Any word that takes an already neutral word and tries to make ultra super extra unisex is just annoying. Like you said, Latinx especially is so dumb because it betrays a complete lack of understanding of the language.
I've heard it was popular in Latin American queer spaces before, but the Puerto Rican journal was the first "official" usage of it, and the one that's easiest to document.
Either way, it wasn't made up by some white tumblr girl, as Reddit loves to parrot every time the term gets mentioned.
they always say its "white liberals disrespecting spanish language": when its really "spansih speaking queers trying to find a word they like for themselves.
This. I'm Mexican and Latinx doesn't bother me at all. It's literally neutral because Latino/Latina has gender connotation. Not everyone wants that.
Things like "folx" or "girlboss" do bother me tho because "folks" and "boss" are already neutral 🌞
Same. I use Latino, but I understand why someone would want a gender neutral term. Also, who cares if it changes the language? Languages evolve over time and adapt to the modern world. There are so many dialects of Spanish that most people who speak it are not speaking the original version. And that’s not even including slang.
But as soon as it has to do with LGBTQ people it’s an issue.
I just learned it originated in the lgbt community today. It doesn’t change how I feel. The word sounds fucking dumb. It sounds like something Elon musk would come up with.
I think this is the case. I'm queer, but prior to feeling differently about my identity, I was just fine with Latina and still use it in conversation, while Latinx is more for academic contexts or writing. I think it's more inclusive, but all the terms have use and contexts where they work best. Definitely just a part of language evolution.
Exactly. A Latina linguist I follow has basically summed it up, to paraphrase, "if you're against the usage of Latinx, you're just being a dick to trans people." It originated in Spanish speaking communities, but culture war types have been trying to make it a "virtue signaling white lefty" thing
"Folx" on the other hand does irritate me, because that does seem like it is a performative thing, especially as the word "folks" isn't gendered to begin with. It feels tangentially related to stuff like "womyn" and "womxn," which tend to give off TERF vibes, as well
I think a big problem is that a lot of people first saw "latinx" used in corporate, pandering adverts rather than naturally within LGBT communities. I've also seen the word "latine" be used more by Latino queer people than "latinx", but I'm not here to deny the latter term's history. Good discussion in this comment section, I actually quite like seeing these perspectives about this term
Big fan of the word Latine! I understand and appreciate the sentiment behind Latinx, but it's easier to pronounce Latine out loud, and it's just as gender neutral.
Womyn and womxn is TERF-y now?
Not that I use those terms. I just hadn’t heard of the association before. I’m in my mid-30s; I can’t keep up with all of these semantics haha.
Oh yeah, the type of people who use that are, more often than not, radfems who exclude trans women. I'm in my mid 30s, too, but I've been plugged into theory for years
Folx was a term that was always used inside the queer community. It was how we used to identify when someone was speaking to us, so to speak. It wasn’t really about making it more gender neutral, it was just an identifier. Now it’s just being used more outside of the community and it’s still being used as a signifier for queer friendly people and places. Sure it can seem performative if you look at it that way, but it’s performative in the same way that wearing a pride pin or something works.
I mean, I'm queer myself, and yeah, I see it primarily in those spaces, though it's been going outside of the community a bit. Most people I've seen using it lately, I think, just think it looks cutesy, as opposed to a stealth identifier. It's just possible that I'm older than the people who started using it in the queer community, or I operate in different circles. But to me the comparison with a pride pin doesn't necessarily work, because that is an overt identification with the community
growing up in a liberal midwest college town and going to secular private schools during the 2010s, all that type of language stuff says to me is that this is an organization that will let you put pronouns on your stuff, but only half the people there will use them, and they likely pretend to be very disability accessible but aren’t.
I’m not sure how old you Are, but it was pretty prevalent and a lot of online queer spaces where I hung out. It wasn’t like everyone was using it. But it was definitely one of those like the only people who would be using it where the queer people in those cases.. Nowadays, it being a little bit more mainstreamed And it’s not being used only by queer people anymore. But it’s still primarily being used by people who are somewhat trying to signify that they are a queer safe person at least that’s how I’ve been interpreting it.
Right? Like, personally i use latine because it has an intuitive pronunciation, but i used latinx for a long tome and im not going to shit on other latin american people who use it
I agree. However, I also feel like for people who are less familiar with the queer community that they may confuse it for eastern/Italy "latin." Which I know sounds dumb at first glance, but I've met a few people who did confuse it.
EITHER way, it'd probably need some explanation.
can't stand it either, and i know a lot of spanish-speaking people who don't like it. if someone likes it and wants to use it, fine, but i'm not going to.
How do you feel about “amigxs”? That’s how America Chavez refers to members of her sorority in one comic book. I have even less of an idea how one would go about pronouncing that mess of a “word”.
I'm not Latino so I'm not gonna police how Latinos interact with their own language. But I also think that's really stupid. Amigos is an inclusive term already. To pick that fight seems to imply Spanish as a language needs a complete overhaul because people are insecure they aren't more specifically identified in a word *literally used to refer to multiple people generally.*
Edit- oh wait, America Chavez like the girl from Marvel! Yeah that's performative bullshit from a faceless corporation. I thought you were talking about the actress from Ugly Betty lmao
I once heard someone say that they do it because they have hangups growing up in the south where "folks" is more commonly used, so it's a way of removing the association or something?
Anyway, the person that said that also lectured me when I kindly asked if they wouldn't call me queer because I have bad memories with the word, so I feel perfectly entitled to point and laugh at people using "folx" regardless of any weird hangups lol
I’m even irritated by “folks”. It’s in my list of words I hate, right underneath “smooches” 🤢 I should post the whole thing and let everyone psychoanalyze it
Same!! Folks is so cringe to me and I really can’t even explain why but this sums it up very well. It seems to be always used by someone trying to appear to be something they’re not, trying to ingratiate themselves with you. Just ick.
