Zhenya Berkovich is being prosecuted on terrorism-related charges. But the Internet is up in arms because she calls herself a ‘directoress.’ Why do Russian feminists use ‘feminitives’?

The Russian authorities have recently charged two female theater artists, Zhenya Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk, with “justifying terrorism.” While the allegations connected to the production of Petriychuk’s play, “Finist the Bright Falcon,” are highly controversial, what Russians talk about the most when talking about this case is why it is that Berkovich calls herself “rezhissyorka” — using a gendered suffix to convey that she is not a “director” but a female “directoress.” The Russian journaliste Shura Gulyaeva thinks that the debates about “feminitives” — feminine-gendered nouns in the Russian language — have nothing to do with grammar, and everything to do with ideology and politics. She explained her reasoning in her essay for Meduza’s newsletter Signal.

In this abridged English translation, we have deliberately followed the author’s decision to use “feminitives,” or feminine-gendered nouns, to describe women’s professions. Contemporary Russian feminists argue that feminitives help make women’s achievements and contributions to the professions more visible. What do you think? Send us your thoughts!

Why ‘directoress’?

In late May, a Moscow court dismissed the complaint filed by Zhenya Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk about their unlawful arrest. Both of them are being prosecuted for allegedly “justifying terrorism” through the rhetoric used in Berkovich’s production of Petriychuk’s play, Finist the Bright Falcon. In her play, Petriychuk tells the story of the hundreds (possibly even thousands) of Russian women who converted to radical Islam and married Syrian jihadists.

Zhenya Berkovich, who produced Petriychuk’s prize-winning play, is an ardent feminist who has for years insisted that others should call her not a rezhissyor (“director” in Russian) but a rezhissyorka, using a feminitive corresponding to “directoress” or something similar in English. As Finist the Bright Falcon and the criminal prosecution of the two female artists drew the attention of the press, excitement about Berkovich’s use of feminitives grew on Russian social media (as it does every time a feminitive makes headlines).

A typical comment reads like this: “The helpful media has informed our whole city and the rest of the world that Zhenya Berkovich is not a director who stages plays but just some chick.” “She’s not really a director, just a directoress,” ran the pejorative reading of the female professional’s preferred noun.

When, two weeks after the two women’s arrest, the legendary rock musician Andrey Makarevich joined the conversation, it was only to say: “You’ve got to be monstrously, criminally deaf to your mother tongue to come up with pearls like professorka, poetka, rezhissyorka… Are you completely bonkers, people?”

Why not just ‘director’?

Well, to begin with, Berkovich herself wants to be called a “directoress.” She even insists that others should refer to her this way. But not everyone is convinced.

Recent years’ heated debates on the use of feminitives in the Russian language have consolidated two mutually intolerant positions. People who side with inclusivity in the use of language are convinced that the use of feminitives raises awareness of the women’s achievements and contributions to the professional world, culture, and society. They think that feminitives can help correct social injustices with respect to women, including gender discrimination, income inequality (women in Russia earn 30–35 percent less than men), and the inequitable spread of domestic chores.

The opponents of feminitives, on the other hand, believe that this linguistic practice diminishes women and doesn’t recognize them as men’s equals. They also like to say that feminitives simply don’t sound “natural” in Russian.

In reality, starting at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, an increasing number of women in Russia (and elsewhere in the world) joined the workforce, offering their labor for hire. At the same time, a variety of new professions were just emerging and becoming a part of regular life, and women who joined them were frequently referred to with feminitives, as she-transcribers, -telegraphists, -aviators (or, rather, “aviatrixes”), and so forth.

Against this backdrop, the pre-revolutionary Russian feminist movement demanded suffrage rights for women. Unlike European suffragettes, Russian women were able to achieve this reform as early as 1917, when, following the February Revolution, the Provisional Government gave in to their demands and granted them the right to vote.

What to call women

At the same time, writes the Russian lingvistka Irina Fufayeva in her book What to Call Women, a linguistic undertow was normalizing the plural masculine form as the generic description of what people — both men and women — can do professionally. What’s a bit more surprising, though, is that this pattern of generalizing the masculine nouns as gender-neutral only became the norm by the 1960s. While, at the turn of the century, feminitives were preferred by women’s publications in 63 percent of cases, by the 1950s this number went down to 25 percent, dropping to 19 percent by the 1980s.

Marxism and Leninism treated women’s emancipation as a task of making them fully equal to men. Immediately after the October Revolution, Soviet propaganda portrayed women as strong workers and peasants. Some might even say they looked “masculine.” Still, even at that time, women were barred from certain occupations, considered too “dangerous” for all but men. By the late 1970s, the list of occupations closed to women grew to 431 different professions, obviating the feminitives that otherwise might have survived in the language.

Zhenya Berkovich is one of the contemporary Russian feminists who try to counter the generalization of the masculine gender. Besides, her determination to do this “definitely doesn’t hurt anyone,” she says.

The unconvinced

The question of using or not using feminitives is, first and foremost, a question of politics. This is, in fact, what bothers people who feel that their right to staying neutral is being taken away from them by the politicization of feminitives.

The linguist Alexander Pipersky thinks that, at the bottom of any linguistic debate there is inevitably a political creed. Anyone who takes part in the heated contemporary debates on language inevitably expresses a political position, sometimes in spite of themselves, or else has one attributed to them, sometimes against the grain of what they really think and feel. This is true not just for the arguments about gendered nouns, but also for other linguistic debates, like the proper way to refer to Ukraine. Either embracing or rejecting feminitives instantly broadcasts an ideological commitment, Pipersky believes: “Maybe you didn’t want to broadcast it. Maybe you’re just coming to a clinic to see a doctor and it’s not the place and time for politics.” When settings like that are newly politicized, it can bother people, Pipersky observes.

One of the arguments for the use of feminitives is that they highlight gender inequality through language and counter the invisibility of women’s work. But some people who oppose the wider use of feminitives think it’s irrelevant to focus on a professional’s gender, since gender falls outside of a person’s professional identity. Other critics of the practice believe that gender-neutral language helps protect women from discrimination. On these grounds, feminists in the English-speaking world have long advocated for gender neutrality in reference to work and professional occupations.

Nevertheless, since in the 1960s, sociolinguists have been noticing that using masculine nouns as neutral doesn’t automatically result in gender-neutral perceptions. When asked about their first associations with generic plural nouns like “writers,” “doctors,” “journalists,” or “experts,” both respondents and respondentesses in Romance in Germanic languages said that their first thought was about a group of men.

Nancy Fraser’s position

One of the critics of the rhetoric of recognition exemplified by the feminitives is the American philosopher Nancy Fraser. She does not believe that inclusive language is enough to solve society’s structural problems. “We are facing,” she writes, “a new constellation in the grammar of political claims-making — and one that is disturbing on two counts.”

Does this mean that we should give up on the feminitives? I prefer to think that cultural shifts can complement our efforts towards economic justice.