Comment by mlmonkey
16 hours ago
Reminds me of that one time my partner mentioned "Latino" in a meeting, referring to people from Central and South America in broad terms (this was a marketing meeting, where customers are naturally grouped together along various dimensions).
She was told to not use "Latino"; but to use "LatinX" instead. What hurt more was the implication that she was being insensitive.
When I learned of it, I asked my Mexican friends which one they preferred. None of them had heard of "LatinX" and were as confused as I was.
“Latinx” is weird because it seems to have arisen from a set of privileged English speakers deciding that poor downtrodden Latinas were being hurt by a word they never complained about and pushing this as the “appropriate” word. It’s so clearly not born of the Latino community because that’s not the construction they would use.
I remember reading about some similar thing with French and the French president’s wife responding that the language was beautiful the way it was and they don’t need outsiders telling them how to gender (or not) their words.
Gives vibes of saying “unhoused” instead of homeless.
I feel like the affluent just love to invent new words to show the “others” that aren’t using it how backwards they are, and how the affluent are truly enlightened.
I also thought unhoused was just a pointless euphemism, but I recently learned it does have a technical meaning. A "homeless" person might live with friends, in a shelter, or on the street. An unhoused person is one strictly living on the street/car/public space.
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The sillyness of LatinX is that there isn't even an "Ecks" sound in Spanish.
I assume you pronounce that X as the X in Mexico.
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I think the Latino community who cares about such things prefers "latine".
LatinX is awful. An AIM screen name from 1998.
Latini Latine tantum loqui deberent
I'm South African so wouldn't really know culturally how African Americans would see it, but wondered at the time if the changing of the Git default branch name to "main" was an initiative by European Americans worried about offending rather than actual offense taken by African Americans.
It is interesting how different locations find different things offensive. Only when I was living in Europe for a while (doing Blizzard Customer Service) did I became aware of how big a deal the usage of N word was, as over here the K-word (look up "South Africa k-word" if you don't know it) is the word of choice for the, unevolved, die hard racists.
Was similarly unaware, (but not really surprised in hindsight) how World War II references were much better left avoided and Nazi references an enormous no-no. Over here references to Nazism are very rare and while South Africans did fight and die for the Allies in Europe, the impact of WW2 over here was no where near what it was like for most of the rest of the world.
Most Latino/latinas I’ve discussed this with find Latinx offensive because there are strong (positive) gender associations with each, and it appears to be explicitly trying to erase them.
Classifying a Latina as a Latino or vice-versa will get you in a pretty serious fight in a lot of places.
Here in Spain both the 'x' and '@' versions are really common in written language. The 'e' version I've not seen. But they're not really spoken because the X and @ versions are weird to pronounce. Replacing the o and a with an e makes more sense but it hasn't really seemed to have reached here.
And no it's not just privileged white people. My Spanish teacher was a Colombiana and she always pointed out the innate patriarchal traits of the Spanish language while rolling her eyes.
My native language has no gender. Every time I see these conversations I wonder “why not do away with the gender?”
It often leaks information the speaker didn’t intend to share. e.g., “I met a friend. She was late.”
Did the speaker mean or care to share to gender of this friend? Is it relevant? I don’t think so.
And I find it especially interesting when people argue for gender-neutral plurals, but then happily use gendered noun. It sort of feels like “everyone must stay in their lane” type of expectation.
Even the patriarchy argument is weird. The patriarchy - along with religion - wanted this gender line and specification in every context. Wanna stick it to patriarchy? Nix the gender from all languages!
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I’m curious on people’s opinions here cause I have seen this both ways. I have seen people say gender in the language at all is bad. And have said Spanish is sexist.
I’ve also seen people argue that we should learn to not see vocabulary gender as gender at all, just start associating some words as “la” and some as “el” with no boy/girl idea behind it.
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Interesting. Google trends shows that Latine is more common in Spain (and everywhere that isn’t the US).
Nonetheless I appreciate a perspective from someone who has an affiliation with the culture term refers to.
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>My Spanish teacher was a Colombiana and she always pointed out the innate patriarchal traits of the Spanish language while rolling her eyes.