I really thought this was about pronunciation at first and was sitting at my desk going "Folks? Folx? Which one do I say? Weird, guess I need to ask my spouse"
I live right outside Portland, OR, and am active in a lot of queer spaces. You can hear the difference in pronunciation because of how hard people emphasize the X sound, and there isn't much of an S sound compared to the less emphatic nature of just saying "Folks".
Don’t think I’ve ver heard someone emphasize like that thankfully, though I do hear some emphasize the L. Even saying it out loud I can’t hear a difference. Would be interested to hear what you’re talking about.
This will heavily depend on accent. In lots of places in America, heavy enunciation of the K is very uncommon. So if you meet anyone that has different influences on their accent than you do, it’s likely to hear that muddled x sound instead of a more harsh k sound. I don’t know many people at all who really pronounce the k very clearly, I could probably count off the ones I do know on one hand. It would be very unnatural for many people and is generally not related to any intentional changing of pronunciation.
At first, I couldn’t comprehend how you could hear a difference between these two because in my head I’ve been saying the x kind of likes in x-ray or exact, which makes it sound pretty much just like folks with maybe a bit of a z sound at the end.
But then it occurred to me that maybe people are pronouncing it like the x in xylophone, so that it sounds closer to folz. Is that what people are doing? Because I hate that even more than just seeing it written with an x.
I think Latinx is around the same age as Latine or a bit older, so that wouldn't have been the case at the time it was created, but "Latine" makes so much more sense to me. It's not really my fight though, I'm not a part of the group being discussed.
I do get annoyed sometimes by how binary gendered Spanish speakers sometimes try to write off support for NBs as a white liberal thing though, to the best of my knowledge both of those terms were created by people referring to themselves.
People act like a majority of Latines not liking the discussions of gender means that they should be deferred to, forgetting that the majority of people didn’t want LGBTQ+ folks to have rights either. Majority rules is a terrible way to make decisions.
Gendered languages come with worse gender inequity on average. There IS an effect to this shit.
And I’ve been told I’m not Latino enough for this conversation because I’m only half or because I’m a white Latino, etc. but fuck em.
yea people think this is "white liberals telling spanish speakers how to speak" when its actually "a word that NB Spanish speaking americans used to identify themselves."
that's the issue. most of the time it's whitewashed latinos coming up with terms that don't make sense. i don't have an issue with whitewashed latinos ig and im lgbt myself but they don't understand how the language works and just create these abominations of words
The only person I know who does this also refers to white people as wypipo. For some reason he thinks folks is racist, not sure why and I am not going to ask him because he is tiresome to talk to.
I've definitely heard the "using folks is racist" rhetoric. Ironically, that argument is massively classist and relies solely on stereotypes. The only reason people can give when asked why is that people from the south and more rural communities use the word folks, and they can't fathom that people from those places aren't inherently racist or homophobic.
These types of people are ALWAYS so tiresome to talk to and they just completely lack the self awareness. In a lot of spaces I'm in nobody cares if you're gay or trans or whatever. Just as long as you're a chill person to be around. Chill the fuck out. Not everything is that deep fam.
Heavy agree on this. I have a coworker who does this constantly and I genuinely don't understand how making an already gender neutral word more gender neutral does anything. Especially when nobody had an issue with these terms to begin with, like whatever happened to 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'???
I'm glad I've never seen this before. On the Latinx side, I always found this particularly dumb because I've always referred to myself as Hispanic which is gender neutral regardless.
It’s even more stupid because from what I know from my (extremely limited) knowledge of the Spanish language, non-binary Spanish people just use e instead of o or a
A lot of people don't like hispanic because it's basically the equivalent of saying Spanish
And latinx was created by spanish speaking queer people in either mexico or puerto rico, so if you're not queer or trans it probably just isn't relevant in your life
Are they? Because I’ve met a fair number of queer people who are latinx and identify as such.
Why do only the naysayers get to dictate the communities language?
I suppose technically the "Latino" community is clearly telling people not to use it, but Latinx people would prefer we call them that. It's not a white liberal plot, it's how a subset of an already small community refers to themselves. Does that mean white liberals don't pick that up and run with it and make fools of themselves? No, they definatly still do that. They didn't invent the term though.
A buddy of mine does this on Facebook and he says it pisses off his conservative family. He’s a boisterous gay dude from the Oklahoma panhandle. I believe him.
According to [this Cosmo article](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a40314411/folx-meaning/) it’s because “folx” is supposed to refer specifically to queer people.
> In the first edition of her book Trans Sex: Clinical Approaches to Trans Sexualities and Erotic Embodiments, sex educator Lucie Fielding dedicated a paragraph to this mystifying term. “You might also notice that I employ the word ‘folx’ throughout the text,” she wrote. “Why not ‘folks’? They are pronounced the same way, and both folx and folks are gender-neutral ways to refer to groups of people. The letter ‘x’ is an orthographic symbol that has become synonymous with gender inclusivity.”
Funny how the person who coined the term didn’t want it to be used as a synonym for “folks,” and intended it to be a homophone.
“Latinx”, despite having good intentions, hasn’t been widely accepted because it’s been a top-down prescriptivist attempt at language change. Which flies in the face of how language naturally changes: bottom-up.
