Talk:Latinx

The reception is overwhelmingly negative

I can cite multiple sources to point out how negative the reception is. Reception is no longer a suitable phrase for it, it’s downright hated almost universally 2603:8001:2E07:2D00:BC54:1AD8:995B:3BDA (talk) 23:37, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Unless you cite sources, that's just your opinion and not a factual statement. (CC) Tbhotch^™ 00:54, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

User:Tbhotch, thank you so much for keeping an eye on this. Drmies (talk) 00:57, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

Seems to me its been pretty widely rejected by average people, just looking at the sources in the article and many others like these: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. A better question would be, has there been any positive reaction from Latino people at all besides a few American LGBT people?★Trekker (talk) 15:10, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Not sure what your point is here. The article provides a lot of detail. It seems your specific question "has there been any positive reaction from Latino people at all[?]" is partly answered by the rest of your question! You answer it by acknowledging that "a few American LGBT people" support it. So, that is itself a positive reaction -- and those people ARE Latino people! Also in the current article and on this page it is mentioned that 33% (a minority, but still) of those who know the term (also a minority, but still) do prefer it, and that in a national poll of all Hipanics/Latinos/Latinx/etc, 4% of people preferred it. Also, many people clearly oppose the usage. These are all people, so their views are of enough significance to at least merit having a discussion. The article certainly does not leave out the critical POVs. David Couch (talk) 05:25, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes but the article is clearly downplaying how the majority reaction has been very negative.★Trekker (talk) 23:26, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

reception has not been overwhelmingly negative for queer latinx/latine people. The gallup poll would be like asking a group of mostly straight people who many supported trans rights, my guess is you'd get pretty identical stats in the group surveyed. This poll tells us what straight ieople think about "latinx", but nothing on what latinx/latine people think. Where I live in Europe latinx is used almost universally by Spanish speakers from the Americas. The applicatio of the poll to this page demonstrates transphobia amongst Spanish speakers, nothing more. Those queer people who use this term are real and focusing most of the article on attacking the term fails to embody it's meaning for those people who use the term. Shall we go into a page on christ and send most of the text talking zbout how little evidence exists fir his existence vs other messianic figures from the time? Probably one small tiny link referencing atheists like myself is enough. Let's reduce the transphobic backlash to the term to one small tiny link and revert the page to the history of the word and its contemporary usage alongside words like "latine" by queer Spanish speakers. This page needs expert moderation. Talonx 77.191.135.234 (talk) 06:09, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Why do you insist on talking about one very tiny small subset of people, as if that one group hold more sway than anyone else. Nothappycamping (talk) 03:44, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

You forget that those using the term are such a minority, that in the grand scheme of the world, their view is insignificant. It is not transphobia, despite the best attempts of some to hide behind such lies and masks, but the general hatred a cultured person can have towards unnecessary mutilation of our richly varied language, while insulting the intelligence of those who have studied the language as a career or profession, only for a keyboard warrior to pretend to rule the usage of a language. As a LATINO, I can tell you LATINOS as a majority abhor the word and its users, and with the typical rascality that characterizes the Latino culture, the users of this type of language mutilation are the butt of countless jokes and pranks, in clear demonstration of how the word is deemed inappropriate in any light. You can take it unto the list of rejected words, like those who, as racists, use slang for many other negative portrayals. It, however, does require elevated intelligence to perceive, so it may be that if flies above the heads of the users of such words. ElFlaco01 (talk) 02:45, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

