Why Does Grammar Only Seem To Matter When Discussing Inclusive Language? Spanish Edition.

It’s gotten to the point that I can’t use the word Latine (pronounced la-TEEN-eh) online in any context without someone coming out of the woodwork to complain about it, insisting that Latino is “already gender-neutral.”

Rather than continuing to inefficiently extoll the benefits of Latine (and Latinx) via individual online comments, I’ve decided to finally just put it all in one place and write an article I can link people to. Because this conversation is exhausting.

Individuals can refer to themselves however they want!

First and foremost, no one is asking anyone to give themselves a label they don’t want. If you’re a woman and consider yourself a Latina, or a man who considers himself Latino, great! No one is taking that away!

Latine (easier for non-English speakers to say, whereas la-TEEN-ix is predominantly used in English) is a way to be inclusive to folks in our community who don’t identify as a particular gender when talking about us as a group. Just as one would use “they/them” in English to refer to a non-binary person, a person whose gender you don’t know, and a mixed-gender group of people, you can use Latine (or Latines) in those same instances.

While no one’s asking anyone to change all of Spanish grammar the way some seem to think, using Latine does require a change in the words we use related to individuals. Our Flag Means Death star, Vico Ortiz, themselves a non-binary Puerto Rican, posted a great explainer on that:

In short: Elle (pronounced EH-yeh) instead of “el” or “ella,” le instead of “lo” or “la,” and then you’d add an “e” onto the end of whatever adjectives you were using to describe the person—belle (BEH-yeh) instead of “bella” or “bello,” vestide (ves-TI-deh) instead of “vestido” or “vestida.”

It definitely takes practice, but it’s not earth-shatteringly difficult.

“Why should we ‘make up words’ for a minority of people?”

You don’t think we should “make up words?” Guess what? We “make up words” all the time! That’s how languages evolve! People “make up words,” and when they no longer communicate an idea effectively, people “make up” new words.

As for doing this “for a minority of people,” I have a couple of things to say. First, making sure we are intersectional and inclusive of everyone when talking about our community is just the kind, decent, and correct thing to do. Why would we knowingly keep making even a handful of our own people feel the pain of exclusion if we have a choice?

Second, it’s not as much of a “minority” as one might think.

According to a Gallup Poll released in 2022 that surveyed 12,416 adults aged 18+ between January and December 2021, 11% of U.S. Latine adults said they were members of the LGBTQIA+ community. Compare that to the 7% of total Americans who identified the same. Meanwhile, only 6.2% of American non-Latine white adults and 6.6% of American non-Latine Black adults identified as LGBTQIA+.

So in the U.S., more Latine identify as members of the LGBTQIA+ community than any other group. It makes sense that of those people, many are non-binary or trans. This isn’t even counting our trans/non-binary siblings in Latin America, where they are clearly enough of a presence that conservative governments like the one in Argentina feel the need to ban gender-inclusive language in schools.

“Words like ‘Latine’ are just gringos trying to ‘colonize our language!'”

Whoo, boy! Where do I even start?

Latine and Latinx don’t just include Spanish-speakers. It’s a label that applies to those from Brazil, where they speak Portuguese, and Haiti, where they speak Haitian Creole and French. The “Latin” of “Latin America” isn’t just another word for “Spanish.” It refers to those either currently living in, or those in the diaspora (who may or may not speak Spanish) with ancestry in, countries with a shared, non-English colonial history.

By the way, that’s how good the English were at colonizing—that even when talking about colonizers, there’s The English and Everybody Else.

In any case, we shouldn’t only be concerning ourselves with Spanish-speakers in this discussion.

These language changes aren’t being “done to” Latine people. They’re happening globally.

To hear some Latine talk about it, one would think these changes in language were specifically created to slight us. What they miss is that these changes in language are happening everywhere, across cultures.

Vietnamese-American actor Ian Alexander (The OA, ST: Discovery), himself a non-binary person who uses he/they pronouns, recently posted the above on Instagram explaining the meaning behind the use of lemons in a recent photo shoot. Apparently, a gender-neutral pronoun was recently created in Vietnamese that literally translates to “lemon.” They explain that the word chanh “was created from chị + anh = chanh (feminine pronoun/sister + masculine pronoun/brother = lemon).”