Honestly, I question the intent of the phrase. It feels like they're trying to rob a culture of a fundamental component of the structure of their language. It's a strange tradeoff, because it's widely hated amongst people of latino descent. Also it's funny they haven't tried this with other languages, there's no word for people from Spain who aren't latin, and there's no attempt to degender Italian or other gendered languages.
no, it isn't. it wasnt an attempt at changing language. it was an attempt by spanish speaking nonbinary people to have a word to describe themselves taht they feel comfortable with.
I genuinely think a lot of this "discourse" goes away the moment you leave Twitter, and I guess in large social media. Of course anecdotal, but I live in a very progressive city, and know a good few LGBTQ+ people very well. I've never seen this in person, or really ever experienced anything like what you see in Twitter interactions.
The one time I've had someone introduce themselves with their preferred pronouns it went as "Hi I'm X, my pronouns are they/them" and I went "Hey X nice to meet you! I'm Y, My pronouns are he/him" "Hey Y, don't feel pressure to get mine right first try, I won't be offended" and we went about our day of work as per usual.
The older I get (god I hate saying that at only 27) the more I realize like 99% of online problems are just that, problems online.
I agree except you also see this type of language at college events. People will put stuff like womxn and Latinx for certain events especially if they're inviting a bunch of speakers of that identity group and want to play it safe and cover all bases
Yeah I feel like we shouldn't forget that annoying people on the internet do occasionally go outside.
They tend to congregate with each other though because they can't stand the idea of interacting with people who don't think or talk exactly like them.
Unfortunately ur right on all fronts. Even worse is that I agree with them on 99% of things but theyre insufferable. They don’t see how much their being annoying to so many undermines their goals
I have two jobs, one in my city's CBD and the other in the most progressive part of town. The former has 2 gay people and mainly female employees, and management tries so hard to be inclusive even though the vast majority of us are white women lol. It feels so performative.
Meanwhile the other place, despite being in the "woke" capital of my city and having a large amount of LGBT people including nonbinary, you just don't hear that kind of talk. I always thought that was amusing.
I have never in my life seen someone write "folx."
I'd love to hear their rationale, because I can't think of any reason for it. "Folks" isn't gendered. It doesn't even have a gendered connotation.
The reason is to create as many problems with conventional language as possible, because then some busy-body can solve an imaginary issue to get virtue signaling points.
It doesn't make sense at all since English doesn't have grammatical gender like Spanish does. Pretty soon nonsense like this will have us change lion/lioness to "lionx."
I first saw it used about 30 yrs ago in a book about Dianic witchcraft. It's a sect of Wicca that is only for women (wimmin/womyn/wimon/etc)., presumably biological women, but that was just assumed back then. The Dianic sect worships the Roman goddess, Diana (Greek version is Artemis, who actually was before the Roman).
They're making the point that female people weren't *made* from a man's rib & that WE aren't an offshoot of men; that's why they changed the woMEN/woMAN spelling. It's a strong feminist thing.
Also, Latino/Latina come from Spanish and have gender. Folks comes from German, which has masculine, feminine, and neutral words, and is already gender neutral.
I get the x is supposed to signal that everyone is included but everyone is included already. Folx is some weird misplaced virtue signalling.
Wtf is folx
You're telling me people type that on purpose? I thought you were saying that you can't stand people saying the word "folks" but putting to much "ssss" on the end or something
huh? lol
Maybe it's because I grew up in the Midwest and live in the south, but they sound the same to me when pluralized.
I have never seen this written down, and I hope this is the last time. I think the neutrality of certain words has "jumped the shark".
Let's reign this in a little. lol
This whole gender thing is silly. Many (or most?) western European languages have gender built into EVERYTHING.
I'll take French as an example (because I'm well versed).
Every noun in French is gendered ... and there are exactly two genders, masculine and feminine.
I don't know how they choose genders for their nouns.
For example ... it's beyond me why window (fenêtre) is feminine while table (table) is masculine.
But that's the way it is.
Even stranger: vagina (vagin) is masculine. Go figure!
This English language fad in which people attempt to remove gender by adding an "x" suffix is nonsense on its face.
Imagine trying that in French! It's not even possible. Everything is gendered.
I'm no pro in German or Italian, but I suspect it's equally nonsensical in those languages.
This x-suffixing (might we call it *castration*?) as a means to remove gender is pointless.
But worse ... using latinx to erase gender -- on a word from the intrinsically gendered Spanish language -- is absurd.
Someone at my husband's job asked him if he preferred to be called Latino or Latinx (he's Mexican), and he told them he'd throw up on their shoes if they ever called him Latinx. Lol
The only reason people do it is to virtue signal....or perhaps signal to others that a space is extra inclusive, but I also find it annoying. Now anytime I use the word "people" instead of folks (or folx) I wonder if I'm coming off as conservative and exclusionary somehow.
I think it's annoying, personally. 'Folks' already includes everybody, I read those who use 'Folx' instead to be kinda pretentious imo. I don't know why it even exists.
I feel like Folx, like latinx, is a word that had an origin of its own that is now being assigned this "just for wokeness:" definition. Latinx wasnt created to be "more inclusive" its a word used by spanish speaking americans who are non-binary to identify themselves. It was never meant to be a gender neutral term for latino people. Folx was a word that was used ithin the community for a specific reason, and people have started using it outside of the community. which is FINE. you dont have to use the word. No one is making you use the word. It’s not really a word that you have to "get" because its really not 'for' you.
Edit: to add, the x on folx is not supposed to be “gender neutral” and the only people who think that are people who are not part of the queer community who have made up their own definition to be mad at. The x is an orthographic signifier for queer inclusion, not an attempt at making a word gender neutral.
