A review by joreneereads
Punto en boca. (Esto no es un manual de lenguaje inclusivo) by María Martín Barranco

Did not finish book. Stopped at 58%.

So. DNFing this book at 58% because I’m just not interested in anything else she has to say.

While I didn’t hate this book and it gave me interesting food for thought, even without all the TERF alarm bells ringing, it did get really repetitive.

The basic themes of the book are:

• the “neutral” masculine is sexist, exclusionary, and not neutral at all
• when women (and other marginalized groups - although she mentions them as an afterthought) are not explicitly mentioned, maleness is considered the default even when the language is technically “neutral” (i.e. not explicitly masculine)
• this includes “neutral” attempts with the spanish language like using x, ‘@, or e instead of o/a. To her, these should only be used for identities outside of the o/a binary that choose to.
• any form of not naming women is exclusionary, including things like “pregnant people.” Name every group you want to include.

I agree with some of these, and some of them have given me interesting things to consider. I do agree that “neutral” language doesn’t fix the masculine neutral, as we obviously have a lot of both of these in English. Things like doctor or engineer are neutral, but we picture men. The opposite does also happen though (nurse, housekeeper, etc). Interestingly, she doesn’t seem to have a problem with “neutral” words in Spanish… only neutral pronouns? She made a point of making fun of the RAE for claiming that feminists wanted a feminine/masculine version of every profession etc., but… according to her own rules, shouldn’t there be? There should be a masculine, feminine, and neutral version so that they can all be named if necessary, because in a sexist society neutral will be perceived as male?? (Again, don’t disagree on that point! Confused on the consistency of application. Maybe I missed something though.)

Then of course we get to the TERF-y-ness. She very clearly has been called a TERF and preventatively gets in there to try to get ahead of it. The constant “if you think trans men __” “whether you agree or not” really put my red flags up, and then we got to the flat out “now lets not be calling people hurtful words like cis, man, or terf.” (Yes, I understand that’s not what she said. She said not to put labels on people they don’t like. But to group all of those together is LAUGHABLE - terf is not analogous to being cis or being a woman, and was clearly thrown in to protect her terfy agenda).

Trying to name every single identity that can possibly get pregnant instead of using something like “pregnant people” is wild. It’s actually impossible, which means you will ALWAYS end up with a “catch all” at the end, which she’s opposed to. Does she have the same freakout with “people with blue eyes” “people with innies”… There is no reason to have this argument outside of feeling like trans issues need to be subservient to feminism.

Cis white feminists always absolutely PANIC when their personal pet issue isn’t seen as the single top most important thing (Susan B Anthony anyone?) and that’s clearly what’s happening here. She’s terrified that anyone could value trans inclusion as much or more than fighting misogyny (even though they have the SAME GOAL for fuck’s sake) so she’s happily throwing it under the bus to propel her own agenda forward.

Interesting read, won’t be reading from the author again.