I’ve never understood LatinX. Is it supposed to be a gender neural Latino/Latina? I’m only a Spanish beginner but I’m fairly sure Latino can be masculine and gender neutral.
"LatinX" was indeed the first attempt at a gender neutral description. "Latino" is still considered by many native speakers to be "neutral", but the most feasible solution I've seen popping up is the "latine" (as in "estudiante", "vigilante", etc). Since it uses an explicitly non-gendered suffix, it is more correctly inclusive than the "latino". It will take a while though, und until it is really widely adopted.
It was first seen in online queer activist circles around 2004. You can read a little about it here. Latino is traditionally masc/neutral but English style guides also said the same about “he” when referring to someone of unknown or unspecified gender for a long time, which has largely fallen out of use for singular “they” now.
Personally, I don’t use Latinx in writing to refer to all Latinos/Latinas as polling has shown only 2-3% of people readily identify with it. But I do think you absolutely should use it if that’s how someone personally identifies.
For some reason people get violently ill when they see someone use pronouns on the internet, so they came up with an alternative words so that their ideas match up with reality.
It's coming around though. My gf watches a garbage amount of influencer bullshit, mostly mainstream streamers and such, and I've heard it quite a number of times.
A mí tampoco me molesta ni que lo digan en español. La verdad no entiendo todo este lío que parece provenir de algún tipo de orgullo antimalinchista. 🤷♂️
Digo, tenemos hasta un antro aquí a la vuelta que se llama Xico y en redes seguido lo escriben como Xicx porque su branding es inclusividad.
So far it isn’t as bad as I feared. It’s very early days though! I’m really keen to create a community where we can discuss any topic including contentious ones respectfully, rather than just avoiding posting anything that could bring out the trolls. I’m hoping the one-warning-then-you’re-banned rule will be sufficient to keep the worst at bay. Please report comments that break the rules if you see them to help keep this community an enjoyable place to be!
OP isn't ignorant because they're white, they're ignorant because of the impact of their social economic class on their education, life experience, and world view.
Your comment opening with:
"Leave it to a white person to..." Is blatant racism.
Thats a good explanation. I'm saving that for future use. It seems easier to empathise with these people when you understand that they're a product of their environment and as much victims of the system as anybody else.
If I can be racist against my very own (according to the 23 and me dealy i got for Christmas 4 years ago) kind, than you know what? Fine I'll take that. White people, especially Americans who feel the need to preamble that with some other European nation like it was an additional qualifying ethnicity, suck. I dislike them. It's like, ooh look at me I'm extra white. Fuck that. They are attention seeking children and a net negative for society.
The abscence of formal centralized definitions is kinda the bread and butter of the english language. All dictionaries are trying to describe how people use words, not what they mean.
It's not amorphous enough fit it to ever be ok for a white+ American girl to just say she's Latin because she feels like that's just a state of mind. Language does not work like that.
Right, but it is not and has not been used to describe queer white people. The OOP describes herself as Irish American who identified as Latinx because she "loves hard", and that's not how anything works.
I don't care if you're ethnically Asian or African or European. If you're born here or have spent a significant portion of your life here--to me--you're culturally latino.