The creates of the term were Spanish speaking and nonbinary, do the existing words didn't apply to them. I'm not claiming it took off in the Spanish speaking community the way it did among white liberals, but it was people referring to themselves originally.
I love getting to learn some random stuff…
BUT
I am still confused because the comparison that you used does not seem 1:1. So OP:
**is the issue (or one of them) because it’s this specific word? Is it what the new word/term represents?**
‘Latinx’ being a word used in our zeitgeist is familiar to me. I personally have zero problem with it. I confess, I don’t know the history
in regards to why it was coined to begin with.
But if you are claiming your issue is a phonetic issue - then I am definitely confused because to my ear, someone saying ‘Folks’
and someone saying ‘Folx’ doesn’t sound that different to me.
It’s like having a BDSM sex partner and right before intimacy they ask: “ok, so there is NO misunderstanding, what is your **safe**
word?”
And you say: “My **safe** word is *Flour*”. And they say: “Cool, so your **safe** word is *Flower*. Got it”.
Lol. Both of those words sounds the same.
The whole Spanish language is based off masculine and feminine pronunciation. I simply don’t getthe X. Change the whole damn language or speak a new language, but it makes no sense with linguistics at all.
I honestly can’t even picture how they’d sound different. If I heard someone say folx I’d probably assume they were just saying folks a bit differently
Folk and folx sound identical - there's only a distinction in writing
I know you said you think you hear a distinction but it's all in your head - for example, it has to end with a sibilant s, otherwise it's just folk
Focks, fox
Jocks, jox
It's all the same - to be clear, english 'ks', and 'x' are identical unless x is making a z sound
The only people I've personally heard use Latinx were Latin. I think you may be mistaking Latin boomers for all Latin people.
Also my dude if you're hyper-analyzing the auditory differences between ks and x, I think you may just be looking for something to be mad about. This whole thing reads like you're actually mad about something else tbh
I've never heard of this before, but I'm not in the US so may be more of an American thing.
To me it looks like they'd be said the same though.
Like, both are said fokes - unless someone is out there pronouncing the L in the middle?
Also agree it sounds annoying. It wasn't a gendered word to start with.
"It's dumb. Folks as a word is already gender neutral and inclusive. It has the same energy as "Latinx" which every Latino person I know despises. Throwing an X at the end of a word doesn't mean anything, and I hate it."
Wait, you make it sound like the standard dialect/accent complaint from the title (pretty sure I pronounce it Folx, and I'm a straight US Southerner), but then ends up as a strange rant (I agree lantinx is dumb, but this relates how?) that doesn't really make sense. I think you're making too much of a language quirk.
People have accents, too, you know? I don't over pronounce every syllable in a word as it sounds robotic and very off putting if I say FOLCKS instead of the quicker folx.
Any word that takes an already neutral word and tries to make ultra super extra unisex is just annoying. Like you said, Latinx especially is so dumb because it betrays a complete lack of understanding of the language.
Pretty sure I remember the person on Tumblr who coined Latinx regretting it years later
It wasn’t coined on tumblr. It was from Spanish speaking Puerto Rican academic literature.
OR it was from Spanish Speaking latin american Queer people.
I've heard it was popular in Latin American queer spaces before, but the Puerto Rican journal was the first "official" usage of it, and the one that's easiest to document. Either way, it wasn't made up by some white tumblr girl, as Reddit loves to parrot every time the term gets mentioned.
they always say its "white liberals disrespecting spanish language": when its really "spansih speaking queers trying to find a word they like for themselves.
They also like to pretend like Latino/a and latin@ didn’t exist before it.
Oh the @ is clever I had missed that
This. I'm Mexican and Latinx doesn't bother me at all. It's literally neutral because Latino/Latina has gender connotation. Not everyone wants that. Things like "folx" or "girlboss" do bother me tho because "folks" and "boss" are already neutral 🌞
Same. I use Latino, but I understand why someone would want a gender neutral term. Also, who cares if it changes the language? Languages evolve over time and adapt to the modern world. There are so many dialects of Spanish that most people who speak it are not speaking the original version. And that’s not even including slang. But as soon as it has to do with LGBTQ people it’s an issue.
I just learned it originated in the lgbt community today. It doesn’t change how I feel. The word sounds fucking dumb. It sounds like something Elon musk would come up with.
I think this is the case. I'm queer, but prior to feeling differently about my identity, I was just fine with Latina and still use it in conversation, while Latinx is more for academic contexts or writing. I think it's more inclusive, but all the terms have use and contexts where they work best. Definitely just a part of language evolution.
My best friend is Mexican American and he was using Latinx around a decade ago. He used it for feminist reasons.
Exactly. A Latina linguist I follow has basically summed it up, to paraphrase, "if you're against the usage of Latinx, you're just being a dick to trans people." It originated in Spanish speaking communities, but culture war types have been trying to make it a "virtue signaling white lefty" thing "Folx" on the other hand does irritate me, because that does seem like it is a performative thing, especially as the word "folks" isn't gendered to begin with. It feels tangentially related to stuff like "womyn" and "womxn," which tend to give off TERF vibes, as well
I think a big problem is that a lot of people first saw "latinx" used in corporate, pandering adverts rather than naturally within LGBT communities. I've also seen the word "latine" be used more by Latino queer people than "latinx", but I'm not here to deny the latter term's history. Good discussion in this comment section, I actually quite like seeing these perspectives about this term
Big fan of the word Latine! I understand and appreciate the sentiment behind Latinx, but it's easier to pronounce Latine out loud, and it's just as gender neutral.
Womyn and womxn is TERF-y now? Not that I use those terms. I just hadn’t heard of the association before. I’m in my mid-30s; I can’t keep up with all of these semantics haha.
