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French to English translations [PRO] Social Sciences - Social Science, Sociology, Ethics, etc. / gender studies
French term or phrase:sexisé
I'm translating an article about sexual harassment in nightlife environments. The context sentence is this:
Lorsque l’on sait que seulement 10% des victimes portent plainte et que la méconnaissance de ces sujets est majeure, on peut affirmer qu’il est primordial d’avoir une lecture féministe de la situation en se fiant plutôt au nombre de témoignages et aux ressentis des publics sexisés.
[Utilisation du terme personnes “sexisé·es” en référence à Juliet Drouar, qui l’utilise pour parler des rapports de force, pouvoir et domination sans invisibiliser tous les autres groupes victimes de sexisme (personnes trans, bi, queer, intersexe, lgbtqia+), les femmes n’étant qu’un groupe parmi d’autres.].
I gather this is a recent coinage and wonder if there's an equivalent in use in English at the moment to encompass all victims of sexism in this way.
There are many more examples of the word on Canadian sites above all.
So far I've found nothing about women being plain 'sexualized', so maybe you need to speak of 'women subject to sexualized BEHAVIOUR' (last example above).
This would cover just about everybody and everything I should think, from mimicking the way a person walks or talks, peering down cleavages, wolfwhistles, etc.
Thanks, although I'm going with 'gender and sexual minorities' for the sake of clarity, your links have been very useful. 3 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer
Thank you all for your input, in the end for this text I decided to go with "gender and sexual minorites" for clarity's sake, with an explanation about recent coinage in the footnote.
If a word is to be invented (and I get to do it! :), it almost feels like this is what it comes down to! But while the term cisheterosexim is becoming more common, I could only find a few instances of "cisheterosexualized". So I'd still go for a workaround or use "sexisé" in quotes and explain what it means (basically "women and gender and sexual minorities", or some version of all those who experience/are impacted by sexism/cisheterosexism).
@Una, From Julia Serrano, a well-known trans activist: "Gender and Sexual Minorities: a broad umbrella term for people whose sex, gender, and/or sexuality falls outside of societal norms, and who often face marginalization as a result." and "Other strands of feminism are more broadly focused on challenging multiple (or all) forms of sexism, and thus are concerned with women as well as gender and sexual minorities." Which is what Drouar has in mind when talking about wanting an umbrella term to cover all those dominated by cis hetero men.
The wikipedia reference looks OK, as it considers it to be about The topic can also be considered as gender and ethnicity, whereby gender groups could be predominantly one gender of male or female, or another in one place while the equal gender dominance is not always the same in another place. Gender and minority groups are considered similarly to ethnic groupings in a society, while I believe that many people don't speak about underlying or personal issues, preferences and orientations. (The wikipedia reference looks OK, if you want to consider various groups in a diverse society, whereby all sorts of people could find or meet one another.)
In this podcast (1st link below), Juliet Drouar says of the term 'sexisé.e.s' - "utiliser le terme “sexisé.es” pour toutes les personnes issues des minorités sexuelles et de genre qui subissent des formes de sexisme (plutôt que de l’utiliser d’une manière qui désigne toujours implicitement le seul groupe « femmes »)". So, this would mean that those who are 'sexisé.e.s' are those who are oppressed and/or exploited by the cisheteropatriarchy - "A system of power based on the supremacy and dominance of cisgender heterosexual men through the exploitation and oppression of womxn and the LGBTQIA+ community. This includes oppressive discrimination such as queerphobia (homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, binarism, etc.)." (see 2nd link)
As 'sexisé.e.s' seems to have been very recently coined and used by Colette Guillaumin and Juliet Drouar, and doesn't seem to have an established English equivalent yet, could you leave the term as 'sexisé.e.s' with a note ?
I actually like the word "target" over "object of", Libby, esp. since the term "objectified" does still has a negative tone to it, like in the case of the phrase "the"objectifying (sexual) of women" (that's why I offered that option with some reticence). Although, in it's general scope, like it is put forward in modern psychoanalytic theory, "object relations" are seen as intrinsic to human development, and not so overtly related to sexuality, as Freud would have thought, at least early on.
Similar to Barbara's slightly longer phrase, what about simply "the sexually harassed/targeted"? I just feel that "genderized" doesn't work here, where we're not talking about that whole notion of someone labelling what gender you are; this is more about someone sexually harassing you, however you identify. By the way, not all progressive people feel insulted to be called a "victim" of harassment or other crimes. Maybe that's just a hyper-perception. In any case, agree that we can use "object" or "target" instead, in these very sensitive times.
The expression "victims of sexism" is old hat and outmoded, IMO. Not to mention offensive to those who have experienced it and would read your translation. If I were translating this text, I might use something like "those who have been the object of sexist behavior" in some of the places. In that way, I think one loses a fair amount of the denigrating tone of the term "victim", and puts the onus/blame back on the perpetrator of the harassment, while court systems and the like seem to look at victims as people, esp. women, whom they can further "victimize" by doing things like compelling them to talk about their past sexual behavior, etc., on the stand, as if they are the ones who are on trial and guilty, when they are most definitely not, in some specific incident.