You could account for the MASSIVE amount of LATINOS who reject the usage of such word, as it insults the roots of such rich and widely varied language as is Spanish, for some people with a skewed point of view who want to shape the world under their twisted sights, all entirely disregarding the culture they attack and the impopularity this non-existent word creates. Especially in light of the rejection of woke and pseudo-progressive mentalities, all the while demonstrating that those SJWs are simply blinded by their ego. ElFlaco01 (talk) 02:33, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I feel compelled to remind people that Wikipedia is not a forum, and this talk page exists only for discussion of how to improve the article it is attached to. Heatedly expressing your opinion repetitively is not going to do anything to improve the article. Only finding and citing additional reliable sources that address usage of and reactions to this term is going to do that. I actually generally agree with many of the opinions being vented here, but it remains nevertheless unconstructive venting, and is thus basically a waste of time. This is not Facebook, and simply being opinionated won't make any changes here. Only sourcing work will do that.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:57, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Entirely off-topic material about Wikipedia coverage of trans-related subjects.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:06, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish there is a wikipedia Page called "trans genocide" but not one page dedicated to the many issues with treating trans women as actual women. It feels for some that the only way to make a point at the ridiculous stance taken by wiki is to vent on on the talk pages. Nothappycamping (talk) 04:12, 26 October 2023 (UTC) Not sure what this has to do with improving the Latinx article. "Treating trans women as actual women" isn't an encyclopedia article title, but the issue in general is covered at Trans woman, Transgender, Gender-critical feminism, Transfeminism, TERF (acronym), Transgender people in sports, Feminine essence concept of transsexuality, and elsewhere (see Category:Transgender; our coverage of the subject area is quite broad). Not every conceptual idea (like "treating x like y") makes for a discrete encyclopedic topic of its own (stand-alone article). And it's important to realize that "stance taken by wiki[pedia]" isn't a thing as they say these days. This is not "ProgressivismPedia" or "ConservatismPedia", and this project doesn't take a stance on anything at all (other than the centrality to the project of its own sourcing and related policies), but reflects what the reliable sources say in the aggregate, as best as our all-volunteer editors can do the job. At any rate, if people just vent unconstructively on an article talk page, their commentary actually can simply be removed. So trying to "make a point" by doing that is not going to be productive. Only doing the research and editing work will be. This is a workplace, not a social-media site.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:10, 26 October 2023 (UTC) Exactly my point, not every discrete encylopedic topic should be a topic, I completely agree. But when it comes to trans it most certainly does have its own topic. There is a topic on "trans genocide" as I have said already. How ridiculous is that? Yet there is no one wiki page that is devoted entirely to pointing out the flaws with the trans movement. The articles you linked to are all positive trans wiki pages with next to zero criticism. Even the sports article insists on keeping old data on it that confirms what trans people want to believe, that there are no differences between trans women and women. Wikipedia is clearly run and defended by a certain group of people. I assume its because that sort of person has a hard time trying to leave the house so they waste their time putting ridiculous articles together on wiki. And this is where we are today. A completely unbalanced website run by idealogues that want to push their beliefs on everyone else and are clearly not interested in the truth. It took me months to clear out the lies on the "x gender" wiki. Do you really think we have the time to do the same on more contentious pages with a lot more defenders with a lot more time? Nothappycamping (talk) 05:35, 26 October 2023 (UTC) I see, then, that this really does have nothing to do with Latinx, and is just off-topic, so there is no point in continuing this discussion here.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:50, 26 October 2023 (UTC) @SMcCandlish it's the same nonsense. A very small unemployable minority forcing this crap on a very suspicious public. Nothappycamping (talk) 10:55, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 October 2023

"Latinx" is not an appropiate way to describe the origin, ascendence or culture of a latin person, according to our use of vocabulary, culture, and worldview. While non binary latin people deserve respect and identity they have not chosen this word as part of it. Instead it has been imposed by north american people and culture as a colonialist treatment of our culture, yet again. This attempt of continuing the manifest destiny now in the internet culture is disrespectful to our culture and we... 189.152.247.97 (talk) 20:59, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

The article already seems to say essentially that - what do you want to be changed? This article is only about the term "Latinx", not the people the term has been used to describe. Tollens (talk) 21:51, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

latinx is like n-word for us a white discriminative word for latin american ppl, we preffer latino/latina or in plural latinos, who includes everyone 152.203.213.88 (talk) 23:33, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Our article already covers the fact that many people consider the term offensive. Wikipedia is not a platform for advocacy; you would be better off taking your "change people's behavior" activity to Facebook, YouTube, or some other medium.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:06, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Latinx is indeed widely rejected, but article needs to calm down.

