this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2024
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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.
Fuck them nonbinaries just wanting to not be misgendered every single day of their existence, right?
As opposed to your stance which is fuck people who don't want to have their language massively rewritten. I think it's far more reasonable to make individual accomodations for the non-binary folks that we interact with and accept that language has limitations and can't be changed overnight.
Languages are not static.
You people are going to confuse the LLM training.
Confused about gendered pronouns in English?
Don't worry, its pretty simple, just use boolean genders!
It's quite common for 'he' to be replaced with 0 or FALSE , or 'she' with 1 or TRUE in modern English speech!
This will be updated soon with the advent of Quantum English which will introduce an indeterminate number of indeterminate words for an indeterminate number of identities which cannot be observed without directly interacting with every individual simultaneously!
Is this like Schrodinger’s gender?
I made a point out of being able to fluently use "any/all" pronouns in language. As in "Any is here, wearing all green scarf".
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.
I mean, I am a queer person, but ok.
If you are gonna decide to guilt trip me by saying someone might potentially kill themselves if I refer to them as... them or he or she instead of bun or jae, then I'd say you're being emotional abusive.
Also, judging by the votes I've gotten so far, it seems you're gaslighting me when you say no one wants to listen.
Its not that neo-pronouns seem silly.
Its that they convey no useful meaning to anyone who does not already know that person, personally.
Sometimes you have to write things down in a manner that conveys useful information to say, apply a person for a government grant or aid of some kind. Sometimes these things are gender or sex specific.
Sometimes people who don't know a person need to read things about them and make decisions that could prevent them from starving to death, being murdered from a domestic abuser or living on the streets.
Writing bun repeatedly in correspondence or on a government form isn't going to work.
You cannot have a potentially infinite list of pronouns that you somehow expect everyone to just learn, and make this work in any kind of wide system where people don't know that they even are pronouns.
Pronouns are kind of a fundamental, fixed element of English.
Its different with a noun or adjective as there are many of those, and it is far, far easier to learn new ones and use them correctly.
Like, I'm an anarchist, but not to the point of total linguistic anarchy.
He/She/They is fine, and won't confuse the hell out of everyone. We have pronouns in English that are not gender deterministic, nor dehumanizing, and they are They and Them and Their and Themself.
Hell, when I was managing the databases for the non profit I worked at, I went through a ton of work to add in the ability for clients to be able to indicate their preferred pronouns and have it be reflected system wide.
No one, out of thousands, used it. Not one, and that includes tons of people who identified as trans, gay, lesbian, bi, pan, asexual.
After 6 months we reverted to he/she/they because, in addition to no one using it, having 4 open string fields instead of a key value indexed to a lookup table was slowing down the server and potentially a security risk if someone decided their pronouns include ;"DROP TABLE *" or something like that.
If neo-pronouns are ever going to make sense, they are going to need to have agreed upon and fixed definitions.
If you want to say that ok, from now on, She and He are for straight cis people, and i don't know, Je and Ke now refer to lesbian women and gay men, and you go on like that, as long as these terms actually have fixed agreed upon meanings, so on, they aren't easily confused with existing words, then maybe something like that could work.
You would need a defined system capable of being taught to PreK through 5 students such that they could learn it.
I don't see anything like that. I see a tiny minority of terminally online people making up new pronouns, unable to define them, and often changing them at a whim.
On a personal, colloquial, relatively close relationship level, neo pronouns can work the same way and inside joke or lingo amongst a tight knit group of people can.
Not on the scale of millions or billions, not without meaningful, at least initially fixed definitions.
EDIT: I just now realized you are the passive aggressive anti-realist solipsist, "I believe in magic but I can't define it" person who argued that atheists are jerks by telling them what they define magic as.
Nothing quite seems to irk my autism like people who break language, congrats I guess on riling me up again.
If I could, I would hug you and give you a pastry. Thank you for being amazing, giving good explanations and keeping your cool in the face of that dumbass jerk. Hell knows my queer, autistic ass just can't cope.
Language is important because it helps convey things. If a language is mangled to the point where it can't be understood, it is no longer a language at all, and the person you have been responding to seems to either be a troll, too profoundly stupid or actively unwilling to engage in proper communication.
