After massive media coverage of the Orlando nightclub shooting in 2016, many
Hispanic people were caught off guard by the widespread use of a neologism that alluded to them, yet they had never heard before: “Latinx.”

The popularization of this term on the occasion was the result of an attempt by progressive English-speakers to adopt a more inclusive variant of the word Latino. They felt that, since the victims might not have necessarily identified as men or women, journalists shouldn’t use a masculine noun to describe them.

The stories needed to be presented as respectfully as possible, but the question was how to respectfully describe this group of people in their own gendered language without falling into a gendered grammatical structure. Some American academics had created in the mid 2000s what they thought was the perfect solution: “Latinx.”

By using that term, English-speakers would be killing two birds with one stone. First, they would alleviate any discomfort with Spanish binary gender structures by avoiding the final masculine “o” in “Latino.” Second, they would place themselves on the always-favorable side of implicit kindness and compassion — in other words, the side of political correctness.

This is how American media and institutions chose to disregard centuries of Spanish
grammar to come up with a hybrid, politically charged, impractical, offensive and
unnecessary term — but it’s more inclusive in their eyes.

Judging the Spanish language from a simplistic point of view, it may seem that it was designed to be non-inclusive. That is, non-inclusive of anything other than male or female and on top of that, seemingly discriminatory towards women. Otherwise, why in the world would the masculine plural be used to describe a group of people of more than one gender? But, by avoiding shallow interpretations and analyzing Spanish with the depth it deserves, it’s clear that these presumptions are not accurate.

There are many linguistic theories addressing the origins of grammatical gender in Romance languages, and it is clear that these grammatical structures are a remnant of the late Proto- Indo-European gender system. But there is no consensus when it comes to how and why they were assigned in the first place.

The fact is that in Spanish (as in 44% of the 256 languages included in a study by the World Atlas of Language Structures Online) there is grammatical gender. There is a marked or defined gender (feminine) and an unmarked or undefined gender (masculine). This is why the masculine is used to refer to an indeterminate group of people (as in Latinos, for example). The final “o” is not intended to indicate supremacy, but rather a lack of definition. Therefore, there is no need to substitute our already inclusive “o” with an unnatural “x.”

The Royal Spanish Academy, an institution that studies, defines and clarifies Spanish language rules, provided guidance via Twitter. “The use of the letter ‘x’ as a supposed mark of inclusive gender is alien to the morphology of Spanish, as well as unnecessary (and unpronounceable), since the grammatical masculine already fulfills this function as an unmarked term of the gender opposition,” the academy said in Spanish.

It is worth noticing that, in stark contrast to the members of the Royal Spanish Academy and due to the term being created in the United States, most of the people who endorse “Latinx” are not native Spanish speakers. In the almost three years that I have lived in the United States, I have barely heard any Latinos refer to our community as “Latinx.” On the contrary, there have been many more times that I have heard them reject it outright without much consideration. And it is not about one political position or another, since data from the Pew Research Center shows that Republican and Democratic Hispanics agree when it comes to disliking “Latinx.” However, college media, and especially college activists, have insisted on the neologism despite its unpopularity.

And, in addition to the inherent immorality of trying to dictate changes in the grammatical rules of a foreign language, their opinion has another major flaw: they are contributing to the hurtful misconception of Spanish as patriarchal and discriminatory to meet a socially acceptable standard of political correctness. As Angel Eduardo put it in his article “Call ‘Latinx’ What It Is: Lexical Imperialism,” it is like saying: “We’re going to take your savage, backward language, force it to adhere to our superior gender norms, and impose this change upon you so that you can be good, right, and just — like us!” Intentionally or not, advocates of the term “Latinx” are perpetuating the idea that Hispanic culture is retrograde and savage, and therefore must be colonized and illuminated by wokeness.

Looked at closely, “Latinx” is simply the result of a political dogma applied to linguistics.
The postmodern notion that the binary must be neutralized in order to include people who identify outside of the gender binary is the main force behind the idea that, by changing an “o” to an “x,” we are empowering a marginalized group.

But, unlike societies and governments, the Spanish language doesn’t have the ability to discriminate against anyone. It has not dictated that the “o” refers only to men, nor that it is inherently masculine. Based on this misunderstanding and fueled by deconstructive political ideas, some people have chosen not to feel included. But the fact that someone chooses not to feel included in a term does not make it discriminatory.

Seeing how “Latinx” is rarely found beyond American college campuses and the media that feeds off of them, it is obvious that it has less to do with inclusiveness than with satisfying a leftist narrative. While people’s urge to be more inclusive nowadays is understandable, especially when they can virtue-signal their inclusiveness, it is not inclusive to alienate 40% of the people you are intending to include in order to meet the ideological aspirations of a 2%. And this is exactly what data has revealed regarding the perception of the term “Latinx” among Hispanics.

According to a recent Politico poll that interviewed 800 Hispanic voters residing in the United States, only 2 percent used “LatinX” to describe their ethnic background, while 68% used Hispanic, 21% Latina/Latino, and 8% used “something else.” When asked if the use of the term “LatinX” to describe their community bothered or offended them, 40% answered “Yes,” and 20% said “Yes, a lot.”

Considering this study, we can draw some conclusions regarding “Latinx”. The first being, it was not the result of a natural evolution of the Spanish language, but rather an ideologically motivated imposition from an American academic elite. Second, it is impractical because it is unpopular and difficult to pronounce, especially for Hispanics. Third, it is offensive to the vast majority of the people it purports to describe. And finally, what I believe is one of the strongest arguments against it, it is completely unnecessary. It’s not just that the Spanish “o” is already inclusive, as I mentioned earlier, but also that there are plenty of better (non-offensive and non-invasive) alternatives.

If you don’t like the way our language works — and that is, using the masculine for plural — you can certainly avoid any moral dilemmas by calling us “Hispanics” or “people of Latin American descent” instead. One of the best ways to make someone feel included, however, is to respect their language.

American institutions should not allow ideologues to impose their will on a language spoken
by 572 million people, just because they need to put their political leaning on record
wherever they go. A language does not belong to those who step on it for an ideological purpose, but to those who speak it. And many of those who speak Spanish have clearly said no to “Latinx.”

Justo Antonio Triana is a freshman classical civilization major. His column appears biweekly. He can be reached at [email protected].

Published on February 9, 2022 at 12:59 am