What have we liberals done to the US west coast?

Do you have an example of a performative progressive legislation? I'm trying to think of one that's just for show and not 1. Legitimately just helping people or 2. A necessary counter to some right wing culture war nonsense, like we wouldn't need protections for abortions, trans people, or voting if they're weren't under attack

I see this come up all the time in this context, and it kind of baffles me (if there are some key facts that I am ignorant of, please do let me know). Most discussion I can find of the origins of Latinx suggest it was first used in Puerto Rican publications:

Scharron-del Rio first noticed the use of the letter X to escape the gender binaries encoded in the Spanish language about two years ago in a number of Puerto Rican psychology periodicals. Authors would, for example, write “lxs participantes” to avoid the masculine “los” in the phrase “the participants.” ¹

Would it not be the height of linguistic colonialism for English speakers to decide they shouldn't use a word that a group of Spanish speakers are using? And it is a word that many Spanish speaker do use (though of course this does not take from your point that there are many detractors):

Sometimes negative reactions to new terms like Latinx are based on the assumption that ivory tower scholars, or a small group of activists disconnected from the rest of society, make those words up. In my own experience, I first heard Latinx being used by queer, non-binary students as a way to linguistically perform and promote gender inclusivity. ... So, I would respond to those criticisms by expressing that the use of the term Latinx is an opportunity to approach history with an open mind. Latinx histories have been marginalized, ignored and suppressed. The term reflects the desire to broaden awareness about historically newer or lesser examined communities. In this sense, the “x,” in Latinx, is also about the unknown past and complex present of the diverse Latinx community. ²

There also seem to be some concerns regarding the use of terms like "Hispanic," which prioritizes linguistic and cultural traditions derived from Spain (... a colonial power) over any other culture or history in the area:

"That immediately erases all of the centuries of pre-Columbian history, culture and civilizations that existed before the European conquest and colonization of the Americas ... and that's understandably upsetting to people who are not white." It alienates indigenous and Afro-Latino communities whose history includes deep resistance to the Spanish invasion and is not necessarily tied to Spain, Ortiz says. ³

Lastly, I am curious about the statement that "English speaking people of Latin American descent in universities" are "the elite." Some research from the Pew Institute seems to suggest that in 2021 ~30% of latin americans were enrolled at least part time in college, while 23% of them had earned at least a Bachelor's degree⁴ (there is definitely a larger conversation to be had about relative rates of enrollment and graduation for asian vs white vs all other students, but that is probably beyond the scope of this discussion). Calling 20-30% of the population "the elite" seems a bit strange to me, but I might be misunderstanding this statement.

I don't speak Spanish nor am I of Latin American/Hispanic/Latin/Latinx/Latin@ (etc, etc) descent, so I am absolutely not the right person to have an opinion on the best term to use. But I do think that the term "Latinx" in particular is met with perhaps unwarranted scorn and oversimplified as an issue, and I think it's worth considering its origins and use a little more carefully when considering it in the context of performative liberalism and linguistic imperialism.

So much of what you've said here is simply inaccurate.

I lived in Mexico in the early 2010s, and happened to make a few queer friends (who I have never spoken English with at all). I've see them use both -@ and later -x on social media and and as far as I can tell, neither was ever pronounceable, and that was never the point (though the -e suffix is becoming more common with the benefit that it's more pronounceable). When you expect to see an -o/a and you see an -@ or -x instead, it visually communicates exactly what it's doing as far as including both/removing gender respectively.

If you speak Spanish, you should know it's not simply a grammatical gender issue. I can say "soy una persona masculina" and the fact that persona and its accompanying article/adjective are all feminine grammatically have nothing to do with my gender. But you quickly run into the necessity of identifying yourself as one gender or the other to say even the most mundane of things, like "I'm bored".

On the English side of things, I'm also just going to guess that any time a woman identifies herself as Latina, you don't respond with "Well ackshually English doesn't have grammatical gender so Latina is incorrect"; and if you do, please don't, for your own sake. Point being, Latino/a/x are all just words borrowed from Spanish anyway.

For what it's worth, I think it's a drawback of "Latinx" in English that it can be pronounced, because it doesn't confer the meaning that it has in Spanish.

Grammar and pronunciation arguments about it are really just red herrings that fall apart unless you just really don't think queer or non-binary people should exist in any language.

It's a word you only think to use if your only audience is English speaking people of Latin American descent in universities (aka the elite).

A lot of the backlash against "Latinx" is really no different than any other right-wing anti-queer / anti-"woke" talking points, and calling college-educated Latinos, the majority of whom are the first generation to attend college, "the elite" really makes no sense other than to understand it as simply being conflated with other right-wing talking points.

Sorry, but "the elites" are the people that benefit from you being angry about "Latinx", not the queer or non-binary college kids that use it to describe themselves.

But fuck me, it took like a decade of every news organisation hearing over and over that we bloody hated it (because it's language colonialism) before they took the message.

This sentence really struck me as hilarious, given how British it sounds, if "we" is understood to be people in the United States, and that's before considering the next layer of irony that Spanish itself is a colonial language.

On that note, literally the first time I ever saw -x removing gender from words in Spanish it was on Zapatista political artwork in Chiapas, which is an indigenous movement of people for whom Spanish is their second or maybe third or fourth language if they speak it at all. In their case, it's a response to colonialism.

Meanwhile, Trump takes a larger proportion of the Latin vote every time he runs, particularly men.

The right wing fuels itself on resentment and hate of queer people, particularly among men, be it trans people using the bathroom or playing sports, or trans kids taking puberty blockers, or queer Latinos using "Latinx" to describe themselves. It's not unique when it comes to Latino men, or any more justified.

I'm not saying you can't be performative. Performances are important to keep coalitions together, and let people know that they're heard. I'm saying that picking every single hill to die on is only a good strategy if you actually want to die on a hill.

I'd argue that even if you're cynical enough to think that anyone using Latinx is simply performative, and not simply, going out of their way to signal that they genuinely want to be inclusive of LGBTQ people, it's worse to be so anti-Latinx that you just propagate right-wing memes and disinformation.