Woke-bashing of the week: Je suis outraged – the right’s GCSE French panic

How dare a British exam board allow GCSE French students to use gender-neutral language, especially when, according to the outraged right-wing press, “the French don’t even use it themselves.”

The latest culture-war panic was triggered after it emerged staff at exam board Pearson Edexcel had been advised not to penalise students who use inclusive pronouns, nouns and adjectives in GCSE French, German and Spanish exams.

The story, first circulated by the Sunday Telegraph and eagerly recycled by GB News, the Spectator, and the usual anti-woke outrage machine, treated the issue as though civilisation itself were under threat. French students, readers were warned, may now use pronouns such as iel or ille in place of il and elle, and iels instead of ils and elles.

What particularly inflamed the anti-trans commentariat was the claim that France itself supposedly rejects such language entirely, because French grammar traditionally assigns masculine and feminine forms to nouns and adjectives.

As usual, the coverage also relied heavily on loaded language. GB News described iel and iels as “made-up neutral terms,” as though every word in every language was not, at some point, literally made up.

What the outrage ignores, of course, is how languages evolve constantly. French already contains recognised debates around inclusive language, and terms such as iel are not imaginary inventions dreamt up by British activists.

In 2021, Le Petit Robert, one of France’s most respected dictionaries, added iel to its dictionary, prompting outrage from traditionalists on what they called the latest incursion of US-inspired “wokeism.”

Pearson Edexcel’s guidance was reportedly developed with input from the LGBTQ+ charity Stonewall. The predictable parade of culture-war groups soon followed. Among them was Sex Matters, a campaign organisation routinely quoted by conservative newspapers whenever trans rights are discussed.

Its spokesperson warned about a “pro-trans agenda” and the “pernicious creep of gender ideology throughout the curriculum,” before taking a predictable swipe at toilets and changing rooms.

What goes almost entirely unmentioned in these stories is the broader reality of trans people’s lives. France, far from being some anti-woke fortress, allows legal gender recognition without requiring medical intervention. It’s among the few European countries that have prohibited conversion therapy practices targeting gender identity.

At the same time, trans people in France continue to face severe discrimination and violence. Reports suggest that around 80% of trans people in France have experienced discrimination or violence, with trans women of colour facing especially high levels of abuse. Yet the British right-wing press appears far more transfixed on the possibility of teenagers writing iel in a GCSE exam than by the actual conditions trans people live under.

The Spectator, attempting a more intellectual spin on the outrage in a piece entitled: ‘The irony of the woke war on GCSE French,’ argued that France has resisted “the excesses of wokery” because it views such ideas as an American cultural import.

The real irony is that the people most obsessed with policing language are often those accusing others of authoritarianism. No student is being forced to use gender-neutral French. Examiners are simply being told not to penalise pupils who do.