We are in the middle of a global pandemic, social unrest, looming mass evictions, and another Great Depression, but the Hispanics are at it again.
They’re celebrating the majority of a disparate and undefined ethnicity hasn’t heard of or isn’t using the all-encompassing and inclusive term Latinx. Mind you, these Atlases holding up this mythical linguistic Latino heaven (mostly done online and by people whom are seldomly and haplessly quoted by mainstream media to make their coverage seem fair and balanced by adding their shitty opposing views) are also in the minority (LOL).
In other words, the Hispanics who fancy themselves Latinos —because Hispanic is now a dirty word for them for numerous reasons (it lumps us all together with the Spanish and because it was concocted in the US of A as if Latino isn’t also primarily used in the States)— are rejoicing because according to Pew, 76% of our people have not heard of and 20% do not use the term Latinx. Only 3% of us do—mostly advocates and academics as well as some celebrities and a handful of entities that have the decency to hire advocates in their respective fields.
Most of these people sadistically rejoicing are cishet. Most are men. Most are calling the term imperialistic—the brainchild of a colonized mind that has been influenced by Usain LGBTQA+ advocates. As if Spanish isn’t a language of colonizers. As if Spanish wasn’t forced on our ancestors. As if we aren’t the bastard children of those Spanish-speaking rapists. As if language isn’t changeable, adaptable, flexible, fluid… Language is a living, breathing, ever-evolving organism. It’s never been static, unlike you emotionally and intellectually stunted manchildren. No offense to children. But I’ve seen way too many of you stomping your digital feet because a writer or a journalist dared to call us Latinx, so you throw their whole message away no matter how pressing or important it is. RidíCULOS. No offense to culos. They are very important parts of our anatomy. Try to live without one. You’ll see. Now we can definitely exist without you and your shitty opinions. Word the hell up.
My editor thinks I write English in Spanish. Which is a hoot since now I have to translate my English thoughts back to Spanish. I used to do the reverse when I was brought to the States. Instead of that being celebrated as transformative, like we celebrate dead white authors’ audacity to come up with whole new terms, words, and expressions, of slicing and dicing languages, I’m seen as some bizarre foreign usurper that expresses himself in a clearer way than natives. ¿Quién los entiende? People see me as some scrivener anomaly when I am but one in a sea of people who think and write just like me.
Stop being so pedantic with language if it isn’t affecting you physically, materially, spiritually. Not long ago you didn’t even want people calling you Latino. You wanted people to call you by your nationality or the birthplace of your parents. Calling marginalized advocates and academics elitist while gatekeeping a term is pretty fucking grand. You’re the ones wielding the power and the fact that you don’t realize that (or don’t want to realize that) just shows the rest of us that your advocacy for it is rooted in denialism of the little privilege you were given by isms, but even that little privilege is enormously hurtful, materially evil to the people in the margins of our enigmatic ethnicity. Those very same people who are at the frontlines for our liberation and uplifting. Yes, indeed. You’ll see more women, more gay men, more gay women, more nonbinary folk, more trans folk fighting for our rights in the streets, in the classroom, in corporate America, in orgs, in our communities than the people who despise the term Latinx. But most cishet men get all the credit for the progress they have made for us. It’s all very maddening.
If you truly wanted change, you’d spend little time debating the merits of a term and working on undermining and upending the hierarchies in which we live (on and under), but I know you aren’t interested in that porque son unos bárbaros. You just want to occupy all the space.
Check the language settings of your smart devices. Look for the Spanish option. What do you see? Spanish from Spain? Check. Spanish from the U.S.? Check. Spanish from Latin America? Check. We speak a different Spanish in our country of origin. We speak a different Spanish when we move to the States. Hell, we even have regional accents and dialects. Now tell people who hate the term Latinx that they should stop pronouncing, saying certain words the way they do because they’re mispronouncing them and their intonations are weird—the cacophony of fits they’d throw would be deafening. Best believe you are mispronouncing words. Best believe you’re butchering the Spanish the Real Academia Española gatekeeps. We don’t even call ourselves Latinos outside of the United States. Seldom does that term come up during conversations in our countries and it’s mostly coming from celebrities who have gotten famous in the US and from the very same people who go back to their lands who are now decrying Latinx and rejoicing that the majority of our people don’t use it.
