Though we often think of language as simply a communication vehicle for sharing content, it’s also about negotiating social status and power dynamics through our language choices. So it’s also interesting to see how language has changed in ways we aren’t even aware of, informing us about the shifting status of women in society. That, in fact, it’s often been unexpectedly regressive. Nowhere better to see this effect than in the muddled up ways polite language, the terms of address, or honorifics, are used to refer to a woman’s social status: Mrs., Miss, and Ms.

Boroditsky's research has found that the way people often describe objects correlates with the object's given gender in a language. In German, for instance, "bridge" carries a feminine pronoun, and Boroditsky said Germans are more likely to refer to bridges as "beautiful" or "elegant," both typically feminine traits. Spanish-speakers, meanwhile, will refer to bridges as "strong" or "sturdy," as the Spanish word is masculine.

Talking to women is not harassment. Talking to the opposite sex is a necessary part of societal living which can be an enriching experience on both sides. On the whole, women like being talked to by guys. The vast majority of us do not hate men and do not want to live in a world where they are scared to approach us, to befriend us, to want to be part of our lives. But that doesn’t mean that we’re ok with low-level sexual harassment on a daily basis.

Supporters of inclusive writing say the new forms are aimed at use in written communication, not speech or literature. They also point out the Académie is hardly a model of gender equality. Established by Louis XIII’s chief minister Cardinal Richelieu in 1635, outlawed after the French Revolution and restored by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1803, there have been a total of 726 members, only eight of whom have been women. The first, Belgian-born novelist Marguerite Yourcenar, was elected in 1980.

And if a picture is worth a thousand words, classic car ads have the most to say about women, and what they're saying is this: Women are attractive props. Anyone who wants to find a muscle car online will have to wade through dealership websites featuring young women draped over hoods or posed beside fenders. It's a digital form of what you'll see if you walk through any automotive trade show: men in polos walking the floor, booth babes in booty shorts plying brochures. Buy one, whispers the advertising, and you might snag the other, as if the two belong in the same category, the sexy object and the sex object.

"We need a shared vocabulary for having a this difficult conversation: not just a set of words to describe our experiences, but a set of concepts that help us understand how our words will affect the people reading them."

The team largely sought out older men, believing that they were less likely to alter their speech out of politeness than women and so were a better representation of a true dialect.

As we approach the end of 2017, one might expect language and attitudes to be very different to those of the Middle Ages. And yet, there are some very prominent figures who seem to be stuck in the past.

The French Academy is France’s 400-year-old voice of authority on language and its sole British member, Sir Michael Edwards, has deemed the gender neutral words “gibberish”.

How men interact with women is important, but even more crucial is men having the courage to challenge men who interrupt women, harass them or worse.