It's okay for an article to be overwhelmingly negative if that reflects the consensus of experts. In this case it certainly seems that Latinx is not well-received and the reasons why are important to understand.

However, it's sufficient to say the term has been widely rejected, the same way you would in an article about a conspiracy or pseudoscience topic that's been widely rejected (just an analogy, I know these are different things). This article just sort of sandblasts people into agreeing with it by listing every possible objection in excruciating detail. A Wikipedia article isn't a persuasion piece.

I think the reception section (if such a thing is even necessary, since it's basically a covert criticism section), especially needs to be trimmed down and reframed. As it stands, it's essentially a rant about the topic, like "look how many sources we have on the anti- side! It proves we're right!" There's no cohesion and it's just a pile of "Latinx is bad" sources.

I think a good solution would be to acknowledge that the phrase is not widely accepted, and concisely include the reasons, but not to hoard every source that's ever come out against the term. And if the reception section must stay, it needs to include positive reception as well, otherwise it's a criticism section and that is a policy violation. Even if that just means acknowledging the term's popularity among some activist groups and academics.

I hate the term, I really do, but even I think this article is a bit much! 2603:7081:1603:A300:2D59:93B2:9F0A:B2F (talk) 18:08, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

WP:NOT#FORUM digression that has nothing to do with improving the section under discussion.

I believe there's a reason there's more criticism on it than acceptance sources. Many supporters don't emphasize their willingness to use Latinx alone, compared with the alarmistic opposers. There are substantial academic studies and scholars on gender neutrality in West Iberian languages, which part of it is about activism/militancy/dissidence. In Neo-Latin countries, the subject is highly controversial. And it's no difference with the acceptance of neolanguage in Wikipedia (check WP:NEOPRONOUN). It's another example of Gender bias on Wikipedia. 189.75.138.21 (talk) 22:46, 4 December 2023 (UTC) Some of that doesn't really parse into complete or coherent statements. You seem to be trying to imply that because Wikipedia accurately reflects that fact that the majority of sources are negative toward this term that Wikipedia is not being "accepting" and that this is an example of "gender bias on Wikipedia", but that's obviously not true. You appear not have to actually read Gender bias on Wikipedia, which has nothing to do with this subject or anything like it. And you're ignoring the fact that many Spanish-speaking transgender/nonbinary and other LGBT+ people, and other left-leaning people in general, are opposed to this term. It is not Wikipedia's "job" to support causes that progressives of one very narrow particular stripe are in favor of (against the preferences of broader segments of progressivism, and a vastly broader selection of Spanish speakers regardless of their socio-political compass position). WP's role is to reflect what the real-world sourcing is telling us, even if a particular socio-political faction doesn't like it, even if a majority of WP's own editors side with that faction, which in this case they don't anyway. And WP:NEOPRONOUN is not an example of "gender bias on Wikipedia", either, even in a sense far expanded from the coverage in that article. Wikipedia writing the way the vast majority of reliable English-language works are written, instead of the way transgender/non-binary activists write for other TG/NB activists, with novel neologisms that vary widely from one person to the next and which are typically used within a personal social circle, is not a failing on Wikipedia's part, much less a bias against TG/NB people; it's a "bias" for writing encyclopedic English understandable by everyone, since producing an encyclopedia for everyone is the site's purpose. It is entirely sufficient that WP does not impose mis-gendering he/she pronouns on TG/NB individuals counter to their identities, and for the few who use neopronouns, we note in articles about them what their personal neopronouns are if we have reliably sourced information about this. If all you're here for is poorly informed bashing of Wikipedia as a den of bias iniquity, see WP:NOTHERE and WP:NOT#FORUM.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:59, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

The main problem with the section is that it's long-windedly trying to attribute everyone by name and affiliation ("namedropping", of mostly non-notable people), and to present each of their opinions as if they are self-contained and independently notable socio-political stances, with the result of a great deal of unnecessary wording, including a lot of repetition of the same points. The way to fix this is to reduce the criticisms (or supporting views, to the extent there are some) into specific summarized types, and simply cite the sources for them (multiple sources when more than one of them make the same point), instead of summarizing each statement in full and repeating all the arguments that were already covered by previous cited statements.

