Every single American born person of hispanic heritage, every first gen Spanish speaking immigrant I have ever known or met, as a friend, momentary acquaintance, or as a social worker helping to aid the homeless…
…every one that I have met in the real world either thinks latinx is laughably stupid (as in they literally laugh when the topic is brought up), or they are visibly confused when they read or hear the term.
And of friends and acquaintances, I know they ranged all over the political spectrum.
I wish no ill will on whoever came up with the term, but it just is not sensible to anyone who is not terminally online.
Hablo un pocquito español, so… as far as I can tell, there is at least existing precedent for the e ending, but I’ll leave it up to the actual members of the language group and its culture to come up with a term (hell, there may be many different local or regional ways to accomplish it, as Spanish varies considerably by region and locale).
Actual members of the language group and culture did come up with a term, they came up with the x, and the anti-queer-machismo undercurrent in Latine society drove the lot to hysterics about the end of the spanish language and the gringoification of Latine culture.
Every time I see someone try to excuse this shit they’ll spin some variant of “let them decide what term to use”, and I’m like, why isn’t the same right afforded to the queer folks who came up with those terms?
What about the greater Latine culture gives them a superior right to the Latine queer community to decide what letter to use? Why is not listening to the language community in question suddenly ok when it means overriding what the Latin Queer community outright told y’all they wanted in favor of appeasing los machismos who are all suddenly heads of the spanish academy and grammar experts as soon as it’s convenient to be so to shout down some gay math nerds who wanted to be clever and punny in their chatspeak representation?
The Anglosphere didn’t have the right to tell our queer community what they were gonna be called, why should we respect the hispanosphere trying to say they have that right?
Look, if someone wants to identify as latinx, I’m not going to stop them, and I will use that term in reference to them, no problem.
If the term was, as you say, invented by gay latinx math nerds in chat rooms then sure, it works for them on internet chatrooms or in the real.
There does seem to be significant contention as to where and how the term arose, as well as its usage, and that’s from LGTBQ writers, activists and academics.
Some are for it, some are against it, and its not just because of machismo. I’m seeing a whole bunch of articles from a quick search of people writing arguments against latinx from differing perspectives such as X is a product of settler colonialism, it erases blackness, it erases femicides, etc etc, and again this is coming from LGBTQ magazines.
My point was that in practical usage, specifically when serving in a non profit assisting the homeless, the term is a point of confusion, and more generally, it is basically an online term that works when written, but not when spoken.
Sure, if you grew up knowing English you can probably pronounce it, but a Spanish only speaker usually looks at the word and thinks it is a misspelling, as generally latinx does not result in an easily pronounceable sound following Spanish pronunciation rules.
The only similar analogy I can think of in English is the rainbow of pronouns invented by Tumblr.
I have no problem calling a NB person ‘they/them’.
But when it gets to things like xer/xem or bun/buns or fae/faer or some of the other, wackier pronouns I’ve seen… its often words that are very awkward to say aloud, and they just seem ridiculous.
As a native straight Spanish speaker, I’d like to thank you for so eloquently explaining many of my problems with this way of referring to people’s genders. There’s no way the language would survive if we were to adapt to these gender neutral modifiers. Spanish is a gendered language and if we were to adapt to these non binary gender terms, we’d also have to apply it for about half our vocabulary. We’d all have to agree a washing machine for example is now no longer a female lavadora, but rather a lavadore or lavadorx. It’d be impossible to gather the entire Spanish speaking community across dozens of countries to agree on the general way standardize this.
The fact that not seeming silly is more important to your sense of right and wrong than accepting someone’s chosen identity on their terms and potentially saving their life by doing so, is why nobody wants to listen to your opinions on queer people. Jerk.
That’s a lot of text trying to justify not just calling people what they tell you they want to be called.
Also, “settler colonialism” just taking us back to that whole “recognizing queer rights is just white people shit” angle, you just fucking troyed yourself. “In your soul.” “That’s racist.” “In your body?” “That’s gay?” “That’s homophobic.” “That’s Black.” “That’s Racist!”
Talking about it erasing blackness also flying dangerously close to that boundary, and “femicide” looks suspiciously like all the TERF Island rumblings about “erasing womanhood”.
If someone goes out of their way to specifically tell you how they want to be referred to, just fucking do that instead of being a little crying bitch baby about it. It’s some letters, you can ask them for a pronunciation if it’s really that hard to sight read.
Every second you spend on trying to justify intentionally putting down how someone wants to be referred to is infinitely more effort than was ever necessary for anything, and continuing to try and justify this childish tantrum throwing is exponentially more effort than that.
Just respect how people want you to refer to them. Just do that. It’s not nearly as hard as you’re trying to excuse it as. Just be a decent person already.
Are you sure it was actually created in the Latin American world by Spanish speakers and not in the USA by English speakers with Mexican ancestors that keep saying they’re Mexican even though they’ve never been to the country, can’t speak the language and the last person in the family to do so was their grandpa?
Because this seems 100% an American invention by people who can’t speak the language but still need to feel superior by pretending to do “something” for the queer community.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of this outside of English speaking forums comprised mainly of Americans. Not in real life, not in Europe, not in Latin America.
Do you even speak the language? Because I’d argue that before trying to change something, you first need to have a deep understanding of that thing, especially for languages.
Love the clinging for dear life to "n-n-no! Inclusivity is “gRiNgO sHiT!” narrative.
To such an extent that you’ve nearly set up layered positions to move the goalpost to that’ll eventually allow you to try and claim anyone who isn’t a Zapatista is basically just a white english only american anyways.
Don’t worry. At least you tried. Met some English speaking folks who expect everyone to talk in their language… In a country of Spanish speakers. To be fsir, here in Argentina we hsve mandatpry English classes in High School. Its a subject on its own right. So we have some people who can speak English pretty well.