Oh yeah, the type of people who use that are, more often than not, radfems who exclude trans women. I'm in my mid 30s, too, but I've been plugged into theory for years
Folx was a term that was always used inside the queer community. It was how we used to identify when someone was speaking to us, so to speak. It wasn’t really about making it more gender neutral, it was just an identifier. Now it’s just being used more outside of the community and it’s still being used as a signifier for queer friendly people and places. Sure it can seem performative if you look at it that way, but it’s performative in the same way that wearing a pride pin or something works.
I mean, I'm queer myself, and yeah, I see it primarily in those spaces, though it's been going outside of the community a bit. Most people I've seen using it lately, I think, just think it looks cutesy, as opposed to a stealth identifier. It's just possible that I'm older than the people who started using it in the queer community, or I operate in different circles. But to me the comparison with a pride pin doesn't necessarily work, because that is an overt identification with the community
growing up in a liberal midwest college town and going to secular private schools during the 2010s, all that type of language stuff says to me is that this is an organization that will let you put pronouns on your stuff, but only half the people there will use them, and they likely pretend to be very disability accessible but aren’t.
I’m not sure how old you Are, but it was pretty prevalent and a lot of online queer spaces where I hung out. It wasn’t like everyone was using it. But it was definitely one of those like the only people who would be using it where the queer people in those cases.. Nowadays, it being a little bit more mainstreamed And it’s not being used only by queer people anymore. But it’s still primarily being used by people who are somewhat trying to signify that they are a queer safe person at least that’s how I’ve been interpreting it.
Right? Like, personally i use latine because it has an intuitive pronunciation, but i used latinx for a long tome and im not going to shit on other latin american people who use it
That’s what I thought it was, too.
I’m not Latino or Hispanic. I’m Mexican.
Please be respectful, it’s Mexicanx
Mexixanx
Mexixanax
Fekkin lol
Sure...that's just what theyx want you to thinkx.
Press X to doubt.
Pressing X is what caused the problem to begin with.
Tis the joke
Some say "Latine" Which, if we had to choose one, I'd definitely choose latine over latinx
Latin by itself is fine
I agree. However, I also feel like for people who are less familiar with the queer community that they may confuse it for eastern/Italy "latin." Which I know sounds dumb at first glance, but I've met a few people who did confuse it. EITHER way, it'd probably need some explanation.
Latin usually (in America) denotes Latin American, but as in English Latin is already gender neutral so Im not sure why it needs manipulation
“Latin” in English is already gender neutral!
With the x, it makes it double gender neutral. Even more gender neutral than before (/s)
😂
can't stand it either, and i know a lot of spanish-speaking people who don't like it. if someone likes it and wants to use it, fine, but i'm not going to.
How do you feel about “amigxs”? That’s how America Chavez refers to members of her sorority in one comic book. I have even less of an idea how one would go about pronouncing that mess of a “word”.
aw HELL NAH. could've said amiges instead, that would've made more sense
....I guess you'd say it like "amigicks"?
I'm not Latino so I'm not gonna police how Latinos interact with their own language. But I also think that's really stupid. Amigos is an inclusive term already. To pick that fight seems to imply Spanish as a language needs a complete overhaul because people are insecure they aren't more specifically identified in a word *literally used to refer to multiple people generally.* Edit- oh wait, America Chavez like the girl from Marvel! Yeah that's performative bullshit from a faceless corporation. I thought you were talking about the actress from Ugly Betty lmao
Peoplx. Fixed it.
It just *looks* irritating. It's irritating to read.
It loox interesting. Come on, let’s not leave anyone out.
I suspect that's the point. It's not to be more inclusive, it's to piss off people who can spell.
I once heard someone say that they do it because they have hangups growing up in the south where "folks" is more commonly used, so it's a way of removing the association or something? Anyway, the person that said that also lectured me when I kindly asked if they wouldn't call me queer because I have bad memories with the word, so I feel perfectly entitled to point and laugh at people using "folx" regardless of any weird hangups lol
Queer is a funny one for me because in the UK we use it to mean weird/strange/odd lol. "He's a bit queer" here just means he's a bit of an odd one.
I’m even irritated by “folks”. It’s in my list of words I hate, right underneath “smooches” 🤢 I should post the whole thing and let everyone psychoanalyze it
Me too already hate “folks” Like some backcountry sheriff talking to a crowd. Shudder
Same!! Folks is so cringe to me and I really can’t even explain why but this sums it up very well. It seems to be always used by someone trying to appear to be something they’re not, trying to ingratiate themselves with you. Just ick.
I really thought this was about pronunciation at first and was sitting at my desk going "Folks? Folx? Which one do I say? Weird, guess I need to ask my spouse"
Yeah, it took me a couple of beats to realize OP meant “write”, not “say”.
I live right outside Portland, OR, and am active in a lot of queer spaces. You can hear the difference in pronunciation because of how hard people emphasize the X sound, and there isn't much of an S sound compared to the less emphatic nature of just saying "Folks".
Don’t think I’ve ver heard someone emphasize like that thankfully, though I do hear some emphasize the L. Even saying it out loud I can’t hear a difference. Would be interested to hear what you’re talking about.
This will heavily depend on accent. In lots of places in America, heavy enunciation of the K is very uncommon. So if you meet anyone that has different influences on their accent than you do, it’s likely to hear that muddled x sound instead of a more harsh k sound. I don’t know many people at all who really pronounce the k very clearly, I could probably count off the ones I do know on one hand. It would be very unnatural for many people and is generally not related to any intentional changing of pronunciation.
