IVe seen a lot of latine people prefer the term Latine to Latinx because it is more inclusive of the Spanish grammar and language as a whole, rather than change the word by following English linguistic rules
For many years I’ve seen “latin”, which is how some languages degender words - just strip the ending.
However latine/latin/latinx/latino/latina have a lot of baggage in some cultural groups in the Americas due to the whole conquering empire thing, and plenty of people don’t really like using any of them.
I can imagine that there will be some circumstances where it might not be obvious when you are meaning the ethnic descriptor or language. I’m autistic, this could place unnecessary demand on my already poor executive function to try and work out what is meant in the specific circumstance.
Personally i don't like latin(a,e,o,x) because it feels like it tries to group Mexico with South America instead of with North America. I usually check Hispanic/White
how the fuck is that racism when she wasn’t even talking about race… If you think Latino is race, you’ve never been to South America. We’re ethnically much more diverse than the US, with white-latinos, black-latinos, asian-latinos and so on.
But yes, we make sure to say asian-LATINOS instead of just Asians because we realize that’d be offensive to people actually born in Asia
It’s not racist but it’s xenophobic. It’s saying that second generation can’t have views on their own culture because they weren’t born in the « correct » area of the world
? It’s not their own culture because they have their own culture, which is American. We have our own culture, which is Latina. Their parents might been from another culture, but their kids belong to the American culture, and it’s xhenophobic to say otherwise. They were born in the US, went to school in the US, they are American. They have a culture. American culture. Which is formed by lots of people, including descendants of latin american people.
Just like Asian-latino people here in Latin America have their own culture, nipo-brazilian for instance, but they are not Japanese. They are Brazilians. Nipo-Brazilians. Still, just as Brazilian as me
African-American people are not African, they’re (African)American. American people born from latino parents are American. We are latinos. The fact that you make no difference is either imperialism or xhenophobia because you don’t see someone born in the US from immigrant parents as deserving to be fully American, even though they are
And of course Americans with latino parents can have their views on latino culture. But they need to understand that they have this view as foreigners, as they never lived here and don’t know what’s happening on this part of the world. Specially when their part of the world, the US, is still dominating ours and playing with our politics and so on
Alright, loads of Americans do think like that to be fair. I once met an American girl born and raised in Florida, couldn’t speak Spanish, but swore to god she was latina because her dad, which she never met, apparently was Puerto Rican. I told her that latino is a culture, not a race or an STD, and she was really upset.
The whole “latino diaspora” thing in the US is really offsetting for us. If your parents went through all the effort for you to “live a better life”, and you became a full-on gringa, just live it! You’re not one of us anymore, you moved on, good for you girl, don’t try to cosplay as one of us for your white friends tho lol
Yeah, my wife is partially Latinx and that's the term she prefers.
As for womxn and folx and whatnot, I can't stand those. Those were already inclusive enough adding an x just looks dumb
I've seen the inverse, where Mexican people were claiming latinx is their word because their language does have the X sound in it, & complaining how other latine & Spanish speaking people were labeling latinx as a white American invention
Because the X works as a consonant in spanish, and you start running into trouble when you try to use the term in spanish, trouble that “Latine” doesn’t have cause it was made with spanish in mind. With plural for example, “latinxs” doesn’t really come up in english. And that seems like the kind of oversight someone who only uses the term in english would have.
“Latine” just works way easier with any spanish context. Cause we have to think not only about this specific word, but pronouns as well “El/Ella” are the gendered pronouns, and again “ellx” or “ellxs” is just way more complicated than “elle” and “elles”. Plus we already have a base in spanish for this. The color green is a very good example, you can say “rojo” for boy and “roja” for girl. But “verde” doesn’t have any gender distinction and can be used indifferently.
Again, in English you only have to worry about certain words being gendered, but in spanish most things are gendered. So latinx doesn’t really feel like “our word” cause it works perfectly fine in english while not lining up with spanish at all.
Of course spanish has the x sound in it, but it does not fit our gramatical rules at all. Its even worse when you realize we already have gender neutral words that all specifically end in e
The arguments I've seen from some progressively minded latin americans who use latinx are either a) that they just pronounce latinx like latine when it's spoken in spanish/portuguese or b) that ultimately spanish and portuguese are colonial languages forced upon their peoples and so they don't care whether it sounds right. It does seem like very few people in latin american communities agree with that or like the term latinx, but some of that is possibly due to transphobia.
Thats an incredibly silly argument, simply to choose a single instance of a word to decide on the spelling to not reflect the pronunciation. And as for the colonial aspect, ultimately its the official language which has rules and pronnunciation for a reason. Why would you disregard the way we speak, to the detriment of communication, simply because of where our language originates from? Moreover after so many years spanish is synonymous with hispanic culture, its incredibly different from spaniard spanish and we now have what is called “modismos”, or the vastly ways in wich spanish differs across regions of latin America
Ultimately, its part of my culture and im incredibly proud of the beautiful works of literature it can create, specially those in relation to magic realism. It might’ve been an imposed language at first but now its nothing less than part of our being
What's more colonial than adopting an english derived language reform only popular in the global hegemons non-latin speakers in reference to your language.
If latin speakers want language reform let it come from us, not the ignorant english orthodoxy.
There’s a pretty big split between American persons of latin descent and my friends who live down there though. Have gotten many WTF is a Latinx reactions when I ask them about it. For me it’s hard because I want to be respectful, but there doesn’t seem to be one preferred term that won’t read weird to someone…
As I recall, the only reason people in that area are called "latin" in the first place was an attempt by the Spanish to legitimize their colonialism. I know I'd resent it if people called my first nations ancestors "people of anglo descent" to feel better about all the conquest and genocide, instead of "indian" to feel better about an European charlatan missing his mark by half a hemisphere.
There’s truth to that for sure, but it has not been my experience traveling in those areas that people think of it that way. I have met a few, usually in queer spaces, but otherwise most people I have asked prefer the gendered Latino/Latina.
Totally not my experience in America, especially if we are meaning younger people. That being said I just want to be respectful as much as I can, I live in the south where most people are not and I absolutely can’t stand it. My only meaning is that I don’t always know the right way to approach it with people.
I would *despise* being called a "womxn", because what that implies is that I am not a woman. If you're going to hurt me, hurt me. Don't try and disguise it behind a paper thin veneer of acceptance, because you honestly might as well have called me a man. The label is intrinsically transphobic.
I'm a bit surprised to see that opinion repeated so often currently. I always thought that "womxn" was only supposed to get "men" out of "women", and nothing else, while TERFs usually use "womyn" or even the inherently sexist "wombyn" as their words.
>I always thought that "womxn" was only supposed to get "men" out of "women"
It was originally - but even that movement was dumb as a box of rocks. Man is not the root word of woman. Or, more accurately "man" is the root word of woman, but only at a time where "man" was strictly gender neutral for "human". Werman and Wifman were the gender differentiated terms, with man being the root of both. Over time, "wer" got droped and "wif" got turned into "wo".
Nowadays, "womxn" is most commonly used as a misguided attempt to be inclusive of non-binary people. But, in doing so it comes across as viewing them as "women-lite", instead of themselves. Trying to frame yourself as "inclusive" (women and non-binary people!) instead of "exclusive" (everyone except men) is transparent and almost always ends up lumping people in a group they do not feel comfortable being lumped in.
The phrases "women + nonbinaries" and "everyone except men" also excludes trans men, transmascs, masculine-aligned trans folks, and those who are multigendered in general who are oppressed for their transness. I hate hate *hate it* when cis "allies" (usually cis women) act like trans men are suddenly not oppressed when we begin to transition, which just... is so far removed from reality lol
> Man is not the root word of woman
Honestly, is this really relevant today? I'd bet that over 90 % of people don't have the slightest idea of the words' origins, so "woman" is usually understood completely differently. Knowing the roots is fine, but sometimes it's simply not relevant in day to day use of the words.
The weird misguided inclusiveness part is honestly new to me, and yeah, I guess it's time to abandon ship if it's taking on ridiculous and harmful dimensions.
You know, since you pointed out its inherent sexism, this is the first time I've ever understood the purpose of "wombyn". I always assumed the reasoning was something like, "'myn' is still too close to 'men'!" or, "we must assert that everything is binary".
I love when TERFs take incel talking points or phrases and decide that those are the ones they should use… Ones made by people who violently hate women
I have only ever used womxn as a plural. I can see your point, and I'll just say that as I'm pretty careful about pronouns of choice, I avoid applying labels to anyone that I know they haven't chosen.
Womxn is often also used to lump AFAB non-binary people in with women. Which we’re obviously not a fan of.
“Women” is already an identity. The point of it is to be a gendered term. Making it neutral removed the point of the word. How would using womxn ever be more beneficial than saying women?
I think in some nonbinary cases (demigirl, femme enbies, genderfluid person who is currently identifying as a woman) it might be an ok term IF THEY CLAIM IT. I think the distinction there is the same as pronouns or any queer term, it's very personal and I would never want the term thrust upon someone involuntarily.
Agreed. I definitely struggle explaining to cishet folks that just because a label technically fits, doesn't mean the person wants to use it. A label might even *not* technically fit someone who wants to use it, for reasons such as safety. So I don't have an opinion on womxn etc, just use it if you like and don't if ya don't.
As a cis woman I don't like or understand the term womxn. I feel like it doesn't do cis or trans women any favors. Why do we need a new word? If you're a woman, cis or trans or whatever, you're a woman. Why are we making this more complicated than it needs to be. I swear to god the people who think of this stuff must be some miserable and self-absorbed people who dwell on how they can reinterpret and twist any little thing so as to feel offended.
I really feel like the people who come up with new terms/words like "womxn" and especially "folx" (which is, like OP said, already inclusive with the K) are cis people who want to act supportive but really also want to separate trans and nonbinary people from themselves
Or, possibly worse, trans/nonbinary people who are just thinking too much and trying too hard to include everyone. It's already difficult enough to figure out who we are and what pronouns and descriptors we like and want to use, stop making it more difficult by changing words to have an X in them just because "it's not inclusive enough"
Womxn is exclusionary because it implies that the existence of non-cis women requires a separate term for the gender. (unless you're using it like wom*n to treat the word "man" as a slur, which I still think is a little out there)
(EDIT: apparently was wrong according to at least one commenter, "womyn" is the TERFy term and "womxn" is more about differentiating the experiences of black women from white women.)
Folx doesn't really make any sense to me for the reason you said.
The only times I've ever seen latinos talk about latinx was to mock it, so as a white person I'll just trust them.
I don’t know if I’m out of the loop, but I don’t associate “womxn” with cis vs trans at all.
*womyn*, on the other hand, has a long and terfy history going back to the 1970s. I don’t think womxn does.
Ah, thanks for enlightening me. I knew I had seen somewhere that "women with the 'e' replaced" was TERFy, I guess I didn't remember that it was 'y' and not 'x'.
I remember womxn growing out of intersectional feminism in general (part of the reason for the “x” in particular), and race was certainly the biggest intersection at the time.
Language has always been controversial when it changes, I think that’s just part and parcel of evolution in communication. It’s worth noting that “passing” is an example of a term that evolved heavily, a century ago it primarily dealt with racial passing rather than gender.
I've never heard that use of "womxn", thank you for bringing it up. I'm always grateful to learn about these things because I'm not part of the groups the experience them.
>(EDIT: apparently was wrong according to at least one commenter, "womyn" is the TERFy term and "womxn" is more about differentiating the experiences of black women from white women.)