“Gringos” weren’t responsible for that, either.

No group is a monolith. Ours included.

There’s a valid choice many of us make not to use the word, because they don’t want to identify that way at all. Rather, they identify culturally according to their nationality, or their ethnicity/race to remain distant from our colonial history, empowering them to reclaim all of their roots.

Black Puerto Rican writer and activist, Rosa Clemente, for example, vehemently opposes using any “Latin” based words, because she doesn’t want to prioritize whiteness as her Blackness or others’ Indigeneity is erased. I get and respect that.

Still, that choice is easier for an individual to make. When talking about our entire community, which we need to do for many reasons in the U.S., it helps to have one word to apply to all of us. Having never lived in Latin America, I can’t speak to their needs, but when I hear about LGBTQIA+ activism happening there, they’re using Latine, too.

Whether we speak Spanish, English, French, or Portuguese, we all speak the languages of the countries who “successfully” colonized our region, erasing Indigenous cultures while simultaneously erasing the cultures of enslaved Africans. This history seems important to remember as we reassert our African and Indigenous cultures and languages. There’s a reason this needs to be an effort, and that’s something huge we have in common.

Latine/Latinx/Latino/a are terms that speak to solidarity in that shared traumatic history. But that’s just one Latina’s opinion. And if anyone has alternatives that can be used in the same way, I’d love to hear them!

Latine and Latinx came from us!

The misconception that the “only reason” Latine/Latinx are used is “because gringos” is not only factually incorrect, but it erases those in our community all over the world fighting for language to change in this way. The word originated among LGBTQIA+ activists from our communities.

In a 2022 piece in Boston University’s BU Today, Professor Maia Gil’Adí, a Venezuelan specializing in Latine literature and culture, asserts that the term sprouted organically from our young people:

Gil’Adí […] points to a journal article by Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández, an Emory University professor, who places the term’s coinage “around 2004 in queer contexts.” It was an organic youth movement, she contends, born of the internet, and rejected by the older generation.

“With the younger generations—with the kids that I teach—I would think that they’re much more comfortable using the term Latinx,” Gil’Adí says. […]

This can be attributed to the fact that college students are leading the national discussion on gender—or that the national population of Latinx college students is on the rise. In 2020, the Postsecondary National Policy Institute reported that at 21.8 percent, Latinx students were the second-largest ethnic group of college enrollees.”

Please stop clinging to the narrative that Latinx/Latine must have been forced on us by “gringos” just because queer, trans, and non-binary Latines existing makes you uncomfortable.

How do you “decolonize” by protecting a colonizer’s language?

Hearing Latines be so precious about Spanish smacks of white supremacy, despite assertions to the contrary. There’s something icky about the desire for the proximity to whiteness that the defensiveness over Spanish represents.

Racism and colorism run rampant in our communities, manifesting as many Latines working really hard to play up Spanish ancestry while playing down Indigenous or African roots, bending over backward to protect Spanish at all costs. I touched on that in another piece on the Latin Grammys. So, how can one be so anti-English influence “because colonialism” while also being so protective of a language spoken by a different colonizer?

It’s not actually about language, is it?

Grammatical gender (or “noun class”) and human gender are two different things and function in different ways, which actual linguist Jennifer at the Babbel channel on YouTube explains better than I can. So, it’s technically true that Latinos is gender-neutral. But in terms of words like Latine or pronouns like elle, we’re not talking about objects or being abstract. We’re talking about human beings, and many of those human beings want a change.

I wish people would examine why changing a handful of words makes them defensive and angry to the point that they can’t tolerate seeing someone else use the word without needing to say something.

What’s that anger about? Fear that perhaps your worldview needs revamping? That things you believed aren’t necessarily true? Or can you just not stand the idea of anyone living outside rigid gender roles and hate everyone who does?

Regardless, languages tend to evolve organically, depending on the needs of their speakers. If Latine and Latinx continue to be used, it’ll be because they are necessary and were worth keeping. I’d start practicing the new pronouns now.

(featured image: wenmei Zhou/Getty Images)