The material can be cleaned up further by removing unsourced claims like "'Linguistic imperialism' has been used as a basis of both criticism and support". In reality, someone (quoted later in the section) made the off-topic claim that Spanish itself is historically a form of linguistic imperialism in Latin America (that's certainly true, but utterly irrelevant to whether English-speaking activists making up a term like Latinx is or isn't a form of linguistic imperialism, and it certainly is not what the first sentence claims: "'Linguistic imperialism' ... used as a basis of ... support" for Latinx; at most it is a fallacious "this bad thing should be allowed because a similar bad thing already happened" hand-waving exercise, and all of it should simply be deleted from our article as noise. (In short, an argument that X in addition to Y qualfies as LI is not an argument in favor of Y on the basis of LI, it's just a weak attempt to deflate LI as a strong argument against Y.) The only mention of the LI term in here should be its use as an argument against Latinx, because that is how it is actually used in the sources cited.

Anyway, overhauling this section is probably at least two hours' work, of building an outline of arguments, writing summaries of them, and putting the citations in the right places, including short-form second-and-later re-citations as needed, and cutting out all the name-dropping, the side-comments about contexts like Trump, and so forth, to produce an actual encyclopedic summary of the arguments. But I don't feel inclined to do this myself because I try to stay out of the general topic area due to the drama that accretes around it, and I have other fish to fry.

PS: Another part of the problem here is that his has been framed as a "Reception" section as if this is a movie, and which expects a structure of quoting attributed media critics. This should be redone as material worked into "Public awareness and use", because we discourage both "Criticism" sections and "Pro and con" sections.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

we discourage both "Criticism" sections and "Pro and con" sections. - Who is "we"? While WP:CRIT indeed discourages "Criticisms" sections, it explicitly recommends "Reception" type section[s]. So I'm not sure it should be redone as material worked into "Public awareness and use". Awareness, use and reception are different things.

As for 2603:7081:...'s concern that the article is slanted towards criticism: I think that's a bit of an optical illusion from focusing only on the "Reception" section (which indeed focuses on negative reception currently). The rest of the article still contains lots of favorable citations, for many of which notability or relevance could be questioned. E.g. some seem to be quoted for mere use rather than mention (such as Valdes also uses the term in research on black perspectives on Latinx). Others may warrant a critical look to check whether the citation actually supports the claim, e.g. The term and concept of Latinx is also explored by Antonio Pastrana Jr, Juan Battle and Angelique Harris on LBGTQ+ issues.⁴⁰ (At least judging from the TOC and introductory chapter [1], that book seems to use rather than mention it, except for a brief paragraph in the intro's subsection that explains the books use of "Naming and labels", where the authors acknowledge that they use the term "Latinx" even though many [US LGBT] people and groups described in this book may prefer the term 'Latino'".) And these are just two examples.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:47, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't "explicitly recommend" reception sections at all; it says they are permissible and sometimes useful. This is a case that doesn't seem to be among that sometimes, at least no in the form it's been done in. "Reception" itself is part of the problem; another term should be used that doesn't imply this is like a TV show being reviewed. I forget where the guideline language lives against writing sections of pro vs. con back-and-forth material (don't remember the shortcut), but there is a wise enough essay on it at Wikipedia:Avoid thread mode. The gist it, it's just poor, unencyclopedic writing. I generally do agree with the rest of what you said, though. Anyway, if the overall advice I gave above of compressing all the reception material into a concise summary of the arguments, without repetition, and with citations instead of blathering-as-much-as-possible attributions to mostly irrelevant parties, then this would be a pretty compact paragraph, which could be followed or preceded by a (necessarily shorter) paragraph on the arguments in favor of Latinx, and the problem would just go away. But this takes some work.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)