This discussion is indeed very interesting, and to get back to Una's original question about whether an equivalent term in English exists, I personally don't think there is one (not an 'expert', but have read a lot on the topic in both English and French). But I'm very interested in seeing what emerges!
Since Drouar uses the term very explicitly (following on from Guillaumin), it might be worth keeping the term in French and explaining it, or using the various options to work around it (depending on the target audience of the translation, I think that makes a difference!).
I agree with avoiding the word victims, though Drouar's intent is to focus on and include all those who experience sexism (as opposed to just women): "nous pourrions par exemple proposer pour les personnes concernées par le sexisme, donc par la domination des hommes cis hétéro, d’employer le terme de : personnes sexisé.e.s. Un terme qui lève le voile sur les processus de construction sociale de la différence des sexes (-isé.e) à la racine du sexisme et qui permet de ne pas invisibiliser les personnes LGBTQI."
@Phil and others. Thanks for this discussion. There can be various ways to work around the term, saying "victims of sexism" works sometimes, but not always. The term appears a few times in my text, including: "système de domination et de violence envers les personnes sexisées.", "les agressions envers les personnes sexisées et minorisées"; " les mobilités nocturnes des personnes sexisées" and "il existe une continuité d’actes violents dans tous les espaces nocturnes traversés par les groupes sexisés et minorisés". I was wondering whether a recognised term existed in English that those among you specialised in gender studies might know. If not, there are indeed various phrases that I can use instead depending on the context.
You only offend men and women who are subjected to such harassment, whether at a nightclub, or on certain websites, if you call them "victims", a term that any feminist, whether male or female, or educated person, would certainly want to avoid using.
... "nightlife", which is what people who often consider themselves to be modern and "with it" often enjoy partaking in, I think the neologism "sexised", plain and simple, works just fine.
Victims of sexisms in the plural might work - the idea seems to be that discrimination against trans, bi, queer people etc. can also be thought of as sexisms. But I don't know the field; AFAIK, academic readers might also be fine with "sexised".
@Jennifer - Sorry, I hadn't read your comment before I posted this.
Barbara I'm not saying "sexised" is wrong, per se, but it sounds very translated and unnatural to me. Going back to the term "racisé", the English version, "racialized", actually makes sense and is understandable, even though it's not common. And the equivalent for sexisé, "sexualized," already has another meaning, so that won't work. I have no problems with neoligisms in general, but sexised just doesn't sound 'right' or really make sense. If it becomes widely used, I'll grudgingly go with the flow, but not sure we're there yet! :) Still think a workaround is better in this case, but I'll keep digging!
As far as I'm, and it seems many others, elsewhere are concerned, the term, in both French and English,and as I have rendered it in English, is just a neologism.
I would like to add my grain of salt to the discussion. Could sexisés be taken as "gendered public? Especially as it seems there is talk of "personnes trans, bi, queer, intersexe, lgbtqia+" as well as women? And would this fit in to the translation?
But I found the term "sexised" several times on the Internet, in very contemporary contexts, so I think it WOULD be the most "modern option", one that is used in highly circumscribed contexts, like this one.
@Barbara, I couldn't find the source at first, but looked again after your comment and figured out how to get the original PDF. The chapter cited is actually written by a French woman, Colette Guillaumin, which was originally published in French in 1978 and translated a few years later (but not terribly well from the bit that I read). So certainly not the most 'modern' option and not widespread enough IMO to be used without explanation (even that article had quotation marks). There's got to be something better (I hope!). :)
I was going to suggest the same thing as Margaret for the word "racisé", which is relatively recent and not used as frequently in English that I'm aware of, though I did find uses of "racialized" in Canada. Nothing comes to mind immediately for sexisé except working with the idea of "gendered oppression" or sexism.
You could either keep the original word in French, explaining that it's a new term and define it as those who face sexism or gendered oppression. Or work around it by replacing the term with some version of "those who face/experience sexism" or "people who experience gender oppression". I'll try to do a bit more research later out of curiosity, and I'm following the thread to see what other ideas emerge!
I don't have an answer to the specific term, sorry, but I think it's comparable to "racisé" so if necessary you could look at what has been done with that term into English.
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 16 mins (2021-12-13 15:32:15 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
The term "sexised", as it pertains to French feminism, appears here: Sex in Question: French Materialist Feminism - caring labor ... https://caringlabor.files.wordpress.com › 2012/09 PDF by L Adkins — dominated or appropriated ('racised', 'sexised') has 'benefited' from the development of the natural sciences, so for the last 50 years the attainments of . ..
Barbara Cochran, MFA United States Local time: 23:30 Specializes in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 4
peer agreement (net): +1