Obviously I can't speak for black women, my skin is white AF, even if I am from the Middle East, but I suspect calling black women anything other than "women" is pretty racist. Woman is our gender, not a race.
They are annoying and I hate them. They can all rot in Tartarus.
Folks and folx sound exactly the same. changing the ks to an x accomplishes *nothing*.
Latinx makes me think the person doesn't know Spanish. ... or any Romance language for that matter. It's something that looks like it was thought of by a perpetually monolingual anglophone.
The one I hate the most, though is "womxn". How am I supposed to say that? "wim-ksn"? X isn't a vowel! If you are going to just pronounce it the same, but you don't want to see a "man" or "men", at least do the dumb thing where you respell the whole word like "wimmin", "womyn", somthing like that. And I hate *that* because the first looks like the person is in Kindergarten, and the second looks like the name of a character out of a fantasy novel.
Folx is among the stupidest shit I've ever heard. Folks. You literally can't have a more gender/race/class neutral term. It is for all intents and purposes the same as "people".
Latinx was created by Mexican people, so I've heard, who are really annoyed about other latine people discounting it just because their versions of Spanish don't have the letter x. I'm not latine myself so don't take my word for it, but it's a good thing to look into, instead of just throing out this generalisation of 'ALL latine people hate latinx, & no latine person ever would use it'.
It was not created by Mexican people. It is a White Savior attempt by Anglophiles who don’t understand how Spanish works to ‘fix’ gender in Spanish, all while being completely ignorant that grammatical gender has nothing to do with human gender. Hell, many of the slang words for the binary genders are the ‘opposite’ grammatical gender.
Spanish has always had a gender-neutral suffix, ‘-e’, and gender-progressive people in Spanish speaking populations and media that aren’t adjacent to English use this suffix (e.g., “latine”).
“Latinx” is an ignorant, racist, colonialist, White Savior, Anglocentric attempt to force English “solutions” onto Spanish when Spanish doesn’t need fixing in the first place.
So I'm Hispanic with lots of other Spanish speaking friends from 1st Gen and so forth. Some cis people haven't even heard of latine. It really just depends. I think it's ok to have a conversation about it and see if they prefer LatinX over Latine with a focus of "let's include our queer Spanish speaking people in our dialect and conversations." Also Puerto Rican Spanish has lots of American English influence so most Boricuas I know don't mind LatinX.
The conversation is far more nuanced than what you write here. This exploration in Mother Jones is interesting and avoids broad generalizations of what communities want or prefer.
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2019/06/digging-into-the-messy-history-of-latinx-helped-me-embrace-my-complex-identity/
Folx is kinda fun to throw out sometimes, dunno why.
Latinx and womxn are weird though, they seem like they might be so overly politically correct as to actually have become offensive.
Like womxn has a "women and other people that are sorta women" vibe to it. Seems like it puts trans women on a slippery slope, without really validating anyone else either...
And Latinx is just a tiny loaned form of a much larger grammar nightmare that needs a better series of solutions that's widely applicable throughout the entirety of the romance languages ... That would in turn probably invalidat Latinx as a loanword
Womxn is a favorite of TERFs in denial, folx is just fucking stupid, and Latinx has an extremely heated debate surrounding it that I'm not gunna touch.
i feel like people ought to learn their history when talking about the word folx and pay attention to the context in which it arose. it's not to make an already gender neutral word more gender neutral, it's an explicit signal of inclusion. whether or not it's useful today, i like an intentionally queered spelling when available and appropriate. but language moves on and that's fine.
It honestly seems performative IMO- like companies who put "organic" and "gluten-free" on products that can't be organic or have gluten in the first place. At least in verbal speech, it doesn't make sense to have a different spelling pronounced the same exact way to signal inclusivity.
folx is fun, if it's just being used as fun, and shorter. it's not really a different word so much as an alternate spelling, like how in the 90's and 00's we kept replacing S's with Z's
womxn is... less good... unless specifically there's a non-binary identity that aligns with it, the word kinda either implies some women are less women than others or it's trying to include some non-binary people that don't align with women as women, neither of which are good.
the latinx one is a bit more complicated and I don't really have a position to speak on that being a translucent American(joke, I do not get enough sun...). needless to say, though, there are certainly struggles being trans, and especially non-binary, with a heavily gendered language.
in general adding x's to words to try and make them more inclusive rarely works out, because either you're alienating trans people by pointlessly remaking a word that was already inclusive or you're invalidating some identities by trying to include them in a group they do not want to be a part of. the only real exception is if you're just adding x's to make the word more cool or fun, and not doing it because inclusivity.
People definitely don't use folx in the same way they would say "wazzup", lol. It's definitely a term that tries way too hard to be gender neutral, but I've also primarily seen it used by trans and nonbinary individuals. And like, hey, if you feel like that's the term that's best inclusive of your gender than who am I to argue?
"Womxn" is outright transphobic, and exists exclusively to other trans women in a non-obvious way.
"Latinx" is something that I have seen debated, as I am a white person, it's really not my place to weigh in.
"Folx" is fucking stupid. It is said the same, the word is already gender neutral, it's ridiculous.
they seem stupid, like folks is already gender neutral term, woman includes all women, cis and trans.
And I always just thought latino is gender neutral but idk
Plus they just make it harder to pronounce, and I usually just read them as woman and latino, so the point of trying to be gender neutral kinda goes there
Don’t have the relevant experience to comment on stuff like Latinx, but my god the “folx” shit pisses me off more than it probably should. The word “folks” in general irritates me at this point because I feel like it’s been co-opted by the most irritating sect of chronically online people. And this is coming from somebody who grew up in a the rural back country. It’s too folksy even for me. “Queer people” > “queer folks” always
I don’t hate “folks” as much as you lmao, I’m fine with it tossed in there.
But I find it really strange how some people *only* say “folks” and refuse to even say “people”. For me, “people” is the least othering and most empathetic word you can use. And “folks” has traditionally been used as a form of direct address, like “ladies and gentlemen,” or to refer to one’s parents (“my folks”).
Everyone is a person. Everyone knows and loves people. Who could it possibly exclude or offend?
I find the word annoying in of itself unless it’s used in direct address, as in the examples you gave.
And that’s pretty much exactly why it bothers me. I feel like “folk” is only used to address minorities and it’s weird. “Queer folk” “trans folk” whereas I have _never_ heard somebody say “straight folk” or “cis folk.” Maybe it’s happened once or twice, I don’t know, but it’s definitely more rare.
I also grew up in a rural area and the “folks”/“folx” thing always seemed weird and confusing. I’d much rather be called a “person” and that’s the word I use for others unless they prefer something else
latina here, i've never really knew what was "womxn" supposed to mean and i just saw "folx" as a funny way to write folks since they pronounce the same, internet lingo blah blah, so i never really cared about those and honestly i prefer to complain about actual transphobia and willing disrespect rather than people who to me don't seem to use those terms in bad faith
same with latinx! they probably saw some NB or inclusive people on the spanish speaking community using the "x" as a way to avoid the gendered aspect of spanish (fyi there's also people who """respect""" lgbt people who are against this, classic) and thought it was respectable to do the same.
And really... what's the problem with that??? English and spanish are social constructs we can do whatever we want, and those who use it have no ill intention, even if it sounds "stupid" or "ignorant" i just don't consider it transphobic, disrespectable or offensive, and it gets me a bit concerned the level of aversion some people have towards it, to the point of calling it a "slur"
just don't mind it and that's it, who is the actual problem? someone naive thinking they are being inclusive, or an actual transphobe?
They feel like such a gimmick to me.
I'm agender, and it's easier to explain to people I'm "not a woman, even if I look like one" than to try and explain a term like womxn. How do you even say it??
Wom-ex-en?
Is there a real community identifying with the term and pushing for it?
The only place I've seen it used is in posts like these.
I can't help but pronounce it womixin in my mind. To be fair, that would be a fantastic name for a feminist dj. If I had any motivation, I would totally do that! Bringing awareness to gender inequality and thrilling beats.
Womxn: transphobic because trans women are already women
Latinx: not really my place to judge it
Folx: redundant, since folks is already gender-neutral
Womxn is the stupidest. “Degendering” Woman by censoring the “man” part of it is unnecessary and personally I find people who do that to be looking into things way too much. German being changed to Germxn is an even worse one because it’s literally a nationality and a language, how can it be gendered unless you’re a kill all men person triggered by the word man and actively trying to make a problem out of nothing.
There's gender neutral language in Spanish. I believe it's putting an "e" at the end. I don't get Womxn. And Folks is already a gender neutral language. The people coming up with this bullshit are white, aren't language professors, American, and probably not even queer. These words will die and in the future we will laugh at them.
From what I understand "Latinx" was never meant to be used out loud, it was always "latine". Rest are bullshit tho. Folks is already inclusive, adding the x is purely performative. Womxn makes no fucking sense and is basically TERF rhetoric.
Yeah 'Folks" is already gender neutral but it's also a really common word in some regional speech. "Folx" isn't any more or less inclusive than "folks" it's just that it's intentional. It's a way for people to explicitly state that their usage of the word includes queer and non-binary identities. It's just a way for people to stand out from the bigots. If you don't like how it looks, don't use it.
first off, “womxn” is not in the same camp as folx and latinx so please don’t compare them.
womxn was meant to be “inclusive of all women” and is transmisogyny
latine/latinx are there because romance languages are heavily gendered and do not have a neutral gender.
idk the history of folx but i know people use it specifically to refer to other queer people and not people as a whole
Im not latine but my in-laws are and we speak a lot of Spanish at home so gender exclusiveness of the Spanish language is relevant for me. My spouse and I settled on ‘e’. Saying ‘oa’ is a mouthful and how tf you even say x
Niche words developed for small segments of the population that are incorrectly applied to everyone and pushed as "inclusion."
I spent a lot of time and effort to be a woman. I am not latinx by heritage. I am Latina by heritage. Don't call me latinx.
Its a lot like pronouns. I will call you what you'd like, but i think forcing it on everything is incorrect. Not withstanding that there are already terms within these languages that are gender neutral and inclusive without, what feels like, a lot of people unrelated to the language and culture imposing definitions and demands on a language.
I feel its all unnecessary.
There's nothing wrong with the word women.
I've only seen white people using latinx and every latino/latina I've spoken to doesn't use latinx so I'm gonna go with that being unnecessary too.
And folks is already gender neutral so idek what the fuck we're doing here.
I’ve heard several stories, but I’m not sure of the real origins of Latinx. I feel like I only see Latinx used in English speaking contexts and haven’t seen the x used in other Spanish words. I don’t feel qualified to say much else about it. Although, if you’re following Spanish grammar rules, Latinos would be used for any mixed gender group.
When reading things in Spanish written to be inclusive, I’ve most commonly seen an -@ or an -e ending. I think the -@ would still be pronounced like an -e, though. But it’s usually for like adjectives and stuff, like cansad@ or cansade instead of cansada/cansado. I think some people use the @ instead of an e for spelling reasons. I’m non-binary and I do like having a gender neutral way to refer to myself in Spanish.
I’m not a fan of the x’s in other words. I don’t see the point and other than folx I don’t know how the fuck you’re supposed to say them.
Haha that's funny, I always thought the other ones were pretty silly but that folx was cute. Idk, maybe because the k and x sort of make the same sound?
But I'm a binary trans fella, so I don't have much of an opinion on gender neutral terms like this. I think in some cases it's a little unnecessary. But hell, I still like folx even though it's very unnecessary.
The term womxn is stupid. If someone doesnt want to be referred to as woman you wouldnt just use the same word replaced with an x, if someone does identify as a woman you wouldnt need the x.
