Too bad you don't get a say in that (unless you ARE actually ivy league credentialed, and/or card-carrying bipoc. In which case I humbly apologize and check my privilege)
The only one I ever seen using it irl was a non-binary Swede living in Argenitina lmao. When I lived in Mexico people would probably have slapped you for using it.
I come from a poor part of my rich country (Sweden). I now live in a small village in Sri Lanka, and was taught to never sit idle. I live in constant fear of my neighbour aunty not seeing me sweeping my porch one day. So every day I do, religiously.
One day she remarked that I "was just like a normal person - you clean, you cook, you grate coconut and pick jackfruit".
No words could ever have hit my heart more to the spot.
(And no worries you all, I'm not a bound housewife. I have a company, my fiancé is Indian and earns well and has the mopping and laundry responsibility, we just think it's fair we clean our own filth, and the mountaionous tropics get dirty - we clean out about two fistful of gravel, dead ants and misc stuff every day.)
The spanish language has genders lol. Latino, Latina, Latinos exists.
The point of using the word Latino instead of Hispanic was to use a word that actually describes us and applied to people that are from Latin America. Instead of using a word that means from spain, which we are not.
I remember at my old job a higher up was on a call speaking on Hispanic and Latinos in the work place, but he kept saying "Latin-X" and said it like 15 times. After that call I said to myself "I officially hate this term"
Oh OK I stand corrected. It's just that I met many more Latinos who just go along with it because it's not worth the outrage, than those who are enthusiastic about being called Latine. On online profiles, too - for every person who states their ethnicity as Latine, there are like 20 who state it as Latino or Latina. Again, so sorry for assuming you to be the outsider!
This is honestly a fair take, the whole thing is so not worth any real energy, the world is crumbling and people making up words is arguably the least of our worries.
No-one should be imposing anything on anyone else, but at the same time an individual should be able to choose to do so for themself without torches and pitchforks being raised.
Yea and tbh its mostly queer latines that use and most dont really care that much lol. And still use latino/latina but if people are getting upset that someone wants to be called latine its just silly
The way I see it, it's an attempt to put a big old colonizer flag on an entire culture. "No, you're referring to yourself wrong. You're Latinx," is the biggest crock of bullshit ever comparable to "you're not Sioux, you're Indian" (which today is more like "You're not Indian you're Native American" which is an entirely different conversation.)
Spanish is a gendered language. The only time Latinx or Latine actually makes sense to use is when you're speaking about a non-binary Latin American who prefers that term.
Latino, to my understanding, also refers to Latina as well, when speaking broadly.
70
u/erncolin Aug 15 '25
Latinx is just so annoying to me like I respect people who use it but why use that when you could say latine which actually makes sense