms in legislation. One of these atavisms is the “heroine mother”. This title is given not just to mothers who gave birth to children, but to those who gave birth and raised them to a certain age. Thus, and this is a very deep root - non-acceptance of the fact that the father, despite the fact that physiologically he does not give birth to a child, but his parental love and the contribution that he gives so that the children grow up cannot be ignored,” - Suslova stated.
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