The artist documents the life of the inscription in the public space of Toruń. The original slogan “All against Sparta” is displayed on a wall for many months. When the Polish male pronoun “all” is transformed into its female equivalent (which changes the gender tone of the message), a few days later the whole inscription is painted over.
Liliana Piskorska refers to the understanding of linguistic asymmetry as proposed by Bożena Kochman-Haładyj: “Linguistic asymmetry is based on the use of the male form both to describe the male sex and as a generic form. In other words, masculine nouns have a dual function: on the one hand, they refer to men, and on the other hand, they have a more general meaning, including both women and men. Female nouns are not so ambiguous because they are women’s names only”.
(B. Kochman-Haładyj, “Seksizm językowy jako jeden z mechanizmów dyskryminacji kobiet” [Sexism as a way of discriminating against women], in: Podkarpackie Forum Filologiczne, ed. G.A. Kleparski, R. Kiełtyka, Jarosław 2010, p. 140).
