El masculino inclusivo en español

Abstract

The present study critically considers recent proposals that question both the use and the very existence of the so-called generic masculine in Spanish. A model of the grammatical structure of Spanish gender is developed, according to which person masculine nouns (with certain exceptions) do not include semantic information related to sex and are, therefore, epicenes with default gender. It is argued that the use of this Spanish inclusive masculine is not the cause of the invisibility of women in discourse, and that its avoidance is unnecessary and grammatically inconsistent.