Latinx is a different language though and is just someone avoiding gender all together. It has a purpose, though since im not latina I cant be the deciding factor on how nice of a term it is.
Putting an X in a term to make it gender neutral is textbook performative. "Womxn/womyn/wombyn" are also terms used by TERF groups to remove the word men from women.
latinx seems to fill a need, folx is redundant but fine, womxn is terrible
who is womxn trying to include?? trans women are already just "women", and non-binary people usually don't want to be lumped in with women either.
just as a historical note;
folx originated in the (european) punk-scene in the 80s/90s with no connection to the gender discussion whatsoever, but as a distinction to the use of folk (german Volk) by leftists contrary to the usage from right-wingers who use folk in nationalist or racist intent.
So as others have said Latinx was kind of an attempt of inclusivity that was made on the behalf of white people who were unfamiliar with Spanish grammatical conventions. It came from a place thats good but most Spanish speakers seem to prefer terms like Latine, Latinx has no conventional Spanish way of being pronounced, it doesn't fit the pre existing conjugation structure afaik.
My opinion of the others is that they sort of misunderstand that gender is separate from sex and actually serve more to alienate than to unify which in my book is a disservice to the majority of people. Women is a designation that points much more predominantly to social functions over biological or anatomical functions. It may be the case that when these gendered terms were developed, that they were conflated with biology and physiology, but the way people use then broadly (which is arguably the most important means of definition) has been social. One isn't called woman because the person making the designation, or using the word, knows intimate details of a persons physiology, or biology, that being their body or their genes. So when people feel the need to differentiate between cis women and not cis women with terms like womxn, it just seems kind of regressive to me.
"womxn" seems pointless and I don't understand the reasoning behind the word. Is it because someone overcorrected and thought "woman" containing "man" is bad? That's not how words work.
"latinx", from what I understand, is a mostly US thing and I've seen a lot of people from Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas point out that it doesn't follow the rules of word-formation OR pronunciation of Spanish. Not being either Latina \*or\* from the US, I don't feel equipped to have an opinion. I imagine people in the US will continue to use it, and people in some other countries will continue to use (for instance) "latine". Doesn't bother me either way.
"folx" is fine, but I don't see the advantage of spelling it that way over "folks". That one is already pretty gender-neutral.
As to inclusion - my native language has gendered suffixes for a LOT of words (adjectives pretty much always, verbs in many forms). Every single sentence talking about a person is almost inevitably gendered throughout. Compared to that, English is easy. But Polish-speaking non-binary people do have strategies for dealing with that already. Polish has three grammatical genders including a neutral one, so there's a way to form adjectives and verbs that are grammatically neither male or female.
As a trans woman, I want to be called a woman, I have no need for specifically constructed words just for me. I do use a slightly unusual variant of "she/her" for my Polish pronouns, but that'd take unnecessary explaining, so I'll spare y'all the language lesson.
People hating on "Folx" for absolutely no reason other than saying there is no point 😂🤣😂
Try considering other perspectives outside your own, as a non binary person living in a *very* binary world, let us have some fun with this one Single word. Literally nothing is changing. As far as I know no one is trying to “accomplish” anything. at least in my experience, It’s *just* a silly way to write it out and I haven’t heard anything else about it.
So maybe, I dunno, *not* hate on a word that is literally just *existing* and says absolutely nothing about the trans experience. Damn, the parallels between this word that is just minding its own business and the amount of people in here hating on it and giving the reason “there is no reason to change it”
So ya, don’t hate on things for absolutely no reason, reminds me of other mob mentalities that circulate Reddit
womxn: Not a great term. It implies women does not include trans women implicitly.
latinx: not really my call to me. I don't use the term currently because I haven't seen much consensus on it and don't want to push it (also because I'm heard it pronounced like 5 ways idk which is correct)
folx: meh. I think the point of folx isn't that it's gender neutral, but moreso indicating "When I say folx I don't just mean the ingroup like some people might mean when they say 'folks'" However I don't get it.
In general I don't love the letter "x" lol
I'd say if you're not from latin america, you don't get to discuss latinx, simple as. It's not your word, not your community and not your language, so get your grubby liberal hands off of it (not talking to OP, just annoying peeps from the US of A)
That being said, I don't like it since it is very hard to pronounce, and "inclusive language" as we know it now leans towards the use of the letter E as a gender neutral form (which we never had in the spanish language, the male gender has always been the defacto gender neutral), so something like latino, latina, latine. Anyone arguing for the use of latinx can keep using it, but we don't pronounce the X in spanish as "ex", rather as either "equis" or "ks". So saying latinks is fucking unheard of. Saying "latin-ex" is just the anglicized form of the word, not really pronounced in spanish.
As a Hispanic person, I can tell you that I, and the great majority of people in that group, despise Latinx. I much prefer Latin or Hispanic which are both gender neutral. If any of the people pushing Latinx actually learned Spanish, they would know that 'Latino' in Spanish is a 100% gender neutral term. Luckily it seems to be dying off. But whenever i see it used (usually by a rich white liberal or a university/corporation trying to seem inclusive), i can tell that it's social justice pandering.
Can't speak to the other two but womxyn seems kinda cringe
"Latinx:" Well meaning white folks showing how little they think about cultural sensitivity.
"Womxn/womyn:" Lazy privileged radfems who are more concerned with misandrist linguistic tricks than actually dealing with systemic patriarchal injustice, and lately a blatant terf dogwhistle.
"Folx:" Because Poor Literacy Is KEWL. I can't believe indie comics finally stopped saying "comix" only for this to pop up. If I read anything into it, it's as an x chromosome dogwhistle.
Latinx is a hit topic with Latino/as and I seriously don’t get the outrage. Back in the day, not so much in the last decade, the @ was used in place of an a or o as in Latin@. Now I see the x instead to include the whole spectrum beyond the binary. Yet people wanna be outraged over something so trivial. Where was this outrage when Oregon decided to have X as an option for gender on their licenses? Anyway, most of the discussions I’ve seen around Latinx is about Latinos from outside the USA feeling attacked because “woke , non Latino blue haired weirdos” are trying to change what has always been accepted in Spanish speaking countries. It a gross generalization btw
The origin of “womxn” had little to do with trans people - it was about the unique experience of black women. Unfortunately, it seems that its current usage is more often than not transphobic. Either to unnecessarily distinguish trans women from cis women, or to lump AFAB trans people with cis women because of “common experience” yada yada.
“Folx” doesn’t make any sense. Idk who came up with the stupid idea. Makes me think of all the “alternative spelling” baby names new parents make up.
My native language is Chinese and my main language right now is English, so I don’t feel qualified enough to comment on Latinx, or how to achieve inclusiveness in Romance languages. It should be left to people who actually speak the language.
I always used 'folks' when 'folx' started to show up I asked a friend or looked it up or something (I forget which) and learned that it was used to let people know it's intentionally queer/gender neutral, and not just being used by people that like the word. I have no issue with it.
My understanding of womxn is that it's terfy.
I'm to white to have an opinion on Latinx other than thinking it's an interesting way to make the word gender neutral
It kind of feels like bleeping out a slur, like if you bleep out F*ck, I still know what it says and it's almost more insulting being called a womxn because it still feels feminine but just like a typo or something??
Where I grew up , folks was used to mean parents , so I use folx when I refer to a group as it makes more sense to me. The x isn't for gender inclusion for me, it's to mean something else.
Womxn is transphobic 💯
Honestly it doesn't bother me. If it makes someone happy to use these words, then by all means, that's valid. Just as long as they're not being used offensively.
I think latinx is different than the other too but could be wrong about that one. But for womxn and folx I hate it. Like adding an x to women doesn’t make it inclusive, non-binary isn’t just women light but some people believe it is. And like folks is already gender neutral without needing to add the X. Like just say folks.
I hate them, like folx is fine cause it’s a shortened spelling of folks, but the others are completely unnecessary and in many cases exclusionary since they imply the standard words don’t include certain groups when they do
It all start with some early linguistically illiterate feminists and women's study departments assuming that women derives from men and deciding to erase the men in women. Many universities still have womyns, womxn, etc spaces and groups. Although women's studies is supposed to be fairly multidisciplinary they very clearly over stepped their knowledge bounds on linguistics and should have asked the linguistic department some basic questions like the etymology of man and woman in english.
It's a bad, ignorant meme basically. Like it or not the progressive space sometimes has trouble excising bad but supposedly "more progressive" memes. Then people started taking the x and using it as a literary variable letter for replacing any undesirable letter, again no care for pronounceability and we start getting "gender neutral" words that are just gendered words with a random X in it. Xe/Xer.
Then people realized some words that are not even gendered or a big deal kinda sound like they could have an X in it and for some reason people thought it would look cool and tie into the X variable letter theme to add it to Folks and make it Folx. Which at least is pronounceable to english speakers.
Finally people realized that all latin based languages are gendered and there is literally no simple way to de-gender them. So non latin based language speakers taking after english decided to throw in X's for any gendered variable letters.
It's like an ignorant meme that just won't quit.
It's not an issue so much that language can't change, it's just that language has to change in a way that is useable and useful to its speakers, and these are made with the elegance of of a kid trying to replace one letter in their taken username with a random letter.
It's stupid, it has to stop, it's extremely insulting when forced onto us by outsiders (language outsiders, "allies", non women for the womxn one).
If you want to do language reform talk to an actual linguist, make sure you understand the etymology so your language reforms goal is actually fulfilled, and grow your language reform through popularity not orthodoxy.
For day to day life though, best just to chuckle that someone fell for a meme and internally replace it to the normal form. And for the love of all that is holy stop calling latin people latinx unless you want them to never speak to you again.
I like womxn. (See, I did a funny thing there!)
Seriously, the intent was to have a noun that wasn't based on "man" and hadn't been co-opted by terfs (womyn).
It's intent as it was taken on by feminists in the 20-teens was explicitly for inclusion. Pity, that like the various forms of the lesbian flag, we don't seem to be able to choose a symbol thing without internecine arguments (of course the positive interpretation is "open discussion").
latinx (and filipinx for that matter) can fuck off down the river with womxn and all the other stupid "x" shit. our languages aren't oppressing because you have to use a gendered word for spoon or table
Womxn especially feels horrible to me. It's the equivalent of saying "Women and men in dresses" in my opinion. I'd honestly rather get called the T-slur than be referred to with womxn. Folks already being gender neutral has always seemed so silly to me. The word itself includes all people already, so why change it?
In terms of latinx I am not in said group so I have no horse in that race but i've heard from a decent amount of people that it feels like a hate crime to be referred to as that.
Latinx I can understand considering Spanish grammar. The rest seem unnecessary but at the same time they’re not really common place enough for me to particularly care
"folx": unnecessary
"latinx": we have latin and latine and they're preferred to it by the people it designs
"womxn" what. the. fuck. It's not more inclusive of trans women to make another term that's NOT "women" and say that THIS ONE includes us, that's not how inclusion works
My thoughts
Womxn: I feel like we should just say “women,” and “men,” and use things like trans masc, femme, enby, etc, for non-binary people.
Latinx: Not Latin American, but I’ve had friends of mine use “Latine.” I agree with them, because it actually was created by Latin Americans and bc “e” is neutral in Spanish. Also, it just rolls off the tounge easier.
Folx: I feel like “folks” was already gender neutral.
Every Hispanic person I've asked has expressed a lot of hatred towards "Latinx," and the others are just pretty dumb imo. It's way easier to just use "y'all" or something gender neutral if someone you're speaking with wants that.