Ackchyually yes, we do, they're called names. A bit different, they're nouns not pronouns, but functionally there's gigantic overlap and best of all if the name is short enough it's actually not much of a bother to never use pronouns to refer to that person. Most of all, it's regular because we already conjugate names ("bun arrived", "bun's pants", "the letter is for bun"). "bun brushes bun's hair" not to mention "bun dresses bunself" sounds a bit strange but is perfectly cromulent.
...still if you get your panties in a twist over being addressed "they" instead of whatever you're used to or, strictly speaking prefer, I think you're off the mark. I'm cis call me they all you want: Being generic doesn't take away from anyone's identity. It's like being upset that you're being referred to as a human instead of a barber.
Also the point of personal pronouns isn't to communicate information to others. It's to validate the person who has the pronouns. Your giant wall of text ignores the entire argument I actually made and the entire point of pronouns. Maybe you should try caring about trans people instead of worrying about everyone else, and then you'd understand the point of trans pronouns.
Every trans person I have ever met uses he or she.
NBs use they.
I've literally gotten in brawls defending trans people where I was the only person using their preferred pronouns and this pissed off a whole gaggle of people who were assaulting them.
Your argument was that I could potentially kill (apparently you were referring only to trans?) people by not using their preferred pronouns.
Not only is that not a thing I do, not only are you incapable of understanding my apparently too nuanced position for you, I have literally done the inverse of what you claim of me, and have risked my life specifically over properly using a trans person's pronouns, and may have saved their life.
Do you remember when I said your view of the history of magic, along with your rhetorical tactics, are quite similar to fascism techniques?
I guess not.
You've never met a trans enby? Dayum, so sheltered! You should try getting out there and meeting more queer people than just your little bubble.
Fundamentally, the use of pronouns is to point towards something. And the more information is loaded into a pronoun, the better it can point. They arent here to validate the person, but to convey information and to point towards them during conversation.
People choosing their own personal pronouns, thereby choosing the way theyre pointed at, has the added benefit of validating them. But from a linguistical standpoint, all they do is change the pointer and the informations and assumption tacked onto that pointer.9
What the person above wants to express is: While neopronouns can be used in personal conversation, its not feasible to include them into the curriculum for anyone and the chance of your specific neopronoun ending up as a widely used one within your native language are near zero. I think your friends and your immediate surrounding should definitely address you by them. But especially with rapid changing pronouns or those that contradict the phonology of a language or that are close to existing words, they wont see much use. People will fall back to other pronouns, because it simplifies communicatiom for them.
Better than neo-pronouns, single person identifiers should be what they have always been, their name and set the pronouns as they/them, for English at least.
I'm not a solipsist, I'm an antirealist. I believe things are real, but that reality is a social construct and must be abolished.
Anyway, as a willful misgenderer of trans people, you may have a queer identity, but you are not part of the queer/lgbt movement. You have to be an ally for that, it's a choice. So personally, yes, you're queer, but socially, you're not. Try actually respecting other queer people if you want to be queer.
Oh, telling me what I think and do again!
How original.
Let me know when you find the part of my text where I say I willfully misgender trans people.
Fuck, I've nearly been killed over defending a trans person and their preferred pronouns.
But you're the arbiter of reality, so I guess nah, actually I'm awful.
Oh well.
That was a wild chat
There's nothing more important to me than self determination. Now excuse me while I determine that your entire identity is invalid because you... refer to each person using the words they prefer you to use according to situation and social context?
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.
You evidently cannot read, as I explicitly said, in the first line, that I have no problem calling someone latinx if they tell me that is what they want to be called.
Anyway, I am not actually promulgating the arguments you are critiquing.
I am saying that the term latinx is contentious, amongst hispanic LGBTQ people, amongst academics, as well as amongst the reactionaries you seem to want to label me as.
As the term is contentious, and I am not a hispanic LGBTQ person, I am not going to tell people they cannot label themselves as latinx, nor am I going to insist use of that term instead of others.
I am bewildered as to how you have decided that I am a crying little baby bitch who is throwing a childish temper tantrum.
I am not a hispanic LGBTQ person, my only relevant experience or credential or whatever is interacting in my relatively basic level of Spanish with many people, most for the purpose of attempting to help them get housing or some other kind of assistance.