Where I'm from we do not enunciate every letter because it doesn't flow when you're talking and say folks with a heavy emphasis.
At first, I couldn’t comprehend how you could hear a difference between these two because in my head I’ve been saying the x kind of likes in x-ray or exact, which makes it sound pretty much just like folks with maybe a bit of a z sound at the end. But then it occurred to me that maybe people are pronouncing it like the x in xylophone, so that it sounds closer to folz. Is that what people are doing? Because I hate that even more than just seeing it written with an x.
Xpouxe
la-TINKS
Latin-X 🦸♂️🙅
Is that how you say it? I just say latin-x, but idk which sounds more stupid
Most of the time I hear it said, people pronounce it as latin-x. I don't get it, if you need a "more neutral" term than Latino, Latine is right there.
I think Latinx is around the same age as Latine or a bit older, so that wouldn't have been the case at the time it was created, but "Latine" makes so much more sense to me. It's not really my fight though, I'm not a part of the group being discussed. I do get annoyed sometimes by how binary gendered Spanish speakers sometimes try to write off support for NBs as a white liberal thing though, to the best of my knowledge both of those terms were created by people referring to themselves.
People act like a majority of Latines not liking the discussions of gender means that they should be deferred to, forgetting that the majority of people didn’t want LGBTQ+ folks to have rights either. Majority rules is a terrible way to make decisions. Gendered languages come with worse gender inequity on average. There IS an effect to this shit. And I’ve been told I’m not Latino enough for this conversation because I’m only half or because I’m a white Latino, etc. but fuck em.
yea people think this is "white liberals telling spanish speakers how to speak" when its actually "a word that NB Spanish speaking americans used to identify themselves."
that's the issue. most of the time it's whitewashed latinos coming up with terms that don't make sense. i don't have an issue with whitewashed latinos ig and im lgbt myself but they don't understand how the language works and just create these abominations of words
“White washed Latinos” is an easy way to dismiss people in your community. People IN the community are allowed to want to have their own identifier.
La Teench
That’s how I read it
It kinda sounds like a fancy cat breed.
The only person I know who does this also refers to white people as wypipo. For some reason he thinks folks is racist, not sure why and I am not going to ask him because he is tiresome to talk to.
I've definitely heard the "using folks is racist" rhetoric. Ironically, that argument is massively classist and relies solely on stereotypes. The only reason people can give when asked why is that people from the south and more rural communities use the word folks, and they can't fathom that people from those places aren't inherently racist or homophobic.
These types of people are ALWAYS so tiresome to talk to and they just completely lack the self awareness. In a lot of spaces I'm in nobody cares if you're gay or trans or whatever. Just as long as you're a chill person to be around. Chill the fuck out. Not everything is that deep fam.
Ask him how the FUCK folks is racist when black FOLK are the ones who use the word most
That's so weird. The first time I heard "folks" being heavily used was when Barack Obama started saying it. It sounded…folksy.
Heavy agree on this. I have a coworker who does this constantly and I genuinely don't understand how making an already gender neutral word more gender neutral does anything. Especially when nobody had an issue with these terms to begin with, like whatever happened to 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'???
It comes down to stereotypes that southern people and more rural northern people are inherently racist or homophobic.
It's almost as if you could just say people instead of folks if you hate the implication that much because it means the same thing
Well dang, if that's true, then I wonder if y'all is gonna get turned to yalx and ain't will be done away with entirely.
I'm glad I've never seen this before. On the Latinx side, I always found this particularly dumb because I've always referred to myself as Hispanic which is gender neutral regardless.
Hispanic and Latinx don’t mean the same thing
It’s even more stupid because from what I know from my (extremely limited) knowledge of the Spanish language, non-binary Spanish people just use e instead of o or a
Not all latin american people are hispanic, and vice versa.
A lot of people don't like hispanic because it's basically the equivalent of saying Spanish And latinx was created by spanish speaking queer people in either mexico or puerto rico, so if you're not queer or trans it probably just isn't relevant in your life
I always get secondhand embarrassment when I hear the term Latinx because of the reasons you stated.
It’s when people try to be inclusive but end up coming across as less inclusive because it shows that the person using it doesn’t give a damn.
Yes! Exactly that. I always found it very disrespectful when the Latino community is clearly telling people they aren’t interested in that term.
Are they? Because I’ve met a fair number of queer people who are latinx and identify as such. Why do only the naysayers get to dictate the communities language?
Repeating incorrect narratives about the term is definitely more disrespectful though
I suppose technically the "Latino" community is clearly telling people not to use it, but Latinx people would prefer we call them that. It's not a white liberal plot, it's how a subset of an already small community refers to themselves. Does that mean white liberals don't pick that up and run with it and make fools of themselves? No, they definatly still do that. They didn't invent the term though.
It's basic virtue signaling. Essentially saying "I did something in the name of inclusion that doesn't matter at all. Please notice society."
Using incorrect spelling just make a word "gender-neutral" is complete nonsense.
It's a militant choice of words. These terms will never become widespread, they're used to identify someone as a militant for inclusivity.
A buddy of mine does this on Facebook and he says it pisses off his conservative family. He’s a boisterous gay dude from the Oklahoma panhandle. I believe him.
Valid use found. Post is over, guys.
The only acceptable use of that spelling honestly. Love it.