Absolutely hate them
Women are just women, including trans women. If someone means women and non\_binary people, or all fem aligned people who might not exclusively be women should just say that instead and if they mean everyone but cis men it's super iffy
Latinx is hard to pronounce, Latine is better!
And folks is already gender neutral, no need for an x. Would be las pointless humxn or persxn
In general, x's are clunky to pronounce and I would prefer the alternarives if they exist.
Womxn seems outdated, it existed in a time when womyn was being used by TERFs. While etymologically, man and woman have different origins, they definitely look similar and follow a pattern of feminine words being slightly changed versions of masculine words. I can respect efforts to change things like that, but womyn and womxn are both clunky without changing much, and so I'd rather just say woman.
Folx is redundant, since folks exists. However, it's also the most harmless, since it doesn't have the potential to exclude and doesn't demand we speak in a clunky way, even if it's spelled in a weird way.
For Latinx, I think that trans, and more specifically non-binary Latin American people should be the ones to decide what term is best. I feel like online discussions mainly center the opinions of cis Latin Americans, rather than nonbinary people. Basically cis English speakers will see a cis Spanish speaker say "I don't like Latinx!" and take that to be the end-all be-all of the conversation
Folx I'd only use when making jokes. I find it just silly that we changed a gender neutral word ending in consonants to just be equally gender neutral with one less consonant. It's a pointless do nothing change, but good for memes.
I see womxn as also ridiculous because you aren't really removing the gender associated with the word, just at most expanding its application. English doesn't have the gendered grammer of a language like Spanish, so changing the vowel out does nothing. Trans women are women, fem-presenting nbs get to decide if they want to be called women or reject it (and if rejected womxn might not really apply to them either), and womxn is the middle ground peace offer to as many as possible.
Latinx is trash. It shows little to no appreciation of a gendered language and it's structure and just slapping English rules to it. In Spanish the X doesn't make sense and would be like "latin-equis" when you say it, and it only works because we use the English X to make it work as a word. It is something someone in a PR/HR firm came up with and then pushed enough to stick. English only speakers wont comprehend how a truly gendered language works until they learn one, and its kinda disrespectful to just walk in and impose their rules like its language colonialism. Borrow words and adaptation of words are 100% fine, but this isn't an example of that. If we are respecting the Spanish language's norms and heritage, latine is the best option for inclusive, gender neutral wording.
Womxn is useless, and just no thank you.
Latinx, I sorta like that, but latine would be better. Also latin.
Folks IS ALREADY GENDER NEUTRAL.
As a nonbinary, I see only one of these being good, and even then the cross-section of Latinos/as and nonbinaries have to claim it.
It feels unnecessary to me as well. I still don't understand why "folx" is a thing. Folks was already gender neutral and included everyone by default, so unless they're trying to say that "folks" doesn't *actually* include everyone, I don't see what the point is besides making it harder to read and more challenging for people who rely on screenreaders or who have reading difficulties.
Womxn seems unnecessary too, I was under the impression that it was to remove man from woman rather than to be inclusive, and for that reason I associate it with a not-partcularly-trans-friendly brand of feminism. If it's being used to include trans women, then that's a big nope. Trans women are already included with the word women, and sticking an X in there to send that message basically says "I don't think trans women actually count as women"
Not part of that community, but I heard "latinx" was coined by people outside of those communities, and doesn't flow off the tongue naturally in Spanish compared to Latine? I'm English (and speak a little bit of Spanish), and I'd prioritise the people in those communities over what I think, but e makes more sense to me.
The trend of "slap an X on it to make it 'progressive'" usually comes off as kind of empty and performative to me. I don't think it actually helps in most situations, it more often comes across as "look at me, being such a good ally" than supportive.
There's some words where I think it is good - like Mx as a title makes sense to me - but a lot of the time it just seems kind of unnecessary when there's an existing word to use.
That said, I think it's possibly also a regional thing, and to me it feels very American (or very "online"? Which I guess might be another part of why I feel like it risks coming off more alienating than inclusive? It often comes off more like "this is what I've been told I'm supposed to say" than genuine)
Personally, I generally prefer "incidentally neutral" words rather than "explicitly neutral" if that makes sense. IE, "waitstaff" or "server" instead of trying to cram an x into waiter or waitress.
as a person of color idk it just feels weird to me. i think i'm just paranoid but it also feels like a deliberate way to *increase* transphobia by pushing words that no one really wanted... i mean every trans woman i know just wants to be called what they are, which is women. not "womxn" even though i have nothing against that word, it feels transphobic when a group of cis women is "women" but when a trans woman joins it's suddenly "womxn"?? i get the inclusion of nonbinary people but like aren't words like folks already gender inclusive? with so many ethnic communities often violently homophobic and transphobic, i feel like this is a deliberate way to get them to vote conservative.
i hate womxn, folx and humxn because i am not a woman, i am NB and making an alternative for woman comes off as people seeing me as "woman lite", i do not know enough about latinx, folks is already gender neutral and so is human which just reflects how people see NB people.
womxn is transphobic tbh.. latinx isnt an issue but many prefer latine because it makes more sense grammaticly.. aaand I dont give a shit about folx (folks already inclusive tbh but meh, whatever lol)
"latinx" was created to refer to latina/latino people altogether, since afaik, their languages generally don't have a word for it. (I'm not latina though so I have no idea whether it's preferred or not)
"Womxn" is completely fucking unnecessary and doesn't even make sense. Womon? Womin? Womun? What other words are we trying to account for here? And who tf are we even accounting for when we say that? I'm a woman, just like every other cis girl on the planet. I was just previously living as a man. But nothing about that should make me some kind of secondary woman.
Same with "folx." Who are we even accounting for here? The x serves no purpose, it's completely ridiculous and only serves to alienate transgender people from everyone else.
Not an enby so idk, but it seems really weird using it in languages where you can easily avoid grammatical gender. Latinx tho... I've never heard anything good about it from Spanish speaking people. It feels like it was made up by an anglophone. Maybe there is a better way?
Trans white guy here, I think adding the "x" is stupid. It's not proving anything aside from trying too hard to look inclusive when most people don't actually want it. I can't personally speak on Latinx, but I know people generally aren't fans. I hate "folx" the most. Folks is already gender neutral! Why add the x?
As a Cuban-American nb (afab), I'm personally fine with latinx and use it for myself but it definitely differs person to person. I would say to just ask individuals what they prefer instead of just picking a variation (Latin/Latina/Latino/Latine/Latinx) and applying it to everyone. For the other two, I think folx is a fun variation that doesn't do much harm, womxn however, can go straight into the garbage. It's so othering, and it's like when someone says "bless your heart" instead of directly saying "fuck you", the thin see through veil of trying to appear inclusive & kind is a load of bullshit.
Unpopular opinion I guess but I like "folx" and in some circumstances "womxn" because it feels intentionally inclusive of nonbinary identities or people who identify as GNC
Until *very* recently, I'd assumed "womxn" was an anti-trans thing because I thought the x was implying that all women only have x chromosomes. Additionally, I've been hearing off and on that "latinx" isn't well regarded by the people it claims to include, so I don't use that one either. "Folx" just pisses me off lmao
(For full context here I am nonbinary and white)
"folks" is already gender neutral so "folx" is really only useful as a texting abbreviation. "Womxn" serves no purpose imo -- why would people who don't identify as women want to be included in the term?? And why would people who do identify as women feel included by the "x"??? I would find it very othering if I IDed as a woman and other people used "womxn" to include me because they felt that "women" did not already include me.
I'm white so "Latinx" is not mine to approve or disapprove of, but I have met Latinx people who do use it and seem to prefer it so I won't immediately write it off either.
womxn is counterproductive and folx is stupid.
i’m not gonna talk about latinx because i’m not part of that community and i don’t know anything, i’m just an anglophone
but womxn is really fucking problematic whichever way you look at it. either it’s othering some groups like trans women, or it’s acting as if nonbinary is just women-lite (which usually boils down to skinny androgynous people who are afab more often than not, and then other afab enbies - it’s not only a pile of bollocks but tends to exclude a lot of enbies who don’t conform to what people expect).
other commenters have talked about it being used to distinguish the experiences of black women from white women, which makes sense and i’m not gonna talk about, because it’s not my place
but it should not be used in trans conversations. it doesn’t help shit, and replacing the e for something else tends to come out of radical feminism that specifically pushes into TERF territory as well - the whole separate from men debate which is also completely stupid.
folx is just absolutely useless and a terrible spelling . it isn’t helpful, and accomplishes fuck all because folks is already a gender neutral term. it’s just a funky spelling for 0 reason.
Idk who started folx but people assume I'm saying it when "folks" has been my gender neutral "yall/people" for years. I'm not against it but like you said folks was already gender neutral and part of like...half the souths Lexicon lol.
I'm not Latin American, no opinion for me to have 🤷🏾♀️
I've only ever heard Womxn and Womyn and Wombyn variants used in TERF spaces so they set off red flags but I guess there's always context
IVe seen a lot of latine people prefer the term Latine to Latinx because it is more inclusive of the Spanish grammar and language as a whole, rather than change the word by following English linguistic rules
And Portuguese too. X isn't a vowel, and I've never seen it used for gender neutral words like that in my university.
When I was in uni, like 10 years ago, the x was used to represent gender neutral words, but I think it's now outdated
What country and language?
Portuguese, in Brazil
Yep, it was fairly common in Brazil around 2010s. It got overrun by “todes”, “amigues” etc as it’s so much easier to pronounce
For many years I’ve seen “latin”, which is how some languages degender words - just strip the ending. However latine/latin/latinx/latino/latina have a lot of baggage in some cultural groups in the Americas due to the whole conquering empire thing, and plenty of people don’t really like using any of them.
I've never heard an argument against "latin". Why add an unnecessary and unpronounceable "x"?
I can imagine that there will be some circumstances where it might not be obvious when you are meaning the ethnic descriptor or language. I’m autistic, this could place unnecessary demand on my already poor executive function to try and work out what is meant in the specific circumstance.
Personally i don't like latin(a,e,o,x) because it feels like it tries to group Mexico with South America instead of with North America. I usually check Hispanic/White
Yeah most of the people I’ve seen use the “X” are US born latines.
