The woke mob decided a while back that using gendered language wasn’t inclusive. So they invented new words to stop the practice.

There are a lot of problems with trying to eliminate gender in language, but a whopping big one is that about 40% of languages use gendered nouns. Chairs have genders. Bridges have genders. Everything has a gender. If you ever studied Spanish or any of the Romance languages you are familiar with this. German is gendered as well. It is called grammatical gender.

As English speakers, this strikes us as weird.

As a Germanic language, English used to have gendered nouns (grammatical gender) as well, but it started dropping out of favor in the 11th century and was well on its way to oblivion by the 13th. We still have some remnants of this–ships are referred to as “she,” for instance, but as a practical matter English doesn’t have grammatical gender.  You can learn a lot about the English language by listening to the excellent History of English podcast. I do, and I love it!

Progressives, of course, decided that they would like to become language colonizers. So among other terms they invented the term “latinx” to replace gendered “latino” and “latina.” Since the plural is “latinos” for a mixed group, it was sexist and evil or something.

You have to give them credit. They tried really really hard to shove this down everybody’s throat, but the term is so absurd that only the wokest of the woke and the politicians and corporations who buckle to cancel culture used it. I mean, come on. How do you even pronounce the darn word? La-tinks?

Latinos sure didn’t embrace Latinks. In fact Latinos rejected the term wholesale. As in almost every latino considers the term offensive–and they should, since it is an attack on their language and culture driven by the weird white woke women who demand to set the standards by which everybody is supposed to live.

Spain and Argentina actually publicly attacked the very idea of removing gender from language, with Buenos Aires Argentina actually banning it outright.

The city government in Buenos Aires, the nation’s capital, last month banned teachers from using any gender-neutral words during class and in communications with parents. The city’s education minister said such language violated the rules of Spanish and stymied students’ reading comprehension.

Intellectuals in those countries are buckling to the cultural imperialists, but average folk are unhappy about it. Fewer than 5% of latinos embrace the term latinx.

Salon, the radical Left-wing online magazine, has (sort of) thrown in the towel, calling for an end to using latinx. Although they persist in pursuing the idea, suggesting the alternative “latine.” Perhaps because it doesn’t sound quite as idiotic.

Melissa Ochoa wrote a piece in Salon denouncing the term–mostly because it is not accepted by anyone but the cultural elite–while at the same time suggesting a replacement.

As a Mexican-born, U.S.-raised scholar, I agree with the official Argentine and Spanish stance on banning Latinx from the Spanish language — English, too.

When I first heard Latinx in 2017, I thought it was progressive and inclusive, but I quickly realized how problematic it was. Five years later, Latinx is not commonly used in Spanish-speaking countries, nor is it used by the majority of those identifying as Hispanic or Latino in the U.S.

In fact, there’s a gender-inclusive term that’s already being used by Spanish-speaking activists that works as a far more natural replacement.

Low usage

Though the exact origins of Latinx are unclear, it emerged sometime around 2004 and gained popularity around 2014. Merriam-Webster added it to its dictionary in 2018.

However, a 2019 Pew research study and 2021 Gallup poll indicated that less than 5% of the U.S. population used “Latinx” as a racial or ethnic identity.

Nonetheless, Latinx is becoming commonplace among academics; it’s used at conferences, in communication and especially in publications.

But is it inclusive to use Latinx when most of the population does not?

Perpetuating elitism

The distinct demographic differences of those who are aware of or use Latinx calls into question whether the term is inclusive or just elitist.

Individuals who self-identify as Latinx or are aware of the term are most likely to be U.S.-born, young adults from 18 to 29 years old. They are predominately English-speakers and have some college education. In other words, the most marginalized communities do not use Latinx.

In other words she supported the movement to colonize Spanish, but since it failed spectacularly and makes progressives look awful they should drop the idea. Forcing poison down people’s throats does not endear you to them, apparently. And Democrats need those latino votes really badly right now.

Ochoa experienced how hateful the woke mob can be personally–and nothing annoys a SJW more than being accused of not being woke enough:

Scholars, in my view, should never impose social identities onto groups that do not self-identify that way.

I once had a reviewer for an academic journal article I submitted about women’s experiences with catcalling tell me to replace my use of “Latino” and “Latina” with “Latinx.” However, they had no issue with me using “man” or “woman” when it came to my white participants.

I was annoyed at the audacity of this reviewer. The goal of the study was to show catcalling, a gendered interaction, as an everyday form of sexism.

How was I supposed to differentiate my participants’ sexism experiences by gender and race if I labeled them all as Latinx?

Now in my own mind this is very sexist of her. How can she distinguish between men and women without assuming their gender? Isn’t that the point of dropping gendered language in the first place? She, too, is an oppressor and in need of reeducation.

Of course the movement must move on, but not give up the fight. If Latinx doesn’t work, impose something else:

Many academics might feel compelled to continue to use Latinx because they fought hard to have it recognized by their institutions or have already published the term in an academic journal. But there is a much better gender-inclusive alternative, one that’s been largely overlooked by the U.S. academic community and is already being used in Spanish-speaking parts of Latin America, especially among young social activists in those countries.

It’s “Latine” — pronounced “lah-teen-eh” — and it’s far more adaptable to the Spanish language. It can be implemented as articles — “les” instead of “los” or “las,” the words for “the.” When it comes to pronouns, “elle” can become a singular form of “they” and used in place of the masculine “él” or feminine “ella,” which translate to “he” and “she.” It can also be readily applied to most nationalities, such as “Mexicane” or “Argentine.”

Because language shapes the way we think, it’s important to note that gendered languages like Spanish, German and French do facilitate gender stereotypes and discrimination. For example, in German, the word for bridge is feminine, and in Spanish, the word for bridge is masculine. Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky had German speakers and Spanish speakers describe a bridge. The German speakers were more likely to describe it using adjectives like “beautiful” or “elegant,” while the Spanish speakers were more likely to describe it in masculine ways — “tall” and “strong.”

This equation of grammatical gender with oppression is not new–LiveScience had an article back in 2012 linking grammatical gender with sexism. Because we have to find oppression under every couch cushion.

The pushback on language colonizers is one small victory in the larger war on wokism. And unsurprisingly it was won because average folks trying to make a living saw how ridiculous this change was. Our elites hopped on the bandwagon. Schools, the media, politicians, and woke corporations all rushed to embrace the idiocy. But average people saw through the grift.

Thank God. Let’s go win some more battles.

UPDATE: minor changes made to correct grammatical errors.