The RAE eliminates the “easy” definition referring to a woman who “ is freely available to have sexual relations”. Although the modifications to the Online Dictionary are made annually every December, the institution decided on 8th March not to wait and to immediately incorporate this reform (abc.es, 15-III-18).

Finally, on 7th May, 2018 a new request was made to the RAE by a high school from Malaga: to change the fourth and fifth definition of the word mop; as explained in the example, the petition mimics the initiative of the high school in Tenerife, which is credited with the success of the change of the definition of the adjective easy:

High school students ask the RAE to change the definition of mop which states “uncouth and uncultured woman; maid who serves in the kitchen”. Students of the Los Manantiales high school, in Torremolinos, demand a change in the definition of ‘mop’ in the RAE. To do this, several high school students made a video in which they declare they are not mops, and they affirm: “If they are mops, then we are all mops” (antena3.com, 7-V-18)

Why can mop only be female and not male?. Students from a Torremolinos high school call for the RAE to modify the derogatory meaning of the term and use the neutral gender. [...] This “microsexism” has been tracked by students in the subject Social and Gender Change in two courses of 3rd ESO in the educational centre in Malaga, who worked during the course in search for words with negative definitions for women. “Teacher, have you seen the definition of the word mop?”, they told the teacher, Francisca Escorza, who teaches the subject, a few weeks ago. The teacher had spoken in class of the triumph of the 1º BUP students of the La Orotava institute in the Canary Islands, who in just one month thanks to a video, got the Royal Academy to modify the fifth definition of the word easy, so that it no longer refers to women, but to a person who “ is freely available to have sexual relations”

The low impact on the press of this demand was striking, which was related to the lack of follow-up it had on social networks16, possibly because it is about definitions that –unlike those demanded on previous occasions– were already labelled as derogatory in the DLE.

3.3. Arguments and attitudes towards the petitioned definitions

The description of the actors involved in the analysed texts lead us to an ideological polarization (van Dijk, 2010a: 26) that confronts the Academy with “feminist” groups or individuals. The media debate is fundamentally hindered by experts from both sides, who argue, or counter argue, because, as van Dijk (2010b) pointed out, speech is more credible if accompanied by quotations and references, which are the proof and evidence that legitimise knowledge.

In the polarization established between the advocates of feminism and the advocates of the Academy, the former suggested that the prescriptive authority was the Academy; however, it was felt that the imposition came from “the others”, referred to in the following example as a “certain opinion group”, in reference to feminism:

In this the Academy has a “totally open” standpoint, although it is not going to withdraw from the dictionary any “controversial terms related to unpleasant situations, especially for a certain opinion group.” “This will never be done”, added Villanueva “(Abc.es, 17-X-14).