Oh boy.

"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.

Am I the only one who reads LatinX as rhyming with larynx?

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.

I think it's a generational thing because I remember the @ being more widely used in the 90s, especially when the internet cafés were getting popular.

How many of them are actually Latino though? It seems like a term created and made popular by white liberals

Guácala, no. Prefiero mil veces latinx.

Rent free

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!

I just know she wrote this while sipping a Starbucks and wearing big sunglasses while indoors.

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.

Yeah but it's the cool kind of racism that's allowed so it's okay!

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.

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'm pretty sure that as a white person I'm aloud to call out a type of behavior that has become all to common in white people.

Lover, this keyboard wants be more smart than the writer.