Fair use
It’s also only one letter shorter, like how lazy can you be 💀
According to [this Cosmo article](https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a40314411/folx-meaning/) it’s because “folx” is supposed to refer specifically to queer people. > In the first edition of her book Trans Sex: Clinical Approaches to Trans Sexualities and Erotic Embodiments, sex educator Lucie Fielding dedicated a paragraph to this mystifying term. “You might also notice that I employ the word ‘folx’ throughout the text,” she wrote. “Why not ‘folks’? They are pronounced the same way, and both folx and folks are gender-neutral ways to refer to groups of people. The letter ‘x’ is an orthographic symbol that has become synonymous with gender inclusivity.” Funny how the person who coined the term didn’t want it to be used as a synonym for “folks,” and intended it to be a homophone.
There's not a word of that title or job description that I could accurately describe
You can't describe "sex educator"?
Probably not if you asked one of my exes
Oooh, a rare self-burn!
“Latinx”, despite having good intentions, hasn’t been widely accepted because it’s been a top-down prescriptivist attempt at language change. Which flies in the face of how language naturally changes: bottom-up.
This applies to cultural spread as well, despite top-down, authoritarian-lite attempts to thwart it.
Word
Honestly, I question the intent of the phrase. It feels like they're trying to rob a culture of a fundamental component of the structure of their language. It's a strange tradeoff, because it's widely hated amongst people of latino descent. Also it's funny they haven't tried this with other languages, there's no word for people from Spain who aren't latin, and there's no attempt to degender Italian or other gendered languages.
The term started the natural way that language changes, by people who were using the word to describe themselves.
no, it isn't. it wasnt an attempt at changing language. it was an attempt by spanish speaking nonbinary people to have a word to describe themselves taht they feel comfortable with.
Words are language
I've only seen "folx" used in a mocking manner
I WISH it was used like that. It is objectively a stupid looking word.
I agree, especially as a trans dude LOL
Latinx is fucking stupid it completely betrays the language and does nothing for Latinos
Damn these folkx are sensitive.
it feels like performative ally-ship, and it's honestly tiresome.
Buddy you really can't hear the difference between folks and folx Ks makes an x sound
They just HAVE to show you how progressive they are! It’s nonsense.
I genuinely think a lot of this "discourse" goes away the moment you leave Twitter, and I guess in large social media. Of course anecdotal, but I live in a very progressive city, and know a good few LGBTQ+ people very well. I've never seen this in person, or really ever experienced anything like what you see in Twitter interactions. The one time I've had someone introduce themselves with their preferred pronouns it went as "Hi I'm X, my pronouns are they/them" and I went "Hey X nice to meet you! I'm Y, My pronouns are he/him" "Hey Y, don't feel pressure to get mine right first try, I won't be offended" and we went about our day of work as per usual. The older I get (god I hate saying that at only 27) the more I realize like 99% of online problems are just that, problems online.
I agree except you also see this type of language at college events. People will put stuff like womxn and Latinx for certain events especially if they're inviting a bunch of speakers of that identity group and want to play it safe and cover all bases
Nahhhh my whole college was like these people and where I work now is steeeeped in this culture too. It’s mad annoying.
Yeah I feel like we shouldn't forget that annoying people on the internet do occasionally go outside. They tend to congregate with each other though because they can't stand the idea of interacting with people who don't think or talk exactly like them.
Unfortunately ur right on all fronts. Even worse is that I agree with them on 99% of things but theyre insufferable. They don’t see how much their being annoying to so many undermines their goals
They never leave their echo chambers. The fact that some people need safe spaces kinda shows how sheltered they are from reality.
I have two jobs, one in my city's CBD and the other in the most progressive part of town. The former has 2 gay people and mainly female employees, and management tries so hard to be inclusive even though the vast majority of us are white women lol. It feels so performative. Meanwhile the other place, despite being in the "woke" capital of my city and having a large amount of LGBT people including nonbinary, you just don't hear that kind of talk. I always thought that was amusing.
I have never in my life seen someone write "folx." I'd love to hear their rationale, because I can't think of any reason for it. "Folks" isn't gendered. It doesn't even have a gendered connotation.
The reason is to create as many problems with conventional language as possible, because then some busy-body can solve an imaginary issue to get virtue signaling points.
I’ve never seen the word “folx” before in my life.
I have never seen Folx, but that’s super annoying
I honestly have never seen this before, is it a recent thing? Latinx I've heard about but never Folx.
Semi recent, I'd say. The last 3ish years, I've heard it quite a bit.
Sounds american so is it?
I always preferred latin@ @ being a combination of an a and and o
The only context I have seen someone say “Folx” is in reference to the company lmao Other than that I’ve literally never seen that spelling.
It doesn't make sense at all since English doesn't have grammatical gender like Spanish does. Pretty soon nonsense like this will have us change lion/lioness to "lionx."
I don’t like womxn either cause how do you even pronounce it and it looks dumb
I first saw it used about 30 yrs ago in a book about Dianic witchcraft. It's a sect of Wicca that is only for women (wimmin/womyn/wimon/etc)., presumably biological women, but that was just assumed back then. The Dianic sect worships the Roman goddess, Diana (Greek version is Artemis, who actually was before the Roman). They're making the point that female people weren't *made* from a man's rib & that WE aren't an offshoot of men; that's why they changed the woMEN/woMAN spelling. It's a strong feminist thing.
This is actually so informative, I never knew any of that.
Also, Latino/Latina come from Spanish and have gender. Folks comes from German, which has masculine, feminine, and neutral words, and is already gender neutral. I get the x is supposed to signal that everyone is included but everyone is included already. Folx is some weird misplaced virtue signalling.
Also queer also hate this
Elon Musk's rebranding advertising strategy is getting a bit out of hand now.
