Comment by int_19h
6 days ago
The parallels between the "original sin" in Christian theology and "... privilege" in social justice discourse are pretty obvious.
I also find it rather amusing that the social justice movement tends to be so US-centric - i.e. focusing on the issues that are specific to or manifest most strongly in US, and then projecting that focus outwards, sometimes to the point of cultural intrusiveness (like that whole "Latinx" thing which seems to be nearly universally reviled outside of US).
At the same time many people sincerely believe that US is not just a bad country - I'm fine with this as a matter of subjective judgment, and share some of it even - but that it's particularly bad in a way that no other country is. It's almost as if someone took American exceptionalism and flipped the sign. Which kinda makes me wonder if that is really what's happening here.
> that whole "Latinx" thing which seems to be nearly universally reviled outside of US
Well, there are a few things to clear up:
1. Latino is an American word that's only useful in the US to summarize people south of the US in Latam. People in Latam don't use the word since that grouping isn't otherwise useful to them.
2. There definitely are Spanish speakers who do use the -x or -@ suffix like "tod@s" and "todxs".
The mass confusion between these two facts is responsible for most of the discourse you'll read about latinx.
Americans don't understand that #2 exists. "Woke" Mexicans, for example, do use the -x suffix.
"Non-woke" Spanish speakers think the -x suffix is dumb in their own language. But they don't represent all Spanish speakers.
>"Non-woke" Spanish speakers think the -x suffix is dumb in their own language. But they don't represent all Spanish speakers.
Active users of the suffix are a small minority: https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/09/12/ho...
That article is on latinx specifically. As someone from and living in LatAm I can attest that use of todxs, tod@s, and even todes are not rare sights as replacements for "todas y todos". This is a distinct phenomenon from latinx.
4 replies →