Well, guess what? The majority of our people may be more progressive when asked about individual issues, but we are still drowning people in sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, classism, machismo, nationalism… Those things won’t immediately and magically disappear if we use an inclusive term. You got that right. But you, the ones who yell the loudest, the ones who type so furiously against a term you think is so insignificant, why the fuck do you care so much? Why the animosity? I’ll tell you why: You want to be the sole champions of our ethnicity. You want to hold all the platforms. You want to be the only ones hustling the culture to the detriment of us all—but especially to those you don’t want sitting next to you on panels, calling you hypocrites for decrying erasure and discrimination while you do the same to them. Yeah, the term Latino is inclusive, but are you? When was the last time you came to the defense of Black and Brown trans Latinx? When was the last time you privately told an executive to not invite that homophobe to a private event in which members of the LGBTQA+ will be in attendance? Even when they’re not around because you don’t want their bigotry near you because that shit is contagious? When was the last time you confronted your family members about their biases? When was the last time you did some introspection?
You clowns.
See, I was once like you eons ago. A whole-ass clown. But then I was exposed to the rhetoric of people who are more marginalized than me, but instead of letting cognitive dissonance permanently possess me, I let it flow through me. I love Spanish as much as any other Spanish-speaker who resents being forced to learn another language to survive, let alone thrive. I prefer reading in Spanish. I prefer Spanish-speaking songs and poetry. It is indeed like wiping our asses with silk, but the thing is, that short, small, and elusive euphoria is part of the trauma bond we’ve formed with our murderous, raping, and pillaging colonizers. Our ancestors suffered a great deal under the Mano Dura of Spanish-speakers. They were forced to speak Spanish.
So please, spare us this purity bullshit when you now speak a lingua franca among other Latinx people in the States. You’re no different than English-speakers now. You’ve borrowed, you’ve changed, you’ve robbed entire words and expressions from other Spanish-speakers and other languages.
If you don’t like the term Latinx, don’t fucking use it.
Mind your business. If Latinx isn’t materially hurting you, God, why do you care? Why are you so fucking loud and so fucking wrong? Vergüenza ajena me dan.
I give a shit the majority of our people don’t use it, but that’s because I also give a shit about our LGBTQA+ community. The majority is wrong. Plain and simple. It’s Ok to stand alone and stand your ground in a room full of bigots. And most of you really are sounding like bigots right now. Go back to your hypocritical homophobic, transphobic progressive caves. Go back to defending Joe Rogan and the use of outdated terms. Go back to reading, quoting, and imitating dead white men philosophers. What’s the difference between you and white Alt-Right incels?
Roll with the times or stay behind because behind you are—light years away. We never needed you. You were obviously looking for a platform on top and at the expense of our most marginalized. You are the straight white men of our enclaves.
You are our weakest link toward true progress, reciprocity, and inclusivity. And for that, you are dismissed.
Vamoose. Begone. Get to steppin’. Corran camino.
And take your shitty misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic family members with you.
Thanks for reading and sharing with your family and friends.
A mainstream or indie magazine would usually pay me between $250-$450 for one of my pieces. Since I decided to go solo for the sake of keeping my voice unedited and uncensored, I created this website. Keeping it afloat and these pieces coming is not just time-consuming, but it’s also costly because it angers a lot of those same mainstream papers and magazines (along with their donors) for calling them out—so their favorite retaliation tactic is deplatforming. Especially of unapologetic and unhypocritical Black and Brown voices. Ideally, I’d like to raise between $250-$450 per piece and many of you have actually stepped-up to the plate and helped me accomplish that. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you would like to see more of these and support one of the few unbought indie voices, please contribute:
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César Vargas is an award-winning writer, advocate, strategist, speaker, and social critic with a loyal following and a robust social capital that spans from coast to coast: Editors, journalists, celebrities, activists, artists, executives, politicians, and multiple communities. He was named one of 40 Under 40: Latinos in American Politics by the Huffington Post. He’s written about internal and external community affairs to several news outlets and quoted in others: The Huffington Post, NBC, Fox News, Voxxi, Okayafrica, Okayplayer, Sky News, Salon, The Guardian, Latino Magazine, Vibe, The Hill, BET, and his own online magazine —which has a fan base of over 25,000 people and has reached over a million— UPLIFTT. He’s familiar with having a voice that informs, invigorates, and inspires people—creating content that usually goes viral. He recently won two awards from Fusion and the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts for his films Some Kind of Spanish and Black Latina Unapologetically. He attained a degree in Films Studies from Queens College, CUNY. He is currently raising and distributing funds for Haitians in Sosúa.
