On sex, gender and sexism in the Bulgarian culture and language

Abstract

The paper is provoked by the rejection and falsification of the messages of the Istanbul Convention in Bulgaria and other post-communist countries which caused a wave of homophobia. The author tries to prove that neither in the communist period nor in the post-communist period a real emancipation of women was achieved, the theme of homosexuality was a taboo (in the communist period), over-presented in the first decade of the transition and later stigmatize by the rise of the populist nationalistic discourse. During the communist period, the so called "Unions of the fighters against fascism" turned into the male clientelistic networks granted with many privileges and marginalizing female antifascists. The critical discourse analysis of the press (1976) reveals male dominance and silencing of women playing mostly a decorative role. After the democratic changes the same male actors (nomenclature and former state security officers) benefited from the privatization, but the so called "mugs" (wrestlers) presented the new masculinity in the media: women were extremely sexualized and the new femininity was presented by the prostitutes and the girls in the entertaining industry, the professional women were rarely mentioned. The second part of the paper is a gender analysis of the lexical and grammatical system of the Bulgarian language. The analysis of the dominating metaphors reveals the means of male dominance in the everyday speech. Although the Slav languages have morphemes to denote women's professions the media discourse prefers the male forms as more prestigious. The definite article and the plural forms serve to emphasise the male forms and to provide their euphony.