Was the eye roll part of the sarcasm or...? Colombian and other related Spanish speaking cultures do the same things, so what's her point, to feel like she's sticking it to the invisible spanish dude?
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Which is funny because the entire Spanish-speaking world has always been deeply matriarchal.
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> it seems to have arisen from a set of privileged English speakers
I'd recommend getting out a bit more or reading a bit more:
> According to Google Trends, it was first seen online in 2004,[7][21][22] and first appeared in academic literature around 2013 "in a Puerto Rican psychological periodical to challenge the gender binaries encoded in the Spanish language."[20][23] Contrarily, it has been claimed that usage of the term "started in online chat rooms and listservs in the 1990s" and that its first appearance in academic literature was in the Fall 2004 volume of the journal Feministas Unidas.[24][25] In the rest of the United States, it was first used in activist and LGBT circles as a way to expand on earlier attempts at gender-inclusive forms of the grammatically masculine Latino, such as Latino/a and Latin@.[21] A similar use of 'x' in the term Mx. may have been an influence or model for the development of Latinx.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
From the same wiki:
> Despite the increase in awareness, use of the term to describe oneself has not greatly increased over time.[4] As of 2018, use of the term Latinx was limited nearly exclusively to the United States.[29] Manuel Vargas writes that people from Latin America ordinarily would not think of themselves using the term unless they reside in the United States.[29]
Maybe it didn't technically originate in privileged English speakers but it certainly seems to have arisen in popularity among them.
As someone who lives in a 99% hispanic region in the US, I've never heard anyone use this term to identify themselves. We're right on the border and that sort of thing seems to mainly happen in larger cities north of here.
I’m not saying no one who identifies as Latino/Latina/Latinx has ever used the word, or even advocated for it. But the only people I’ve ever heard use this term are, bluntly, very white.
To the extent that the term has become widespread, it seems to have piggybacked on other diversity and inclusion efforts. People who identify as Latino/Latina seem overwhelmingly to dislike the term.
> Among Hispanic and Latino Americans, knowledge of the term is not widespread, and reception to the term as a potential classifier for the entire Hispanic/Latino population has been overwhelmingly negative. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that roughly half of U.S. Hispanics were not aware of the term Latinx; of those aware of it, 75% said it should not be used to describe the Hispanic or Latino population, preferring instead the terms "Latino" and "Hispanic" by large margins.
Ironically, the also relatively uncommon “Latine” is in decline but still more popular than Latinx for all of recorded Google trends history. Except in the US. Of course.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=latinx,L...
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I sub to /r/asklatinamerica (and many similar subs, to learn about global opinions and attitudes first-hand) and they absolutely revile the term, and associate it with an attitude they call Gringosplaining.
Latinx appears to be on the way out now as well, to be replaced by Latine, for exactly the situation you described. "Latinx" didn't come out of the broader community of native speakers, and was seemingly rejected due to that fact.
… I wish they picked a better word, because I actually misread that as Latrine… definitely not going to be referring to anybody with _that_ at least.
"It used to be Shithouse"
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Both were presumably invented by insufferable white people.
9/10 Latinos would roll their eyes and get back to doing actual work, they don't have time to be offended.
Latine comes from South Americans (primarily chileans and argentinians). Whether the people from those countries that came up with it are insufferable white people is up to you.
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I was born in Peru and I absolutely abhor the word "LatinX". I assume people meant well, but ironically, it exhibits the "we Americans known better than you" attitude that liberals usually avoid.
The world is full of people wanting to be offended on behalf of other people.
No one has been saying LatinX for years. Why the anti-lib propaganda from 2022? Are y'all really that desperate to connect with folks?
It it still a thing in many California based tech companies.
Was I wrong in assuming that "Latinx" was only intended for written language? Because it's not pronounceable in any way that makes sense.
I pronounce it "la-tinks" if forced to read it aloud. Always gets some side-eye from coworkers you probably already find obnoxious.
It's all a performance to them anyway, and I'm not playing the game.
How about “Latin Equis” like the beer?
I think you're "supposed" to say "Latin-Ecks" (as in pronounce the X) but yeah it's fun to say Latinx because it sorta signals what you think about it while still technically complying.
That's exactly how my Mexican friend says it, and he's about as liberal as they come