I feel the author just spewed out a lot of BS and anger towards certain people he has encountered but hasn’t said shit to advocate his point of view. Nothing in the article convinces anyone not using the term to use it. The logic behind it makes no sense and if the author doesn’t like it he can bite me.
You can’t really say the word in Spanish, it confusing in English and it’s inconsistent with every other Spanish/ English/ Spanglish word. You can call yourself whatever you want but you can’t call it ‘inclusive’ if you can’t convey a simple explanation for the term.
Languages change and adopt but only terms that mean something will survive. That’s why people still say dope 40 years later but other terms have fell off.
Agreed, the guy is the actual crybaby pssy venting his anger that we won’t use the NEW cancel culture word. Pathentic. In 10 years we’ll be called LatinY, 10 from that, LatiSpano. You will have a group say, why the fuck do you keep labeling us like cattle for political purposes. Then, you will have this idiot say, “Why do you care, accept it, this is the new way now, you’re an idiot for not adopting the new Facebook, I mean fad”. Es un hipocrita.
You are a guy that is the actual crybaby pssy venting his anger that we won’t use the NEW cancel culture word. Pathetic. In 10 years we’ll be called LatinY, 10 from that, LatiSpano. You will have a group say, why the fuck do you keep labeling us like cattle for political purposes. Then, you will have this idiot say, “Why do you care, accept it, this is the new way now, you’re an idiot for not adopting the new Facebook, I mean fad”. Eres un hipocrita y los liberales te llevaron a la cueva, no la luz. It pretty obvious here, you are the one that’s ardido over a term NOBODY gives a fk to use, let alone care. En Mexico o Latino America, jamas usamos esas palabras de los Anglo Saxones, pero hiciste bien en adoptarla. You are no longer Latino or Hispanic, you are WOKE, that is your new ferver. Now go stick up for people asking for help and forget about your collete given righteousness. Nothing more than divisive BS!
I try really hard to listen to voices telling me something that I might not agree with just in case they could change my mind. I too don’t understand Latinx but I do support the LGBTQ community and don’t want to ever be associated with anything or anyone it doesn’t. However regardless of how we became the new custodians of our language if you want to include, then you need to be inclusive, And not just dismissive as some of this article seems to allude to others doing. Why should we be using it LATINX? I understand the anger of not being understood maybe a better term frustration but what about a made up word justifies the movement? Language is important because that’s how we communicate so if you’re going to change our language then you should understand that some of us may have questions. Maybe some Persuasion Is in order Instead of all of this hostility?
It’s imperialistic bullshit. Sorry. The idea that spanish is inherently sexist because it’s a gendered language. Wow. Self hate much?
Yeah…I’m just going to use this term when I visit my small town of less than 10,000 people in Mexico and not get laughed at and ridiculed after getting confused looks. News flash, I can support the gay community and still be against that x. Don’t like the word Latino/Latina? Just use Latin or Hispanic then. Welcome to the “what are we offended by this week” fake social justice warrior generation.
[…] Mark Hugo Lopez reported Aug. 11 for the center. Elsewhere, writer César Vargas scolded, “Stop being so pedantic with language if it isn’t affecting you physically, materially, spiritually. Not long ago you didn’t even want people calling you […]
A la mayoría de los latinoamericanos no nos importa tus complejos e inseguridades. Latinx is some other divisory crap that some lefty woken liberal invented and that nobody cares to adopt. You can manipulate other ethnic groups amd races with names, slogans and hashtags. We are latinos and proud of that. You still can find names for Koreans, Phillipines, Chinese if that makes you happy.
I don’t know what your problem with the pushback against the term is. News flash: you can be pro-LGBTQ rights and against the term Latinx. I personally will always support the fight for the rights of LGBTQ people but will always hate Latinx, specifically because I see it as English imposed norms onto a group that does not accept it. I prefer the use of “latine” and “elle” instead of Latinx which actually flows in the Spanish language. Also, you SHOULD give a shit that a label which is supposed to represent a group of people is rejected by said group of people. It is not up to you to determine whether language changes or not, it is up to the speakers of said language. And as you angrily pointed out, the majority don’t use it. There is a huge problem of machista tendencies in LA but deriding all opposition to the term as transphobic and non inclusive is not the way to go.
