Yeah, just read back and saw someone who did in fact self-identify as non-binary and Latinx; one counter-example is enough, so I'll retract what I said.There were a handful of people who said they identity as Latinx in this thread. I don't know if they do because they are enby because I'm not going to demand they justify themselves for me.
You can go back and read the thread if you want to know who they are.
What? I was responding to Tranq and then summed it up from the wikipedia entry. I'm genuinely appreciative of both of your replies for helping me become slightly more informed on the subject.I hate that I wasted my time responding to you when I should have known you would be that dismissive.
Lesson learned.
Though it's a borrowed word, isn't Latino as a widespread classification U.S. centric? U.S. decided to refer to everyone in this hemisphere with Spanish or Portuguese speaking roots as "Latino" for the census. Didn't think it was a popular term with non-American Spanish and Portuguese speakers.
Broadly speaking, language change is an organic, bottom-up process; language changing via top-down imposition of preference is a relatively new attempted phenomenon.
We both know of several Puerto Rican writers and scholars that use Latinxs and/or use "x" in other gendered articles and pronouns instead of "a/o" or even "@". Lissette Rolón Collazo, Beatriz Llenin Figueroa and Jaime Géliga Quiñones are among the first ones that come to mind. Moreover, a simple Google search of "lxs" + a Latin American country brings up hundreds of thousands of websites, articles, and blogs written by Latin Americans living in their countries of origin that are using this gender-inclusive article in Central and South American as well as the Caribbean. Another google search of "lxs" + psicología produces almost 60,000 results that include the works of scholars and references to teaching materials —such as those by Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso (Dominican-born, residing in Argentina) and Adriana Gallegos Dextre (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú)— in addition to newspaper articles, blogs, descriptions of groups, all using the gender inclusive article "lxs." Thus, while it is not by any means mainstream, the use of the gender-inclusive "x" within Latin America is far from "nonexistent."
Well, you don't have to go through the trouble if you simply accept that grammatical gender is a purely grammatical quirk of the language. Nobody thinks of cars as male, or chairs as female. I don't get why this is so difficult for English speakers to understand. If you say "la persona", nobody will know if you're referring to male, female, or non-binary, EVEN THOUGH THE ARTICLE "LA" IS FEMALE. Likewise, if you say "latino"...Missed this post, you make a good point. You're correct, no one from spanish speaking countries really refer to themselves as "latinos" in general. Instead they obviously call themselves based on their nationality (Mexican, Dominican, Chilean, Peruvian, etc etc). However, it is derived from the word "latinoamericano" so it's still used in many cases but it serves the purpose in america to lump all the browns together as you suggested.
Kinda off-topic of me here. I'm assuming you're talking about gendered pronouns (which are the issue at hand), because I can't even fathom how to de-genderize top-down for the entire Spanish language.
Like how on earth would you de-genderize: "El carro" (The car) and "La silla" (The chair)... as examples.
I get that certain aspects of languages need to change (like gender specific pronouns), but what about the examples above? Is it necessary to change terminology for non-living nouns as well?
So the natural follow-up is that in Spanish speech, Americanx has to be a thing too, right?
What? I was responding to Tranq and then summed it up from the wikipedia entry. I'm genuinely appreciative of both of your replies for helping me become slightly more informed on the subject.
Before I learned English, I remember thinking it was a little unfair that many group terms (particularly the ones used to refer to me at that age so niños, hijos, nietos, primos, etc.) defaulted to the male endings. Not surprising that many men don't consider it a big deal or think about it too much, but I definitely did as a child. Although I was a weird kid in general. :PWell, you don't have to go through the trouble if you simply accept that grammatical gender is a purely grammatical quirk of the language. Nobody thinks of cars as male, or chairs as female. I don't get why this is so difficult for English speakers to understand. If you say "la persona", nobody will know if you're referring to male, female, or non-binary, EVEN THOUGH THE ARTICLE "LA" IS FEMALE. Likewise, if you say "latino"...
Yes, organically. That's not what's happening here--as evidenced by all the Latin Americans who have posted that they've never heard the term before.
Spanish already has ways to be gender-inclusive that are infinitely more palatable to the Latin American ear than "latinx". Why are you not listening to what we're saying and instead keep trying to speak on behalf of non-binary Latin Americans, not a single one of which has self-identified with the term "Latinx" 17 pages into this thread?