I used to design the online and offline forms used for intake and other various functions, and I am basing what I've said on my experience and the many experiences of the employees using said forms, as well as myself when I did outreach.
My personal opinion is twofold:
Latinx basically either doesn't work as a word or is confusing following Spanish's own rules.
I have interacted with (directly and by proxy via constantly receiving feedback from the intake crew and other employees at the nonprofit) hundreds of Spanish only speakers, and they are generally confused by the word latinx, likely due to part 1.
Again, since I apparently have to make this clear, if someone tells me they identify as latinx, I have no problem with this.
You're the one who compared it to neo-pronouns as if expecting people to respect either if presented with them in a social context is ridiculous.
Its the closest analogy I can come up with, though it is not linguistically perfect.
The closeness of the analogy is that neo pronouns and latinx are primarily used by terminally online people, rarely used in most people's day to day real world experience, that the terms are viewed by many as linguistically awkward, confusing and/or cringey.
I don't know what to tell you if you think that talking to an average Spanish only speaker and using the term latinx, or an average English speaker using neo-pronouns, that the average person is in the real world is not going to find this confusing and strange.
They are thus both examples of terms that seem normal/acceptable/understandable only to a person who is terminally online.
Oof, this comment has a lot of correct content individually, but as a response, undoes all your previous points.
Nah, what I've said stands, this is fundamentally about the right to have your own identity be respected, and how queer folks have had to fight tooth and nail just to even get so much as singular they/them accepted in the anglosphere.
There is literally no good reason for there to be a fight about this. You can learn new pronunciation, you can ask for reminders, you can do whatever, but everyone coming at me about "but da X is dum do!" is siding with "but I don't waaaaaaaaaaana!" at the most benign, and "if I see someone using that X I'll burn them alive myself!" at the far end, and yes I have personally seen that sentiment expressed, and not even in the present age of reddit collapse, this was shit from before the pandemic.
Just because society moved on to different means of communication doesn't mean we don't have lessons to learn from why we had to move on and what highly toxic cultural forces were behind pushing that move, lest we have this conversation about why the e was bad and stupid and dumb 10 years from now.
Not to mention the wildly patronizing reflex of some D&I folks to try and say "actually bigotry can be ok if it's the 'global south'™ because being disgusted by bigotry even when 'the good people'™ do it is colonialism or something."
As if those values aren't literally a direct product of missionary colonialism.
if someone wants me to specifically refer to them a latinx, ill comply. I dont see it getting any traction outside of this niche as an acceptable genderneutral form of declination. Latine fits better, since a lot more spanisch paradigms end on -e, from a linguistical standpoint. -x, i.e. /ks/ or /eks/ is very unusual according to Spanisch Phonology. And the vast majority of speakers will use the phonetically easier version, if they wish to change their speech patterns at all.
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.
No, it's not about inclusivity or lack-thereof, it's about you needing to at least KNOW the language before proposing changes to it. I don't need your ignorant opinion. No one needs it. We have enough people talking about shit they know nothing about from their smug high horse, as if their opinion is just as valid as truly knowledgeable people. Learn Spanish, speak it fluently, and then come back.
Or maybe you are one of those people that are flabbergasted when they hear the word "negro" in Spanish?
Hear hear
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
This. No self respecting Latin American tolerates our language being appropriated
poquito
Ahaha, mierda, I am way out of practice.
Also it is 4 am. =P
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.
One of my Spanish teachers in high school was Argentinian, so I learned that the ll is pronounced a bit differently as compared to many other Central/South American forms of Spanish, not a more pure y as a consonant sound, but sort of... zhy...?
Not sure how to represent it textually, but I've found that these and other regional differences can be a fun point to banter about when getting to know native Spanish speakers.
I would love to be able to visit, or maybe even live in Patagonia someday. Similar climate to where I grew up, absolutely beautiful country.
(Obviously I would need to brush up on my Spanish a bit first... It has always astounded me that many or most Americans just expect to be understood in English no matter where they go...)
In Argentina we use it mostly as a "y". And sounds like an "sh".
The German classes haven't been en vogue for almost 80 years right? Fucking joking de acuerdo mon ami.
A lil bit