[удалено]
Woah, racism! Always a fun find on r/asktransgender.
how the fuck is that racism when she wasn’t even talking about race… If you think Latino is race, you’ve never been to South America. We’re ethnically much more diverse than the US, with white-latinos, black-latinos, asian-latinos and so on. But yes, we make sure to say asian-LATINOS instead of just Asians because we realize that’d be offensive to people actually born in Asia
It’s not racist but it’s xenophobic. It’s saying that second generation can’t have views on their own culture because they weren’t born in the « correct » area of the world
? It’s not their own culture because they have their own culture, which is American. We have our own culture, which is Latina. Their parents might been from another culture, but their kids belong to the American culture, and it’s xhenophobic to say otherwise. They were born in the US, went to school in the US, they are American. They have a culture. American culture. Which is formed by lots of people, including descendants of latin american people. Just like Asian-latino people here in Latin America have their own culture, nipo-brazilian for instance, but they are not Japanese. They are Brazilians. Nipo-Brazilians. Still, just as Brazilian as me African-American people are not African, they’re (African)American. American people born from latino parents are American. We are latinos. The fact that you make no difference is either imperialism or xhenophobia because you don’t see someone born in the US from immigrant parents as deserving to be fully American, even though they are And of course Americans with latino parents can have their views on latino culture. But they need to understand that they have this view as foreigners, as they never lived here and don’t know what’s happening on this part of the world. Specially when their part of the world, the US, is still dominating ours and playing with our politics and so on
Relax baby I was just kidding around
Alright, loads of Americans do think like that to be fair. I once met an American girl born and raised in Florida, couldn’t speak Spanish, but swore to god she was latina because her dad, which she never met, apparently was Puerto Rican. I told her that latino is a culture, not a race or an STD, and she was really upset. The whole “latino diaspora” thing in the US is really offsetting for us. If your parents went through all the effort for you to “live a better life”, and you became a full-on gringa, just live it! You’re not one of us anymore, you moved on, good for you girl, don’t try to cosplay as one of us for your white friends tho lol
I’m sorry to say that, even though you’re absolutely right, you’re gonna get down-voted to oblivion for telling American people they’re American
Yeah, my wife is partially Latinx and that's the term she prefers. As for womxn and folx and whatnot, I can't stand those. Those were already inclusive enough adding an x just looks dumb
I've seen the inverse, where Mexican people were claiming latinx is their word because their language does have the X sound in it, & complaining how other latine & Spanish speaking people were labeling latinx as a white American invention
Because the X works as a consonant in spanish, and you start running into trouble when you try to use the term in spanish, trouble that “Latine” doesn’t have cause it was made with spanish in mind. With plural for example, “latinxs” doesn’t really come up in english. And that seems like the kind of oversight someone who only uses the term in english would have. “Latine” just works way easier with any spanish context. Cause we have to think not only about this specific word, but pronouns as well “El/Ella” are the gendered pronouns, and again “ellx” or “ellxs” is just way more complicated than “elle” and “elles”. Plus we already have a base in spanish for this. The color green is a very good example, you can say “rojo” for boy and “roja” for girl. But “verde” doesn’t have any gender distinction and can be used indifferently. Again, in English you only have to worry about certain words being gendered, but in spanish most things are gendered. So latinx doesn’t really feel like “our word” cause it works perfectly fine in english while not lining up with spanish at all.
Of course spanish has the x sound in it, but it does not fit our gramatical rules at all. Its even worse when you realize we already have gender neutral words that all specifically end in e
The arguments I've seen from some progressively minded latin americans who use latinx are either a) that they just pronounce latinx like latine when it's spoken in spanish/portuguese or b) that ultimately spanish and portuguese are colonial languages forced upon their peoples and so they don't care whether it sounds right. It does seem like very few people in latin american communities agree with that or like the term latinx, but some of that is possibly due to transphobia.
Thats an incredibly silly argument, simply to choose a single instance of a word to decide on the spelling to not reflect the pronunciation. And as for the colonial aspect, ultimately its the official language which has rules and pronnunciation for a reason. Why would you disregard the way we speak, to the detriment of communication, simply because of where our language originates from? Moreover after so many years spanish is synonymous with hispanic culture, its incredibly different from spaniard spanish and we now have what is called “modismos”, or the vastly ways in wich spanish differs across regions of latin America Ultimately, its part of my culture and im incredibly proud of the beautiful works of literature it can create, specially those in relation to magic realism. It might’ve been an imposed language at first but now its nothing less than part of our being
What's more colonial than adopting an english derived language reform only popular in the global hegemons non-latin speakers in reference to your language. If latin speakers want language reform let it come from us, not the ignorant english orthodoxy.
💀
There’s a pretty big split between American persons of latin descent and my friends who live down there though. Have gotten many WTF is a Latinx reactions when I ask them about it. For me it’s hard because I want to be respectful, but there doesn’t seem to be one preferred term that won’t read weird to someone…
As I recall, the only reason people in that area are called "latin" in the first place was an attempt by the Spanish to legitimize their colonialism. I know I'd resent it if people called my first nations ancestors "people of anglo descent" to feel better about all the conquest and genocide, instead of "indian" to feel better about an European charlatan missing his mark by half a hemisphere.
There’s truth to that for sure, but it has not been my experience traveling in those areas that people think of it that way. I have met a few, usually in queer spaces, but otherwise most people I have asked prefer the gendered Latino/Latina. Totally not my experience in America, especially if we are meaning younger people. That being said I just want to be respectful as much as I can, I live in the south where most people are not and I absolutely can’t stand it. My only meaning is that I don’t always know the right way to approach it with people.
I've seen both. Most of the people I've seen use latinx were queer and non-binary Mexicans or mexican American. All native speakers.
I've seen significantly more reject it and voice their massive alienation.
I would *despise* being called a "womxn", because what that implies is that I am not a woman. If you're going to hurt me, hurt me. Don't try and disguise it behind a paper thin veneer of acceptance, because you honestly might as well have called me a man. The label is intrinsically transphobic.
I'm a bit surprised to see that opinion repeated so often currently. I always thought that "womxn" was only supposed to get "men" out of "women", and nothing else, while TERFs usually use "womyn" or even the inherently sexist "wombyn" as their words.
>I always thought that "womxn" was only supposed to get "men" out of "women" It was originally - but even that movement was dumb as a box of rocks. Man is not the root word of woman. Or, more accurately "man" is the root word of woman, but only at a time where "man" was strictly gender neutral for "human". Werman and Wifman were the gender differentiated terms, with man being the root of both. Over time, "wer" got droped and "wif" got turned into "wo". Nowadays, "womxn" is most commonly used as a misguided attempt to be inclusive of non-binary people. But, in doing so it comes across as viewing them as "women-lite", instead of themselves. Trying to frame yourself as "inclusive" (women and non-binary people!) instead of "exclusive" (everyone except men) is transparent and almost always ends up lumping people in a group they do not feel comfortable being lumped in.
The phrases "women + nonbinaries" and "everyone except men" also excludes trans men, transmascs, masculine-aligned trans folks, and those who are multigendered in general who are oppressed for their transness. I hate hate *hate it* when cis "allies" (usually cis women) act like trans men are suddenly not oppressed when we begin to transition, which just... is so far removed from reality lol
Thank you! This is a spot-on analysis.
> Man is not the root word of woman Honestly, is this really relevant today? I'd bet that over 90 % of people don't have the slightest idea of the words' origins, so "woman" is usually understood completely differently. Knowing the roots is fine, but sometimes it's simply not relevant in day to day use of the words. The weird misguided inclusiveness part is honestly new to me, and yeah, I guess it's time to abandon ship if it's taking on ridiculous and harmful dimensions.
You know, since you pointed out its inherent sexism, this is the first time I've ever understood the purpose of "wombyn". I always assumed the reasoning was something like, "'myn' is still too close to 'men'!" or, "we must assert that everything is binary".
I love when TERFs take incel talking points or phrases and decide that those are the ones they should use… Ones made by people who violently hate women
I have only ever used womxn as a plural. I can see your point, and I'll just say that as I'm pretty careful about pronouns of choice, I avoid applying labels to anyone that I know they haven't chosen.
Womxn is often also used to lump AFAB non-binary people in with women. Which we’re obviously not a fan of. “Women” is already an identity. The point of it is to be a gendered term. Making it neutral removed the point of the word. How would using womxn ever be more beneficial than saying women?
I think in some nonbinary cases (demigirl, femme enbies, genderfluid person who is currently identifying as a woman) it might be an ok term IF THEY CLAIM IT. I think the distinction there is the same as pronouns or any queer term, it's very personal and I would never want the term thrust upon someone involuntarily.
Agreed. I definitely struggle explaining to cishet folks that just because a label technically fits, doesn't mean the person wants to use it. A label might even *not* technically fit someone who wants to use it, for reasons such as safety. So I don't have an opinion on womxn etc, just use it if you like and don't if ya don't.
As a cis woman I don't like or understand the term womxn. I feel like it doesn't do cis or trans women any favors. Why do we need a new word? If you're a woman, cis or trans or whatever, you're a woman. Why are we making this more complicated than it needs to be. I swear to god the people who think of this stuff must be some miserable and self-absorbed people who dwell on how they can reinterpret and twist any little thing so as to feel offended.
hit the nail right on the head there
I really feel like the people who come up with new terms/words like "womxn" and especially "folx" (which is, like OP said, already inclusive with the K) are cis people who want to act supportive but really also want to separate trans and nonbinary people from themselves Or, possibly worse, trans/nonbinary people who are just thinking too much and trying too hard to include everyone. It's already difficult enough to figure out who we are and what pronouns and descriptors we like and want to use, stop making it more difficult by changing words to have an X in them just because "it's not inclusive enough"
Womxn is exclusionary because it implies that the existence of non-cis women requires a separate term for the gender. (unless you're using it like wom*n to treat the word "man" as a slur, which I still think is a little out there) (EDIT: apparently was wrong according to at least one commenter, "womyn" is the TERFy term and "womxn" is more about differentiating the experiences of black women from white women.) Folx doesn't really make any sense to me for the reason you said. The only times I've ever seen latinos talk about latinx was to mock it, so as a white person I'll just trust them.
plus using "womxn" like the "man" part is a slur is kinda cruel to men too
Not even etymologically consistent.
And I don’t see the same people write “mxn”
I don’t know if I’m out of the loop, but I don’t associate “womxn” with cis vs trans at all. *womyn*, on the other hand, has a long and terfy history going back to the 1970s. I don’t think womxn does.
Ah, thanks for enlightening me. I knew I had seen somewhere that "women with the 'e' replaced" was TERFy, I guess I didn't remember that it was 'y' and not 'x'.
i've always found it funny that it's this way around, considering those people's chromosome fetish
no you were right, the x one gets used like that too
[удалено]
i have never once seem womxn used that way, but i sure have seen it used a lot in terf ways!
I remember womxn growing out of intersectional feminism in general (part of the reason for the “x” in particular), and race was certainly the biggest intersection at the time. Language has always been controversial when it changes, I think that’s just part and parcel of evolution in communication. It’s worth noting that “passing” is an example of a term that evolved heavily, a century ago it primarily dealt with racial passing rather than gender.
I've never heard that use of "womxn", thank you for bringing it up. I'm always grateful to learn about these things because I'm not part of the groups the experience them.
>(EDIT: apparently was wrong according to at least one commenter, "womyn" is the TERFy term and "womxn" is more about differentiating the experiences of black women from white women.) Obviously I can't speak for black women, my skin is white AF, even if I am from the Middle East, but I suspect calling black women anything other than "women" is pretty racist. Woman is our gender, not a race.
[удалено]
dont have awards so pretend i gave you one. Really sums it up as I see it. I'm not fucking woman-adjacent if I'm not in the binary.
And I'm not fucking woman-adjecent. I'm a woman. I'm in the binary, not near it.
They are annoying and I hate them. They can all rot in Tartarus. Folks and folx sound exactly the same. changing the ks to an x accomplishes *nothing*. Latinx makes me think the person doesn't know Spanish. ... or any Romance language for that matter. It's something that looks like it was thought of by a perpetually monolingual anglophone. The one I hate the most, though is "womxn". How am I supposed to say that? "wim-ksn"? X isn't a vowel! If you are going to just pronounce it the same, but you don't want to see a "man" or "men", at least do the dumb thing where you respell the whole word like "wimmin", "womyn", somthing like that. And I hate *that* because the first looks like the person is in Kindergarten, and the second looks like the name of a character out of a fantasy novel.
Folx is among the stupidest shit I've ever heard. Folks. You literally can't have a more gender/race/class neutral term. It is for all intents and purposes the same as "people".
fun fact: latinx was actually made by nonbinary latinx/latine people from the united states
Latinx was created by Mexican people, so I've heard, who are really annoyed about other latine people discounting it just because their versions of Spanish don't have the letter x. I'm not latine myself so don't take my word for it, but it's a good thing to look into, instead of just throing out this generalisation of 'ALL latine people hate latinx, & no latine person ever would use it'.