Younger generations are more open in the DR. There was a video around San Valentine's day were a men showed up in a School with a Gift for his boyfriend and you could see the kids cheering when they kissed. That of course is not representative of the entire population but is nice to see.It's sad because there's so many in the closet. I'm happy my generation(Dominican Americans I should say) are way more open about it. Ever since my cousin came out so many years ago I have met sooooooooooo many.
That is weird at all. I remember in my school people joke a lot because most words in plural have male endings in Spanish. Most girls thought it was unfair and I'm pretty sure you can find a lot of people that think the same now.Before I learned English, I remember thinking it was a little unfair that many group terms (particularly the ones used to refer to me at that age so niños, hijos, nietos, primos, etc.) defaulted to the male endings. Not surprising that many men don't consider it a big deal or think about it too much, but I definitely did as a child. Although I was a weird kid in general. :P
What made you think Latino was an unsafe way of saying Latino?I used Latinx in a OT and everyone was like WHAT'S A LATINX?
I thought it was the safe way of saying Latino but I guess not.
Hell, since google brings up 114,000,000 hits and probably only one of them is me, I'll just tell you, it's Miguel Martinez.hmmmm Pablo Rodriguez? omar esparza? paco? ?Jesus/Chuy bracamontes?
Makes no difference where it originated; it is being amplified and popularized by American media, to the point where a term that sounds foreign to us and that we don't identify with is becoming the default, go-to label for our people. And if you'll recall, the poll in the OP was about whether marketing departments should refrain from using the term to refer to all Latin Americans.Ok, first of all I'm not "speaking for nb folk." The word was made to be lgbt friendly. NB people haved used and do use it as such. I don't need to scrub through 17 pages of a likely majority cis thread to verify your claim for that to be true.
It was an organic development in American universities. A place not everyone has access to, which would of course limit it's spread since it's mainly used in academia. It's a term like mysogynoir or intersectionalism, words that don't come up in everyday converation but tend to appear in discussions about social justice. As for "there are already other words/ways with the same meaning," that's never stopped synonyms from being made. Clearly latinx comes from a speciifc background, so I can see how it can be criticized because of that. It's defintely more of a written word than a spoken one. What I don't like is people saying it has no value when it clearly does in a way most people in this thread will never have to worry about.
I'm only speaking for myself when I say 1) I don't see the harm this word is allegedly causing and 2) it sucks that a word specifically meant to include nb people has so much hatred. Feel free to hate me for that, I guess.
I keep seeing Latinx here just to be on the safe side.What made you think Latino was an unsafe way of saying Latino?
Hopefully my last post will inspire more nuanced discussion than "nobody in Spanish speaking countries ever uses Latinx."
If a stranger dropped it in a conversation, yea I would totally look them weird. If a friend of mine came to me and in a convo dropped the "latinx", I would immediately reply "Te crees cool cabron?"I am not opposed to a gender-neutral term for Latin@ people, my issue is that if I try to say it in my native accent, it feels foreign. If I said it to another Puerto Rican here, they'd look at me weird because I'm speaking an "English sounding word" to them and not something local sounding.
Sure, but that's not what the poll is actually polling for nor what people are generally arguing in favour of in the thread. You keep asking for posts in the thread of people that self-identity as latinx in some bizarre "yeh but do they really tho" piece while barely anyone (anyone?) is in here saying anything in support of forcing everyone to use latinx or referring to them by it. The same has been said for most of the thread.Is it okay for American marketing departments, journalists, and politicians to unilaterally refer to all of us by a term that 98% don't identify with? Remember, that's the reason this poll was conducted in the first place. I and any reasonable person would be fine if they used something like latino/latina/latinx, but to instead use latinx as a catch-all label when so few of us identify with it, or have even heard it before... Is that okay?
Sure, but that's not what the poll is actually polling for nor what people are generally arguing in favour of in the thread. You keep asking for posts in the thread of people that self-identity as latinx in some bizarre "yeh but do they really tho" piece while barely anyone (anyone?) is in here saying anything in support of forcing everyone to use latinx or referring to them by it. The same has been said for most of the thread.
The poll itself, regardless of what prompted it, just asked individuals how they would best describe their own ethnicity.
2% of people selected Latinx. Which isn't really mind-blowing if you consider that the non-binary population -- the people most likely to identify with it -- is likely an equally small number.
If you asked people in the UK who used they/them over he/his and she/her and you would find an equally small result.
