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Latinx is a gender neutral term often used in liew of Latino or Latina that refers to individuals with cultural ties to Latin America and individuals with Latin American descent. The -x replaces the standard o/a ending of Latino and is intended to be more gender inclusive. The term originally appeared online in queer forums, but has slowly gained recognition in academic spaces and social media platforms. There is a current ongoing debate surrounding the usage of the term as well as the other proposed attempts at introducing gender neutrality.

Etymology

The term latinx is derived from the English term latino which is a shortened form of the Spanish "latinoamericano". While the terms latino and latina (from "latinoamericano" and "latinoamericana" respectively) became adopted in the United States in the mid 20th century, the term latinx was first used by members of the queer community online beginning in 2004. After a period of online search inactivity, latinx grew in search popularity in 2015 and increasingly gained recognition within academic institutions as evident in graph 1 below where Google Trends indicates through the results containing the term as tracked by its search engine. The word is intended to be inclusive of all individuals within the Latino community, including men, women, transgendered persons, and those who do not identify with the gender binary. Latinx was predominately used by Afro-Latinx and indigenous persons online, but with its rise in popularity, it has been adopted by various members of the Latino community in order to be more inclusive.

The term Latinx is largely used in the United States but is also being adopted by scholarship throughout Latin America.

Use in the United States

Latinx is mainly used in academic spaces and social media platforms like Tumblr and Twitter. College students in particular have taken to using the word, especially within Latino student organizations. At Princeton University, the Princeton University Latinx Perspective Organization was created in 2016 to “unify Princeton’s diverse Latinx community”. Student run organizations that utilize Latinx in their title also exist at other institutions including Oberlin College and Conservatory, University of South Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Iowa State University, highlighting the widespread usage of the term at the undergraduate level. Multiple scholars have also taken to writing about the term in their own work. Vanessa K. Valdes, Antonio Pastrana, Juan Battle, and Jessica Marie Johnson are just a few of the scholars that have all written extensively about the word Latinx and the merits of its use.

The term has also gained massive popularity given its usage on social media platforms. Originally founded online, Latinx has been increasingly used by multiple blogs that cater to a Latino audience, which has added to its popularity. Prominent Latino run websites like BeVisible Latinx, we are mitú, and Remezcla have utilized the word extensively on their own websites, bringing awareness of the word to a larger audience.

While Latinx has been increasingly used amongst college students and academics, the term itself has not achieved widespread usage at the US national level. Race and ethnicity categories on official United States federal government documents only offer the category of Hispanic or Latino. No other gender neutral term like Latine or Latin@ are utilized on these forms either.

Although utilization of Latinx is nonexistent on official government documentation, mention of the word has been made in past bills. In a proposed bill to the US Senate, the Community Outreach and Engagement Coordinator at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England utilized the word Latinx when advocating for the passing of Senate Bill 147. Her mention of the term within official US documentation is a testament to the widening use of the term beyond academic spaces.

Similar and Related Terms

The word Latinx is not the first attempt by students and activists alike to introduce gender neutrality into the Spanish language. Other terms like latin@ and more recently, latine, have been utilized by some Latinos in order to be more inclusive.

Latin@, /ləˈtinaʊ̯/, /læˈtinaʊ̯/, is an older gender neutral term, in comparison to Latinx, that has been around for two decades. The word first emerged in the 1990s on online blogs and was meant as a way to include both Latinas and Latinos within one word. Although the use of the term is rather popular, it has faced much criticism in recent years because the word Latin@ is viewed by some as not inclusive of those individuals who do not identify with the gender binary. The term Latin@ also becomes more complicated given the fact that there is some confusion over how to pronounce the word. Some chose to either say Latino or Latina when reading the word, while there are instances in which some pronounce it as “Latinow”, “Latinao”, or “Lah-teen-at”. No singular consensus exists on how to pronounce it correctly.

Latine is a fairly recent term that has emerged within the last five years. The word functions similarly to Latinx when it comes to gender neutrality, but is seen by some as easier to pronounce in Spanish in comparison to Latinx. The (e) ending is more readily adoptable by Spanish speakers as it is phonetically adaptable to the Spanish language. Thus, Latine subscribes to more commonplace Spanish pronunciations, allowing its use to be more accessible to non native English speakers.

Criticisms

Despite its increasing popularity throughout public and academic discussions, the term Latinx and its adoption in the United States is still heavily debated by both those inside and those outside of the community. The deficit of research on the term’s origins and the absence of concrete information regarding its spread throughout contemporary usage is a source of critique. Its increased usage since 2014, as seen in graph 1 above and in the adoption of the term by many academic institutions, magazines, and other forms of media throughout the United States, has subject the term to extensive critiques from Spanish speakers as well those who cite a variety of complications surrounding its adoption into mainstream language.

Critiques about Latinx stem primarily from the confusion and rejection of the pronunciation of the term. The absence of the term’s presence in Latin American speech and research highlights the critique of inaccessibility and incomprehensibility as Gilbert Guerra and Gilbert Orbea of Swarthmore College write, arguing the term as “a blatant form of linguistic imperialism.”

Orthographically, in English, the letter (x) can be pronounced as a voiceless consonant cluster such as /ks/ whereas in contemporary Spanish speech, the (x) is only retained in some words and its pronunciation varies from [j] (such as “'México' being pronounced as 'Méjico'”) to [ks] (as heard in oxígeno). Additionally, Latinx introduces the -x following a consonant, a linguistic pattern not previously present in Spanish. The difficulty of introducing the -x ending into conjugatable Spanish poses an additional challenge for its use outside of the term Latinx.

Aside from opposition based on its linguistic incompatibility, some claim that the term would lead to the “destruction of gender, a fundamental part of the Spanish language” and that attempts at removing gender from the Spanish language “advocat[es] for the erasure of Spanish.”