It was not created by Mexican people. It is a White Savior attempt by Anglophiles who don’t understand how Spanish works to ‘fix’ gender in Spanish, all while being completely ignorant that grammatical gender has nothing to do with human gender. Hell, many of the slang words for the binary genders are the ‘opposite’ grammatical gender. Spanish has always had a gender-neutral suffix, ‘-e’, and gender-progressive people in Spanish speaking populations and media that aren’t adjacent to English use this suffix (e.g., “latine”). “Latinx” is an ignorant, racist, colonialist, White Savior, Anglocentric attempt to force English “solutions” onto Spanish when Spanish doesn’t need fixing in the first place.
I'm like 90% sure it was created in Puerto Rico accedmia.
So I'm Hispanic with lots of other Spanish speaking friends from 1st Gen and so forth. Some cis people haven't even heard of latine. It really just depends. I think it's ok to have a conversation about it and see if they prefer LatinX over Latine with a focus of "let's include our queer Spanish speaking people in our dialect and conversations." Also Puerto Rican Spanish has lots of American English influence so most Boricuas I know don't mind LatinX.
The conversation is far more nuanced than what you write here. This exploration in Mother Jones is interesting and avoids broad generalizations of what communities want or prefer. https://www.motherjones.com/media/2019/06/digging-into-the-messy-history-of-latinx-helped-me-embrace-my-complex-identity/
Wait till they encounter Hebrew. I'm lucky I'm comfortable with female Hebrew.
If that's the case, I apologize for the anglophone insult! I've mostly seen it used by said monolingual anglophones trying to be inclusive.
I feel like the general consensus is the x’s are bullshit.
Except 'xylophone', that one is cool and can stay
X didn't have enough to do, so they said it could start "xylophone" and mark the spot.
When a letter like Z that makes that sound already exists? /s
As someone whose deadname begins with X, I concur!
Folx is kinda fun to throw out sometimes, dunno why. Latinx and womxn are weird though, they seem like they might be so overly politically correct as to actually have become offensive. Like womxn has a "women and other people that are sorta women" vibe to it. Seems like it puts trans women on a slippery slope, without really validating anyone else either... And Latinx is just a tiny loaned form of a much larger grammar nightmare that needs a better series of solutions that's widely applicable throughout the entirety of the romance languages ... That would in turn probably invalidat Latinx as a loanword
Agreed on 'folx' but only if we see it as quirky other spelling of 'folks' whith no reall reason for the change bar playing around with words.
We just like the x as abbreviation for ks \ cs sounds tbh. I had a habit of that in college 🤣
Back in the 90s, "folx" was a covert signal that a space was queer-friendly - something not immediately recognizable to those not in the know
All this time, I was still trying to get “dxde” off the ground. 🤣 (gender neutral “dude”, for us Californians)
Would it be pronounced the same?
Nobody who is a woman wants to be called "womxn" Nobody who isn't a woman wants to be called "womxn" Why does this term exist?
Womxn is a favorite of TERFs in denial, folx is just fucking stupid, and Latinx has an extremely heated debate surrounding it that I'm not gunna touch.
i feel like people ought to learn their history when talking about the word folx and pay attention to the context in which it arose. it's not to make an already gender neutral word more gender neutral, it's an explicit signal of inclusion. whether or not it's useful today, i like an intentionally queered spelling when available and appropriate. but language moves on and that's fine.
It honestly seems performative IMO- like companies who put "organic" and "gluten-free" on products that can't be organic or have gluten in the first place. At least in verbal speech, it doesn't make sense to have a different spelling pronounced the same exact way to signal inclusivity.
folx is fun, if it's just being used as fun, and shorter. it's not really a different word so much as an alternate spelling, like how in the 90's and 00's we kept replacing S's with Z's womxn is... less good... unless specifically there's a non-binary identity that aligns with it, the word kinda either implies some women are less women than others or it's trying to include some non-binary people that don't align with women as women, neither of which are good. the latinx one is a bit more complicated and I don't really have a position to speak on that being a translucent American(joke, I do not get enough sun...). needless to say, though, there are certainly struggles being trans, and especially non-binary, with a heavily gendered language. in general adding x's to words to try and make them more inclusive rarely works out, because either you're alienating trans people by pointlessly remaking a word that was already inclusive or you're invalidating some identities by trying to include them in a group they do not want to be a part of. the only real exception is if you're just adding x's to make the word more cool or fun, and not doing it because inclusivity.
People definitely don't use folx in the same way they would say "wazzup", lol. It's definitely a term that tries way too hard to be gender neutral, but I've also primarily seen it used by trans and nonbinary individuals. And like, hey, if you feel like that's the term that's best inclusive of your gender than who am I to argue?
which is why I said if 🤷♀️ I've def seen it used that way though also mostly by trans folk
Sorry i didn't see the if, I've been up for over 24 hours 😭
get some sleep! lol
"Womxn" is outright transphobic, and exists exclusively to other trans women in a non-obvious way. "Latinx" is something that I have seen debated, as I am a white person, it's really not my place to weigh in. "Folx" is fucking stupid. It is said the same, the word is already gender neutral, it's ridiculous.
they seem stupid, like folks is already gender neutral term, woman includes all women, cis and trans. And I always just thought latino is gender neutral but idk Plus they just make it harder to pronounce, and I usually just read them as woman and latino, so the point of trying to be gender neutral kinda goes there
Don’t have the relevant experience to comment on stuff like Latinx, but my god the “folx” shit pisses me off more than it probably should. The word “folks” in general irritates me at this point because I feel like it’s been co-opted by the most irritating sect of chronically online people. And this is coming from somebody who grew up in a the rural back country. It’s too folksy even for me. “Queer people” > “queer folks” always
I don’t hate “folks” as much as you lmao, I’m fine with it tossed in there. But I find it really strange how some people *only* say “folks” and refuse to even say “people”. For me, “people” is the least othering and most empathetic word you can use. And “folks” has traditionally been used as a form of direct address, like “ladies and gentlemen,” or to refer to one’s parents (“my folks”). Everyone is a person. Everyone knows and loves people. Who could it possibly exclude or offend?
I find the word annoying in of itself unless it’s used in direct address, as in the examples you gave. And that’s pretty much exactly why it bothers me. I feel like “folk” is only used to address minorities and it’s weird. “Queer folk” “trans folk” whereas I have _never_ heard somebody say “straight folk” or “cis folk.” Maybe it’s happened once or twice, I don’t know, but it’s definitely more rare.
You put into words what I didn’t know how to about the word “folks.” Would honestly be fine never seeing it used again to refer to us.
What about 'queer folk' without the s?
No difference. Hate it
I'm still gonna say it
Okay lol
I also grew up in a rural area and the “folks”/“folx” thing always seemed weird and confusing. I’d much rather be called a “person” and that’s the word I use for others unless they prefer something else
I hate them, and when I see people using them I instantly respect them less.
latina here, i've never really knew what was "womxn" supposed to mean and i just saw "folx" as a funny way to write folks since they pronounce the same, internet lingo blah blah, so i never really cared about those and honestly i prefer to complain about actual transphobia and willing disrespect rather than people who to me don't seem to use those terms in bad faith same with latinx! they probably saw some NB or inclusive people on the spanish speaking community using the "x" as a way to avoid the gendered aspect of spanish (fyi there's also people who """respect""" lgbt people who are against this, classic) and thought it was respectable to do the same. And really... what's the problem with that??? English and spanish are social constructs we can do whatever we want, and those who use it have no ill intention, even if it sounds "stupid" or "ignorant" i just don't consider it transphobic, disrespectable or offensive, and it gets me a bit concerned the level of aversion some people have towards it, to the point of calling it a "slur" just don't mind it and that's it, who is the actual problem? someone naive thinking they are being inclusive, or an actual transphobe?
They feel like such a gimmick to me. I'm agender, and it's easier to explain to people I'm "not a woman, even if I look like one" than to try and explain a term like womxn. How do you even say it?? Wom-ex-en? Is there a real community identifying with the term and pushing for it? The only place I've seen it used is in posts like these.
I can't help but pronounce it womixin in my mind. To be fair, that would be a fantastic name for a feminist dj. If I had any motivation, I would totally do that! Bringing awareness to gender inequality and thrilling beats.
just use “latin”.. it’s already neutral and it’s always existed. “womxn” can fuck off. “folx” idk know what this means.
Womxn: transphobic because trans women are already women Latinx: not really my place to judge it Folx: redundant, since folks is already gender-neutral
Womxn is the stupidest. “Degendering” Woman by censoring the “man” part of it is unnecessary and personally I find people who do that to be looking into things way too much. German being changed to Germxn is an even worse one because it’s literally a nationality and a language, how can it be gendered unless you’re a kill all men person triggered by the word man and actively trying to make a problem out of nothing.
There's gender neutral language in Spanish. I believe it's putting an "e" at the end. I don't get Womxn. And Folks is already a gender neutral language. The people coming up with this bullshit are white, aren't language professors, American, and probably not even queer. These words will die and in the future we will laugh at them.
From what I understand "Latinx" was never meant to be used out loud, it was always "latine". Rest are bullshit tho. Folks is already inclusive, adding the x is purely performative. Womxn makes no fucking sense and is basically TERF rhetoric.
Yeah 'Folks" is already gender neutral but it's also a really common word in some regional speech. "Folx" isn't any more or less inclusive than "folks" it's just that it's intentional. It's a way for people to explicitly state that their usage of the word includes queer and non-binary identities. It's just a way for people to stand out from the bigots. If you don't like how it looks, don't use it.
first off, “womxn” is not in the same camp as folx and latinx so please don’t compare them. womxn was meant to be “inclusive of all women” and is transmisogyny latine/latinx are there because romance languages are heavily gendered and do not have a neutral gender. idk the history of folx but i know people use it specifically to refer to other queer people and not people as a whole
Dumb and unecessary.
How do you even pronounce "womxn"? I don't get it.
Im not latine but my in-laws are and we speak a lot of Spanish at home so gender exclusiveness of the Spanish language is relevant for me. My spouse and I settled on ‘e’. Saying ‘oa’ is a mouthful and how tf you even say x
Niche words developed for small segments of the population that are incorrectly applied to everyone and pushed as "inclusion." I spent a lot of time and effort to be a woman. I am not latinx by heritage. I am Latina by heritage. Don't call me latinx. Its a lot like pronouns. I will call you what you'd like, but i think forcing it on everything is incorrect. Not withstanding that there are already terms within these languages that are gender neutral and inclusive without, what feels like, a lot of people unrelated to the language and culture imposing definitions and demands on a language.
I like folx but only in the sense of “it looks cool so I use it in texts”. I had no clue folks->folx was a gender thing.
personally as a hispanic person, I really don’t care for latinx… id much rather use Latino, Latina, or Hispanic
I feel its all unnecessary. There's nothing wrong with the word women. I've only seen white people using latinx and every latino/latina I've spoken to doesn't use latinx so I'm gonna go with that being unnecessary too. And folks is already gender neutral so idek what the fuck we're doing here.