Which isn't the fault of the people like yourself that are taking it from the perspective of "would you want to be called latinx" rather than "what, of everything, would you refer to your ethnicity as" as that's how the article has poorly reframed the data to push that narrative. When all the data shows is that 2% of the population polled use latinx and that shouldn't be surprising.
People like Warren are misplaced in their use of it to cover everyone, despite the intent not being to enforce something upon others it evidently has a negative impact when used to refer to the wider Latin American population. Which is more than valid, and again something I've not seen [m]any in here argue in favour of (the suggestion, not Warren).
The issue is with the framing of the piece and the pretty benign data to keep pushing the notion that it's about something being taken from someone else, instead of using a term that's inclusive in places to acknowledge that a % of the population do identify that way. Because as we've seen it prompts a pretty poor reaction that overextends in the other direction and has people mocking the notion of anyone using the term themselves as white, dumb or worse.
I was genuinely curious to see how they were using the word Latinx and I didn't find that. I feel like you posted that article to prove Spanish speaking countries use "Latinx", but you misread the article. Re-read the first sentence of the quote of the article you posted. It says " scholars that use Latinxs and/or use "x" in other gendered articles and pronouns instead of "a/o" or even "@ "". This is extremely misleading, they make it sound like the authors are using latinx when that's not the case. Instead, that they use latinx OR other non-gendered terms... which is true lxs/l@s in their articles.
They use lxs or l@s (something not mentioned in the article is the word "les" is also used) as pronouns instead of the traditional gendered "Los/Las". Not that they specifically use the word "latinx", because I haven't seen it.... thus far on google.
Think I'm talking out of my ass? Hop on a non-US Google with that region's results. Tell me how many results you get that aren't Telemundo, Univision, BBC, and other American/English based companies. I looked for the authors listed and none of them used the word latinx in the few articles I found, but they did include a lot of friendly non-gender pronouns that your article mentions.
I'll say this so we're not getting things twisted.
It's fine that american Latinx (or any non-American) that wants to identify themselves as Latinx. How about we let the native Spanish speaking NBs pick their own term... Can we agree on that?
And time and time again, Latinos here said is corny. I'm tired of people trying to change are language. Latino and Latina means everyone in spanish. Depending on the sentence. In an english speaking board say "Latin or Hispanic *insert gender* and go from there.
Is this why I sometimes see folx on here instead of folks?
Are we at the point where we tell people to change their languages? Good luck changing all those heavily gendered languages
I posted that article for a few reasons.
First, it shows that there are people in Spanish speaking countries that do in fact use Latinx in their writings. They list some of those people. Secondly, it was to dispute the whole "x" thing that people are arguing makes no sense in Spanish and thus Latinx is too complicated or whatever to use. There are people in Spanish speaking countries who are using lxs, which comes with the exact same issues, right?
As for your last point. That is literally what this thread is about. 2% of people polled by the people in the OP are choosing Latinx for themselves. We immediately got people who came in and shat on their preferred term for self-identification.
As I've mentioned before, that isn't really surprising, people are stubborn and the Latin community has countless issues with the LGBT community anyway. So yes, I completely agree that anyone should use whatever term best suits them, and I will argue with those who feel the need to sling insults at those who choose to use something they feel best describes them.
And what is wrong with using "persona latina" in Spanish and "Latin American (person)" in English?
Both are gender neutral terms that do not assume anyone's gender and do not require to invent any new words.
Who is telling you to change *your* language when someone like me uses "folx"? It's just a personal choice that causes you no harm.
A lot of cisnormative privilege all over this thread, yikes.
All brown people are the same apparently.It's pretty ironic how OP asked "Chicanx-ERA" what they think, either forgetting (or ignoring) that Chicano only refers to people from Mexico and not the entirety of Latin America.
I looked up a few of those people and didn't find that they do use Latinx in their writings, I told you that in previous post. You're using evidence that's not there just to prove your point, when you didn't even really fact check it (it even has the pronunciation wrong for latinx very first sentence).
Without looking this up, please tell me how to pronounce lxs/l@s in Spanish... is it open to interpretation cause that arrangement of letters just doesn't make sense in Spanish?
So lxs/l@s are actually pronounced as los/las... and some people might debate they are actually pronounced... so maybe it is actually pretty more complex than you're making it out to be?
Except that is not what the OP presented and the original article are about, re-read the original article.
