The masculine always prevails over the feminine

“The masculine always prevails over the feminine” this is what I learnt in school.

This means that if I am talking about a group with 100 women and 1 man, I should use the masculine form in my French sentence.

It even means that if I am talking about a group with 100 women and 1 dog, I should use the masculine form in my French sentence.

However, research has shown that the human brain imagines men when it reads a sentence in the masculine form.

It has also shown that people tend to instinctively use the masculine form to talk about presidents and doctors, but they tend to use the feminine form to talk about secretaries and nurses.

This leads women to think they will only ever be able to get secondary roles.

And it invisibilizes and marginalizes non-binary people.

This is why we need to write with gender diversity in mind. And writing with everybody in mind is writing with inclusive language, whatever form it may take.