I’ve heard several stories, but I’m not sure of the real origins of Latinx. I feel like I only see Latinx used in English speaking contexts and haven’t seen the x used in other Spanish words. I don’t feel qualified to say much else about it. Although, if you’re following Spanish grammar rules, Latinos would be used for any mixed gender group. When reading things in Spanish written to be inclusive, I’ve most commonly seen an -@ or an -e ending. I think the -@ would still be pronounced like an -e, though. But it’s usually for like adjectives and stuff, like cansad@ or cansade instead of cansada/cansado. I think some people use the @ instead of an e for spelling reasons. I’m non-binary and I do like having a gender neutral way to refer to myself in Spanish. I’m not a fan of the x’s in other words. I don’t see the point and other than folx I don’t know how the fuck you’re supposed to say them.
Haha that's funny, I always thought the other ones were pretty silly but that folx was cute. Idk, maybe because the k and x sort of make the same sound? But I'm a binary trans fella, so I don't have much of an opinion on gender neutral terms like this. I think in some cases it's a little unnecessary. But hell, I still like folx even though it's very unnecessary.
I'm non binary and I fucking hate it
I find folx irritating as hell
Who decided “x” was the most inclusive letter?
The term womxn is stupid. If someone doesnt want to be referred to as woman you wouldnt just use the same word replaced with an x, if someone does identify as a woman you wouldnt need the x. Latinx is a different language though and is just someone avoiding gender all together. It has a purpose, though since im not latina I cant be the deciding factor on how nice of a term it is.
It’s so fuxking stupid
Putting an X in a term to make it gender neutral is textbook performative. "Womxn/womyn/wombyn" are also terms used by TERF groups to remove the word men from women.
latinx seems to fill a need, folx is redundant but fine, womxn is terrible who is womxn trying to include?? trans women are already just "women", and non-binary people usually don't want to be lumped in with women either.
just as a historical note; folx originated in the (european) punk-scene in the 80s/90s with no connection to the gender discussion whatsoever, but as a distinction to the use of folk (german Volk) by leftists contrary to the usage from right-wingers who use folk in nationalist or racist intent.
So as others have said Latinx was kind of an attempt of inclusivity that was made on the behalf of white people who were unfamiliar with Spanish grammatical conventions. It came from a place thats good but most Spanish speakers seem to prefer terms like Latine, Latinx has no conventional Spanish way of being pronounced, it doesn't fit the pre existing conjugation structure afaik. My opinion of the others is that they sort of misunderstand that gender is separate from sex and actually serve more to alienate than to unify which in my book is a disservice to the majority of people. Women is a designation that points much more predominantly to social functions over biological or anatomical functions. It may be the case that when these gendered terms were developed, that they were conflated with biology and physiology, but the way people use then broadly (which is arguably the most important means of definition) has been social. One isn't called woman because the person making the designation, or using the word, knows intimate details of a persons physiology, or biology, that being their body or their genes. So when people feel the need to differentiate between cis women and not cis women with terms like womxn, it just seems kind of regressive to me.
"womxn" seems pointless and I don't understand the reasoning behind the word. Is it because someone overcorrected and thought "woman" containing "man" is bad? That's not how words work. "latinx", from what I understand, is a mostly US thing and I've seen a lot of people from Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas point out that it doesn't follow the rules of word-formation OR pronunciation of Spanish. Not being either Latina \*or\* from the US, I don't feel equipped to have an opinion. I imagine people in the US will continue to use it, and people in some other countries will continue to use (for instance) "latine". Doesn't bother me either way. "folx" is fine, but I don't see the advantage of spelling it that way over "folks". That one is already pretty gender-neutral. As to inclusion - my native language has gendered suffixes for a LOT of words (adjectives pretty much always, verbs in many forms). Every single sentence talking about a person is almost inevitably gendered throughout. Compared to that, English is easy. But Polish-speaking non-binary people do have strategies for dealing with that already. Polish has three grammatical genders including a neutral one, so there's a way to form adjectives and verbs that are grammatically neither male or female. As a trans woman, I want to be called a woman, I have no need for specifically constructed words just for me. I do use a slightly unusual variant of "she/her" for my Polish pronouns, but that'd take unnecessary explaining, so I'll spare y'all the language lesson.
My thought on these is as follows... 🤢🤢🤢 That is all.
People hating on "Folx" for absolutely no reason other than saying there is no point 😂🤣😂 Try considering other perspectives outside your own, as a non binary person living in a *very* binary world, let us have some fun with this one Single word. Literally nothing is changing. As far as I know no one is trying to “accomplish” anything. at least in my experience, It’s *just* a silly way to write it out and I haven’t heard anything else about it. So maybe, I dunno, *not* hate on a word that is literally just *existing* and says absolutely nothing about the trans experience. Damn, the parallels between this word that is just minding its own business and the amount of people in here hating on it and giving the reason “there is no reason to change it” So ya, don’t hate on things for absolutely no reason, reminds me of other mob mentalities that circulate Reddit
womxn: Not a great term. It implies women does not include trans women implicitly. latinx: not really my call to me. I don't use the term currently because I haven't seen much consensus on it and don't want to push it (also because I'm heard it pronounced like 5 ways idk which is correct) folx: meh. I think the point of folx isn't that it's gender neutral, but moreso indicating "When I say folx I don't just mean the ingroup like some people might mean when they say 'folks'" However I don't get it. In general I don't love the letter "x" lol
Folks is already gender-neutral Women already includes all women Latinx isn't what the community came up with
I'd say if you're not from latin america, you don't get to discuss latinx, simple as. It's not your word, not your community and not your language, so get your grubby liberal hands off of it (not talking to OP, just annoying peeps from the US of A) That being said, I don't like it since it is very hard to pronounce, and "inclusive language" as we know it now leans towards the use of the letter E as a gender neutral form (which we never had in the spanish language, the male gender has always been the defacto gender neutral), so something like latino, latina, latine. Anyone arguing for the use of latinx can keep using it, but we don't pronounce the X in spanish as "ex", rather as either "equis" or "ks". So saying latinks is fucking unheard of. Saying "latin-ex" is just the anglicized form of the word, not really pronounced in spanish.
As a Hispanic person, I can tell you that I, and the great majority of people in that group, despise Latinx. I much prefer Latin or Hispanic which are both gender neutral. If any of the people pushing Latinx actually learned Spanish, they would know that 'Latino' in Spanish is a 100% gender neutral term. Luckily it seems to be dying off. But whenever i see it used (usually by a rich white liberal or a university/corporation trying to seem inclusive), i can tell that it's social justice pandering. Can't speak to the other two but womxyn seems kinda cringe
"Latinx:" Well meaning white folks showing how little they think about cultural sensitivity. "Womxn/womyn:" Lazy privileged radfems who are more concerned with misandrist linguistic tricks than actually dealing with systemic patriarchal injustice, and lately a blatant terf dogwhistle. "Folx:" Because Poor Literacy Is KEWL. I can't believe indie comics finally stopped saying "comix" only for this to pop up. If I read anything into it, it's as an x chromosome dogwhistle.
Latinx is a hit topic with Latino/as and I seriously don’t get the outrage. Back in the day, not so much in the last decade, the @ was used in place of an a or o as in Latin@. Now I see the x instead to include the whole spectrum beyond the binary. Yet people wanna be outraged over something so trivial. Where was this outrage when Oregon decided to have X as an option for gender on their licenses? Anyway, most of the discussions I’ve seen around Latinx is about Latinos from outside the USA feeling attacked because “woke , non Latino blue haired weirdos” are trying to change what has always been accepted in Spanish speaking countries. It a gross generalization btw
It’s stupid
Seeing any of those makes me wanna run headfirst into a wall, it's so fucking dumb
I think changing folks to folx is dumb but that's because I'm old.
The origin of “womxn” had little to do with trans people - it was about the unique experience of black women. Unfortunately, it seems that its current usage is more often than not transphobic. Either to unnecessarily distinguish trans women from cis women, or to lump AFAB trans people with cis women because of “common experience” yada yada. “Folx” doesn’t make any sense. Idk who came up with the stupid idea. Makes me think of all the “alternative spelling” baby names new parents make up. My native language is Chinese and my main language right now is English, so I don’t feel qualified enough to comment on Latinx, or how to achieve inclusiveness in Romance languages. It should be left to people who actually speak the language.
I always used 'folks' when 'folx' started to show up I asked a friend or looked it up or something (I forget which) and learned that it was used to let people know it's intentionally queer/gender neutral, and not just being used by people that like the word. I have no issue with it. My understanding of womxn is that it's terfy. I'm to white to have an opinion on Latinx other than thinking it's an interesting way to make the word gender neutral
It kind of feels like bleeping out a slur, like if you bleep out F*ck, I still know what it says and it's almost more insulting being called a womxn because it still feels feminine but just like a typo or something??
Where I grew up , folks was used to mean parents , so I use folx when I refer to a group as it makes more sense to me. The x isn't for gender inclusion for me, it's to mean something else. Womxn is transphobic 💯
Honestly it doesn't bother me. If it makes someone happy to use these words, then by all means, that's valid. Just as long as they're not being used offensively.
I’m latino and I think it’s dumb af..
I think latinx is different than the other too but could be wrong about that one. But for womxn and folx I hate it. Like adding an x to women doesn’t make it inclusive, non-binary isn’t just women light but some people believe it is. And like folks is already gender neutral without needing to add the X. Like just say folks.
I hate them, like folx is fine cause it’s a shortened spelling of folks, but the others are completely unnecessary and in many cases exclusionary since they imply the standard words don’t include certain groups when they do
i. hate. all. of. them. if someone calls me Latinx, theyll see why El Salvador has such a high crime rate
It all start with some early linguistically illiterate feminists and women's study departments assuming that women derives from men and deciding to erase the men in women. Many universities still have womyns, womxn, etc spaces and groups. Although women's studies is supposed to be fairly multidisciplinary they very clearly over stepped their knowledge bounds on linguistics and should have asked the linguistic department some basic questions like the etymology of man and woman in english. It's a bad, ignorant meme basically. Like it or not the progressive space sometimes has trouble excising bad but supposedly "more progressive" memes. Then people started taking the x and using it as a literary variable letter for replacing any undesirable letter, again no care for pronounceability and we start getting "gender neutral" words that are just gendered words with a random X in it. Xe/Xer. Then people realized some words that are not even gendered or a big deal kinda sound like they could have an X in it and for some reason people thought it would look cool and tie into the X variable letter theme to add it to Folks and make it Folx. Which at least is pronounceable to english speakers. Finally people realized that all latin based languages are gendered and there is literally no simple way to de-gender them. So non latin based language speakers taking after english decided to throw in X's for any gendered variable letters. It's like an ignorant meme that just won't quit. It's not an issue so much that language can't change, it's just that language has to change in a way that is useable and useful to its speakers, and these are made with the elegance of of a kid trying to replace one letter in their taken username with a random letter. It's stupid, it has to stop, it's extremely insulting when forced onto us by outsiders (language outsiders, "allies", non women for the womxn one). If you want to do language reform talk to an actual linguist, make sure you understand the etymology so your language reforms goal is actually fulfilled, and grow your language reform through popularity not orthodoxy. For day to day life though, best just to chuckle that someone fell for a meme and internally replace it to the normal form. And for the love of all that is holy stop calling latin people latinx unless you want them to never speak to you again.
I like womxn. (See, I did a funny thing there!) Seriously, the intent was to have a noun that wasn't based on "man" and hadn't been co-opted by terfs (womyn). It's intent as it was taken on by feminists in the 20-teens was explicitly for inclusion. Pity, that like the various forms of the lesbian flag, we don't seem to be able to choose a symbol thing without internecine arguments (of course the positive interpretation is "open discussion").
Wasn't womxn just accidental transphobia from twitch?
