A recent Gallup poll reveals that a mere 4% of Hispanic and Latino Americans use the fake term “Latinx.” Interestingly, a significant portion, 15%, prefer to be identified as “Latino” or “Latina,” while 23% favor the term “Hispanic.” Another separate survey conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International, a Democratic firm, found that only 2% of respondents like the term, and 40% find it offensive.
That has never stopped woke liberals from using the fake term to virtue signal their gender inclusivity. Latinx may get a lot of hype from woke white liberals, but it’s not mainstream. So, naturally, a brand new term has dropped: “Latine.”
“Latine is the new Latinx,” declared Axios. I guess that means no one is actually going to use this new term either.
“‘Latine,’ a gender-neutral way to describe or refer to people with Latino origins, is surging in popularity on university campuses, in museums, and among researchers and media,” the outlet insists.
Is it really? If Latinx was never popular, why are we supposed to believe Latrine—I mean Latine—is now becoming widely used?
“Catch-all terms like Hispanic or Latino have come under scrutiny for blurring important nuances and presenting a large part of the U.S. population as a monolith,” Axios notes.
Related: Democrats Cling to ‘Latinx’ at Their Own Peril
According to Carlos Zavala, vice president at consulting firm Whiteboard Advisors, the term “Latine” is “part of a movement centered on wanting to build and foster an inclusive community.”
Apparently, Latinx is becoming less fashionable in woke circles, and Latine is now the gender-neutral option du jour. “Latinx had been pushed by U.S. academics as a gender-neutral option for Latinos but was criticized for using the letter ‘x’ in a manner that’s unnatural to Spanish speakers” — which sounds about right.
Context: Spanish words generally have a fixed grammatical gender, making them either masculine (el gato) or feminine (la silla). Many plural nouns also use the masculine form as a default (los niños). The same rules apply in Portuguese.
- To better accommodate diverse gender identities, some Spanish and Portuguese speakers are increasingly using the -e suffix for some nouns, such as using “todes” in addition to “todos,” both of which mean “everyone.”
- Even some government offices in Latin America have adopted using the -e suffix as part of a wider movement for inclusive language.
- Using Latine (sounds like “la-TEEN-eh”) in the U.S. “makes sense as an internationally used way of speaking and writing in a less gendered manner,” says Monica Trasandes, director for Spanish language media and representation at GLAAD.
By the numbers: Younger people are even more positive about Latine, with 43% of respondents ages 18-29 saying they’re comfortable with using it, compared to just 33% of those 65 and older.
Does “Latine” have a chance of becoming mainstream? That’s not likely. According to an Axios-Ipsos poll, the preferred terms by a huge margin are still “Latino,” “Latina,” and “Hispanic,” garnering over 80% acceptance, followed by identifiers linked to specific countries of origin, like “Cuban American” or “Mexican American.” There is also significant discomfort with “Latine,” particularly in border states, in the Midwest, and in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, where it is considered unnecessary and distorts grammar rules.
I wonder what silly new term they’ll come up with next.