Since moving to the United States, I’ve been conducting a small experiment. A few days into living in a new country, I heard the term “Latinx”: a gender-neutral word to describe people of Spanish or Latin-descent. At first, people corrected me every time I said Latinos, and prompted me to say its gender-neutral form. Although I was raised in Colombia and consider myself Latina, I personally did not feel a part of the Latinx community. Once I heard the term, I started asking people both in Syracuse University and at home what they thought of it. Unsurprisingly, nobody at home had heard of it, and were even shocked by it. But those in SU who have never lived in a Spanish-speaking country but are of Latin-descent, identified with it.

Different studies have also demonstrated a lack of satisfaction from the Hispanic community when it comes to the term “Latinx.” According to a poll conducted by Bendix and Amandi International, approximately 40% of Latinos believe the term “Latinx” is insulting and offensive to some degree given that the United States is forcing the term onto the Latino community but not everyone in the community accepts it. Only 23% of U.S. adults who identify as Hispanic or Latino have heard of the term, and only 3% use Latinx to describe themselves.

Many people also believe that the term Latinx is an anglicism— something adhering to English customs— and is “laughably incomprehensible to any Spanish speaker without some fluency in English.” The word is incomprehensible in Spanish because it does not follow the grammar and diction rules of the language. Spanish is a gendered language but altering a language to include the gender-neutrality of English is not a way of moving forward. In Spanish, the plural form of verbs ends in “o,” but even that has been considered sexist by English-speakers, as it is the masculine ending of words. However, for the Spanish-speaking community, ending a word in “o” is not considered sexist.

The idea of containing a gender-neutral term to describe a community is justifiable, and a lack of acceptance shows traditionality and lack of modernism. But what people don’t know is that, for the past couple of years, the Latin community has been gradually changing their language to become more gender-neutral. It’s called “lenguaje inclusivo,” and includes the use of the word “Latine.” Since the 1970s, the push to create gender-neutral terms has not only been an American issue but a global one.

People living in Spanish-speaking countries are already facing our own gender-neutral revolution. Maybe if people knew about this revolution, the term Latinx would not exist since “Latine” is more popular in Spanish-speaking countries. Though the Real Academia Española (RAE), the main institution that analyzes and enforces the Spanish-language, didn’t officially accept “lenguaje inclusivo,” it has gained traction throughout the past years. Latinx is an American term, Latine is the gender-neutral term that originated from Spanish-speakers. Even though “lenguaje inclusivo” is still not the norm, in English, words like Hispanic or Latin are gender-neutral and adequately describe the population.

The term Latinx may come from a place of inclusion but it also developed from ignorance. The biggest critique of the term is its lack of understanding of the Latin community and its language. Only if the Hispanic community acknowledges the term will it be acceptable but in the meantime, people are forcing a category on us that we did not agree to. Hispanics understand the limitations of the Spanish language and we are adjusting it in our own way in a form that follows the grammatical rules of Spanish. In contrast, less than half of the Hispanic-American community uses Latinx and Latinos living in Spanish-speaking countries rarely use it, unless they have a tie to the United States. Though it emerged in the name of inclusion, this term excluded those it was meant to represent.

Daniela Dorado is a Junior creative writing major. Her column appears bi-weekly, and she can be reached at ddorado@syr.edu.

Published on September 25, 2022 at 11:43 pm