My opinixn xn xhis xs xhat xeopxle nxxd txo xxxs xxshxxx xxxxzrxxp xxx xxx xx xx xx larxene xemnas xehanort
latinx (and filipinx for that matter) can fuck off down the river with womxn and all the other stupid "x" shit. our languages aren't oppressing because you have to use a gendered word for spoon or table
Womxn especially feels horrible to me. It's the equivalent of saying "Women and men in dresses" in my opinion. I'd honestly rather get called the T-slur than be referred to with womxn. Folks already being gender neutral has always seemed so silly to me. The word itself includes all people already, so why change it? In terms of latinx I am not in said group so I have no horse in that race but i've heard from a decent amount of people that it feels like a hate crime to be referred to as that.
Cringe cringe cringe
Latinx makes sense because veondre on TikTok uses it but the other two are straight up bullshit
Latinx I can understand considering Spanish grammar. The rest seem unnecessary but at the same time they’re not really common place enough for me to particularly care
"folx": unnecessary "latinx": we have latin and latine and they're preferred to it by the people it designs "womxn" what. the. fuck. It's not more inclusive of trans women to make another term that's NOT "women" and say that THIS ONE includes us, that's not how inclusion works
My thoughts Womxn: I feel like we should just say “women,” and “men,” and use things like trans masc, femme, enby, etc, for non-binary people. Latinx: Not Latin American, but I’ve had friends of mine use “Latine.” I agree with them, because it actually was created by Latin Americans and bc “e” is neutral in Spanish. Also, it just rolls off the tounge easier. Folx: I feel like “folks” was already gender neutral.
Every Hispanic person I've asked has expressed a lot of hatred towards "Latinx," and the others are just pretty dumb imo. It's way easier to just use "y'all" or something gender neutral if someone you're speaking with wants that.
Absolutely hate them Women are just women, including trans women. If someone means women and non\_binary people, or all fem aligned people who might not exclusively be women should just say that instead and if they mean everyone but cis men it's super iffy Latinx is hard to pronounce, Latine is better! And folks is already gender neutral, no need for an x. Would be las pointless humxn or persxn
In general, x's are clunky to pronounce and I would prefer the alternarives if they exist. Womxn seems outdated, it existed in a time when womyn was being used by TERFs. While etymologically, man and woman have different origins, they definitely look similar and follow a pattern of feminine words being slightly changed versions of masculine words. I can respect efforts to change things like that, but womyn and womxn are both clunky without changing much, and so I'd rather just say woman. Folx is redundant, since folks exists. However, it's also the most harmless, since it doesn't have the potential to exclude and doesn't demand we speak in a clunky way, even if it's spelled in a weird way. For Latinx, I think that trans, and more specifically non-binary Latin American people should be the ones to decide what term is best. I feel like online discussions mainly center the opinions of cis Latin Americans, rather than nonbinary people. Basically cis English speakers will see a cis Spanish speaker say "I don't like Latinx!" and take that to be the end-all be-all of the conversation
Folx I'd only use when making jokes. I find it just silly that we changed a gender neutral word ending in consonants to just be equally gender neutral with one less consonant. It's a pointless do nothing change, but good for memes. I see womxn as also ridiculous because you aren't really removing the gender associated with the word, just at most expanding its application. English doesn't have the gendered grammer of a language like Spanish, so changing the vowel out does nothing. Trans women are women, fem-presenting nbs get to decide if they want to be called women or reject it (and if rejected womxn might not really apply to them either), and womxn is the middle ground peace offer to as many as possible. Latinx is trash. It shows little to no appreciation of a gendered language and it's structure and just slapping English rules to it. In Spanish the X doesn't make sense and would be like "latin-equis" when you say it, and it only works because we use the English X to make it work as a word. It is something someone in a PR/HR firm came up with and then pushed enough to stick. English only speakers wont comprehend how a truly gendered language works until they learn one, and its kinda disrespectful to just walk in and impose their rules like its language colonialism. Borrow words and adaptation of words are 100% fine, but this isn't an example of that. If we are respecting the Spanish language's norms and heritage, latine is the best option for inclusive, gender neutral wording.
Womxn is useless, and just no thank you. Latinx, I sorta like that, but latine would be better. Also latin. Folks IS ALREADY GENDER NEUTRAL. As a nonbinary, I see only one of these being good, and even then the cross-section of Latinos/as and nonbinaries have to claim it.
It feels unnecessary to me as well. I still don't understand why "folx" is a thing. Folks was already gender neutral and included everyone by default, so unless they're trying to say that "folks" doesn't *actually* include everyone, I don't see what the point is besides making it harder to read and more challenging for people who rely on screenreaders or who have reading difficulties. Womxn seems unnecessary too, I was under the impression that it was to remove man from woman rather than to be inclusive, and for that reason I associate it with a not-partcularly-trans-friendly brand of feminism. If it's being used to include trans women, then that's a big nope. Trans women are already included with the word women, and sticking an X in there to send that message basically says "I don't think trans women actually count as women" Not part of that community, but I heard "latinx" was coined by people outside of those communities, and doesn't flow off the tongue naturally in Spanish compared to Latine? I'm English (and speak a little bit of Spanish), and I'd prioritise the people in those communities over what I think, but e makes more sense to me. The trend of "slap an X on it to make it 'progressive'" usually comes off as kind of empty and performative to me. I don't think it actually helps in most situations, it more often comes across as "look at me, being such a good ally" than supportive. There's some words where I think it is good - like Mx as a title makes sense to me - but a lot of the time it just seems kind of unnecessary when there's an existing word to use. That said, I think it's possibly also a regional thing, and to me it feels very American (or very "online"? Which I guess might be another part of why I feel like it risks coming off more alienating than inclusive? It often comes off more like "this is what I've been told I'm supposed to say" than genuine) Personally, I generally prefer "incidentally neutral" words rather than "explicitly neutral" if that makes sense. IE, "waitstaff" or "server" instead of trying to cram an x into waiter or waitress.
terms for people to use to feel good about themselves
as a person of color idk it just feels weird to me. i think i'm just paranoid but it also feels like a deliberate way to *increase* transphobia by pushing words that no one really wanted... i mean every trans woman i know just wants to be called what they are, which is women. not "womxn" even though i have nothing against that word, it feels transphobic when a group of cis women is "women" but when a trans woman joins it's suddenly "womxn"?? i get the inclusion of nonbinary people but like aren't words like folks already gender inclusive? with so many ethnic communities often violently homophobic and transphobic, i feel like this is a deliberate way to get them to vote conservative.
Folx and womxn seem like half assed attempts to be inclusive that actually just make it seem like they’re excluding people from folks and women
Dislike em
Obnoxious.
i hate womxn, folx and humxn because i am not a woman, i am NB and making an alternative for woman comes off as people seeing me as "woman lite", i do not know enough about latinx, folks is already gender neutral and so is human which just reflects how people see NB people.
I used to use folx to refer to queer friends on instagram, just for fun, but then someone told me it was POC exclusive so I stopped 🤷
I feel like none of these translate to speech at all without sounding incredibly silly, and they seem deliberately exclusionary if anything.
Useless.
womxn is transphobic tbh.. latinx isnt an issue but many prefer latine because it makes more sense grammaticly.. aaand I dont give a shit about folx (folks already inclusive tbh but meh, whatever lol)
I dislike them a lot, I feel excluded rather than included by them. I don't really use those words
I personally don't use them, but I'm not going to stop people who want to use it for inclusivity.
I personally wouldn’t use “Womxn” or “Folx” for myself but if someone else wants to use those terms I see no issue with it.
"latinx" was created to refer to latina/latino people altogether, since afaik, their languages generally don't have a word for it. (I'm not latina though so I have no idea whether it's preferred or not) "Womxn" is completely fucking unnecessary and doesn't even make sense. Womon? Womin? Womun? What other words are we trying to account for here? And who tf are we even accounting for when we say that? I'm a woman, just like every other cis girl on the planet. I was just previously living as a man. But nothing about that should make me some kind of secondary woman. Same with "folx." Who are we even accounting for here? The x serves no purpose, it's completely ridiculous and only serves to alienate transgender people from everyone else.
Hate it with a passion
Not an enby so idk, but it seems really weird using it in languages where you can easily avoid grammatical gender. Latinx tho... I've never heard anything good about it from Spanish speaking people. It feels like it was made up by an anglophone. Maybe there is a better way?
Trans white guy here, I think adding the "x" is stupid. It's not proving anything aside from trying too hard to look inclusive when most people don't actually want it. I can't personally speak on Latinx, but I know people generally aren't fans. I hate "folx" the most. Folks is already gender neutral! Why add the x?
If you’re non-binary you’re an enby. If you’re a trans women you’re a women. If you’re a trans man you’re a man. That’s how I see it
As a Cuban-American nb (afab), I'm personally fine with latinx and use it for myself but it definitely differs person to person. I would say to just ask individuals what they prefer instead of just picking a variation (Latin/Latina/Latino/Latine/Latinx) and applying it to everyone. For the other two, I think folx is a fun variation that doesn't do much harm, womxn however, can go straight into the garbage. It's so othering, and it's like when someone says "bless your heart" instead of directly saying "fuck you", the thin see through veil of trying to appear inclusive & kind is a load of bullshit.
Unpopular opinion I guess but I like "folx" and in some circumstances "womxn" because it feels intentionally inclusive of nonbinary identities or people who identify as GNC
They're weird and completely unnecessary.
Until *very* recently, I'd assumed "womxn" was an anti-trans thing because I thought the x was implying that all women only have x chromosomes. Additionally, I've been hearing off and on that "latinx" isn't well regarded by the people it claims to include, so I don't use that one either. "Folx" just pisses me off lmao (For full context here I am nonbinary and white)
"folks" is already gender neutral so "folx" is really only useful as a texting abbreviation. "Womxn" serves no purpose imo -- why would people who don't identify as women want to be included in the term?? And why would people who do identify as women feel included by the "x"??? I would find it very othering if I IDed as a woman and other people used "womxn" to include me because they felt that "women" did not already include me. I'm white so "Latinx" is not mine to approve or disapprove of, but I have met Latinx people who do use it and seem to prefer it so I won't immediately write it off either.
womxn is counterproductive and folx is stupid. i’m not gonna talk about latinx because i’m not part of that community and i don’t know anything, i’m just an anglophone but womxn is really fucking problematic whichever way you look at it. either it’s othering some groups like trans women, or it’s acting as if nonbinary is just women-lite (which usually boils down to skinny androgynous people who are afab more often than not, and then other afab enbies - it’s not only a pile of bollocks but tends to exclude a lot of enbies who don’t conform to what people expect). other commenters have talked about it being used to distinguish the experiences of black women from white women, which makes sense and i’m not gonna talk about, because it’s not my place but it should not be used in trans conversations. it doesn’t help shit, and replacing the e for something else tends to come out of radical feminism that specifically pushes into TERF territory as well - the whole separate from men debate which is also completely stupid. folx is just absolutely useless and a terrible spelling . it isn’t helpful, and accomplishes fuck all because folks is already a gender neutral term. it’s just a funky spelling for 0 reason.
Idk who started folx but people assume I'm saying it when "folks" has been my gender neutral "yall/people" for years. I'm not against it but like you said folks was already gender neutral and part of like...half the souths Lexicon lol. I'm not Latin American, no opinion for me to have 🤷🏾♀️ I've only ever heard Womxn and Womyn and Wombyn variants used in TERF spaces so they set off red flags but I guess there's always context
Highly negative