This is just cringe, Spanish isn’t even your native language. You can support the LGBTQ community without using the Latinx.The majority of people who use Latinx aren’t real latinos. We latinos don’t use to call ourselves as latinos, we call ourselves as mexican, argentinian, colombian, chilean, and etc dependent of your country.
Has anyone ever considered that ”Latinx” is just lame???? Can we not legitimately prefer collectively adopting using an “e” (such as Latines), in place of the letters “o” or “a”?? Why not if this practice has already been gaining popularity in other parts of the world, making it a more practical linguistic mechanism to break gender norms which also makes the effort MORE INCLUSIVE and likely more efficient than some self-aggrandizing crusade to control the discourse and push a term that many people don’t agree with for various legitimate reasons. I guess the response is to cry “bigot!” and disingenuously shame those who aren’t on board since it makes it less likely that people will voice their own opinion (lest they be called a misogynist, sexist, racist, and any other number of -ists that can be mustered on any presumptive and flimsy basis projected by the accuser). Not to mention that, as a result of injecting bias into the debate even where it may not be warranted, the accuser revels internally in a self-masturbatory exercise of assuming the role of champion and authority on all issues “woke”. I honestly don’t care if someone refers to themself as Latinx, but it’s such a despicable response to automatically accuse prejudice as against all those who don’t agree. The performative indignation in this piece, while likely getting the writer many a head pat by those who found his vitriol cute, also primes people to similarly be lazily dismissive and prejudicial to others whenever one comes upon this crime against humanity-level microagression of not utilizing Latinx since it is the case that their failure to conform must represent a sinister and discriminatory mindset.
why would a person go to a country that felt they were margianilzing them. or colonizing them. of making them learn the language of the country they just snuck into. stay home. wed prefer that. smh.
This is idiotic and very hipocritical.. Or a bait.. Sice the name of the page is not latinx rebels in any case.
This author is a crybaby little b*****. Latino and proud.
Yeah Latinx sounds stupid as fuck. Sounds like Mexican x men or something. Are we gonna call gringos gringx next?
I have to say, this is an incredibly offensive and ignorant post. If you expect agreement with your perspective that no one should care about a label being created to identify them, then you are just as bigoted as the individuals who generated the use of other ethnic and racial epithets to label entire groups of people much against the use of those terms, and I think we all know the terms I mean.
The problem with the US’s obsession with labeling “minorities” is that the practice perpetuates division in a nation that has long since ceased to be a White, Anglo dominant country. Hanging on to labels to separate, slide, dice, and divide subgroups of people in order to account for exactly how, when, and where those people are in contrast to “real Americans” is truly mind boggling in of itself, and a large reason why the Census is often a useless tool unless you want to focus its information down to gerrymandering use – which is actually largely what it is all about.
As for Spanish being a “sexist language,” if you are going to that far, you may as well throw in Italian, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Hebrew to name a few. All of those language have gender pro-nouns. Romanian and German use three classifications, not just male and female. The grammatical structure of all those languages is not subject to arbitrary changes at their core just because some group of people in the United States decided to change the root of their own language usage to reflect sociopolitical and cultural developments on expressions of equality.
While we are at it, consider that everything you have so venomously spewed about massively contradicts the very notion of what the original purpose of the term “LatinX” was meant to address: inclusiveness. By resoundingly rejecting the right everyone has to choose how they wish to self-identify, you are no better than all the others before you have done the same.
“If you don’t like the term Latinx, don’t fucking use it.”
That’s also why I don’t use preferred pronouns B)
calla conchatumare
Latinx this the most stupid thing i ever heard.. Latin is not male or female. what is next el Sol, la Luna, el Mar, el pendejo o la pendeja….
Call Latinos by the term they like, u fuc**** pendejo, show respect
Árabes 💙 Latinos
When I was young the way I used to be too PC was to believe white people don’t spit made up Spanish words at Spanish speaking people. As a white Anglo male i will never ever use that stupid ass, condescending made up word.