I used to think about this a lot: Why did activists go with Latinx when just Latin could've been used instead? I imagine it would be way easier to get people to use that as well. Latinx looks and sounds very awkward linguistically.
Chim pum!I identify as Peruvian first. My experience, culture, upbringing, etc. is too different from other latinos for the label to be relevant.
I did specifically say that I can't blame people for taking it that way and that the tactic was shitty on the part of that company.The issue here is that this article/thread had nothing to do with NBs other than the author of the article (and his entire marketing team) using/describing "Latinx" incorrectly.
Regardless of what the poll asked, the article is framed as: "What do the browns prefer to call themselves these days?"
This isn't some anti-nb movement, the article itself is misinformed so you can't blame people's reaction to it... The article itself is saying that LatinX is a new label for "Latinos", when we all know that's not true. Those who are informed know it's a label mainly used by Latin NB (in America).
Read some of these misinformed quotes:
"Over the past few months and years, several of our clients have noticed the term "Latinx" trending as a new ethnic label to describe Latinos. It has been used by academics, activists, and major companies, including NBC and Marvel, as well as politicians like Senator Elizabeth Warren. We were curious about the appeal of "Latinx" among the country's 52 million people of Latin American ancestry and decided to test its popularity."
"We presented our respondents with seven of the most common terms used to describe Latinos and asked them to select the one that best describes them. When it came to "Latinx," there was near unanimity. Despite its usage by academics and cultural influencers, 98% of Latinos prefer other terms to describe their ethnicity. Only 2% of our respondents said the label accurately describes them, making it the least popular ethnic label among Latinos."
They're the ones framing Latinx as an alternative to labeling people Latino/Latina NOT as an addition.
Some people prefer to identify with the other. Otherwise I don't think there's a problem if you're speaking to general use.And what is wrong with using "persona latina" in Spanish and "Latin American (person)" in English?
Both are gender neutral terms that do not assume anyone's gender and do not require to invent any new words.
I used to think about this a lot: Why did activists go with Latinx when just Latin could've been used instead? I imagine it would be way easier to get people to use that as well. Latinx looks and sounds very awkward linguistically.
I doubt you've scoured all of those people's writings. I'm taking the word of people who claim to have read their writings and say they use it. I'm not claiming to be an expert, just pointing to information I've seen online.
I would assume they aren't meant to be pronounced. Like Latinx wasn't mean to originally be pronounced but was made to point out the things they wanted to point out.
When have I said this isn't complex? I'm saying these are terms used. They look strange and may or may not be meant to be pronounced, you know like "latino/as" isn't meant to be pronounced but convey a message.
I suppose it depends on which reading is accurate. You are reading it as them being asked what the whole group should be called, but they say this: We presented our respondents with seven of the most common terms used to describe Latinos and asked them to select the one that best describes them. That, to me, reads more personally. You may be right, I don't know. And as a new term, it doesn't surprise me that the % is low, considering the age range.
Latinx feels the same as POC. The first place I saw the term POC was here and I feel the same about it as I do about Latinx. Those are words meant to homogenize groups of people for the convenience of others that can't be bothered to know the difference.
Everything? No, but I looked enough to make my conclusion that the article means lxs/l@s is being used rather than Latinx. I still couldn't find those easy google results that article is talking about, even when I use the keyword "lxs" I still get weird results like for Lexus (car) site. Using keyword "Latinx" all I get are sources from American authors/sites. I was curious to see how those authors are using the word latinx and what their thoughts/feelings are about it, and like I said I found nothing of the sort. I'm not going to keep looking just to prove you wrong, but at some point I will likely stumble across an article organically (probably via FB since this is US focused forum).
Your words:
"Secondly, it was to dispute the whole "x" thing that people are arguing makes no sense in Spanish and thus Latinx is too complicated or whatever to use. There are people in Spanish speaking countries who are using lxs, which comes with the exact same issues, right?"
You're using the article as proof of Spanish speaking countries that are already using "lxs" to tell people here that it's not complicated/complex. That's what I'm hearing when you say "Spanish speaking countires who are using lxs, which comes with the exact same issues, right?".
All I can tell you is that it happens.
Again, not going to scour the internet looking for examples, because I've already said that it isn't super popular, just that it happens.
"La guerra contras todxs lxs puertorriqueñxs"
Again, the situation we find ourselves in is complicated, but the way to use it is not. Using an X that way seems consistent across the authors mentioned before, even though specifically finding "Latinx" seems difficult to track down.