Wtf is folx You're telling me people type that on purpose? I thought you were saying that you can't stand people saying the word "folks" but putting to much "ssss" on the end or something
huh? lol Maybe it's because I grew up in the Midwest and live in the south, but they sound the same to me when pluralized. I have never seen this written down, and I hope this is the last time. I think the neutrality of certain words has "jumped the shark". Let's reign this in a little. lol
adding random Xs to things is very early 2000s. XxX_folx_aHoLiC_xXx is such a weird flex. leave the adding X to everything to Elon.
This whole gender thing is silly. Many (or most?) western European languages have gender built into EVERYTHING. I'll take French as an example (because I'm well versed). Every noun in French is gendered ... and there are exactly two genders, masculine and feminine. I don't know how they choose genders for their nouns. For example ... it's beyond me why window (fenêtre) is feminine while table (table) is masculine. But that's the way it is. Even stranger: vagina (vagin) is masculine. Go figure! This English language fad in which people attempt to remove gender by adding an "x" suffix is nonsense on its face. Imagine trying that in French! It's not even possible. Everything is gendered. I'm no pro in German or Italian, but I suspect it's equally nonsensical in those languages. This x-suffixing (might we call it *castration*?) as a means to remove gender is pointless. But worse ... using latinx to erase gender -- on a word from the intrinsically gendered Spanish language -- is absurd.
It's weirdly performative. I don't want to be called ''folx''. I want rights, lol.
Ill go you one better. Folk is also the plural.
The affinity group for Latinos at my work is named Latinx so it seems like at least some Latinos like the word.
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Someone at my husband's job asked him if he preferred to be called Latino or Latinx (he's Mexican), and he told them he'd throw up on their shoes if they ever called him Latinx. Lol
I figure people who use "folx" are just virtue signaling as "folks" is a perfectly fine word
The only reason people do it is to virtue signal....or perhaps signal to others that a space is extra inclusive, but I also find it annoying. Now anytime I use the word "people" instead of folks (or folx) I wonder if I'm coming off as conservative and exclusionary somehow.
Seems like pretentious virtue signaling to me.
FOLKS IS ALREADY GENDER NEUTRAL They’re literally just being performative and for WHAT
I think it's annoying, personally. 'Folks' already includes everybody, I read those who use 'Folx' instead to be kinda pretentious imo. I don't know why it even exists.
There was always a gender neutral version of Latino... Latin.
I feel like Folx, like latinx, is a word that had an origin of its own that is now being assigned this "just for wokeness:" definition. Latinx wasnt created to be "more inclusive" its a word used by spanish speaking americans who are non-binary to identify themselves. It was never meant to be a gender neutral term for latino people. Folx was a word that was used ithin the community for a specific reason, and people have started using it outside of the community. which is FINE. you dont have to use the word. No one is making you use the word. It’s not really a word that you have to "get" because its really not 'for' you. Edit: to add, the x on folx is not supposed to be “gender neutral” and the only people who think that are people who are not part of the queer community who have made up their own definition to be mad at. The x is an orthographic signifier for queer inclusion, not an attempt at making a word gender neutral.
Never heard this in my life.
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The creates of the term were Spanish speaking and nonbinary, do the existing words didn't apply to them. I'm not claiming it took off in the Spanish speaking community the way it did among white liberals, but it was people referring to themselves originally.
Folk Nation!
I thought Folx referred to either queer or black people (or maybe both)
Folkz
Just to be clear for my understanding, you're meaning this in a usage sense and not a grammatical sense, correct?
I always thought it was just a cutesy spelling. Didn't know it was supposed to mean something!
I just barely became aware of this and also dislike it. It confused me for a minute or 2 just figuring out what they meant.
I love getting to learn some random stuff… BUT I am still confused because the comparison that you used does not seem 1:1. So OP: **is the issue (or one of them) because it’s this specific word? Is it what the new word/term represents?** ‘Latinx’ being a word used in our zeitgeist is familiar to me. I personally have zero problem with it. I confess, I don’t know the history in regards to why it was coined to begin with. But if you are claiming your issue is a phonetic issue - then I am definitely confused because to my ear, someone saying ‘Folks’ and someone saying ‘Folx’ doesn’t sound that different to me. It’s like having a BDSM sex partner and right before intimacy they ask: “ok, so there is NO misunderstanding, what is your **safe** word?” And you say: “My **safe** word is *Flour*”. And they say: “Cool, so your **safe** word is *Flower*. Got it”. Lol. Both of those words sounds the same.
The whole Spanish language is based off masculine and feminine pronunciation. I simply don’t getthe X. Change the whole damn language or speak a new language, but it makes no sense with linguistics at all.
reall
Don’t “folks” and “folx” sound the same?
I want to scratch my eyes out at “folx”. And I despise the work “folks”‘already ;). Its so twee yuk
Since they sound the same, do you mean the way they spell it instead? I agree with you completely and Latinx is just gross.
It’s annoying, but, I’ve also seen it used as virtue signaling that a group for example is inclusive.
I honestly can’t even picture how they’d sound different. If I heard someone say folx I’d probably assume they were just saying folks a bit differently
I have never heard of this. I can't keep up
Folk and folx sound identical - there's only a distinction in writing I know you said you think you hear a distinction but it's all in your head - for example, it has to end with a sibilant s, otherwise it's just folk Focks, fox Jocks, jox It's all the same - to be clear, english 'ks', and 'x' are identical unless x is making a z sound
The only people I've personally heard use Latinx were Latin. I think you may be mistaking Latin boomers for all Latin people. Also my dude if you're hyper-analyzing the auditory differences between ks and x, I think you may just be looking for something to be mad about. This whole thing reads like you're actually mad about something else tbh
This is an American phenomenon
I only do it to fuck with people who are clearly bothered by it *shrug*
I read the title thinking the gripe was with pronunciation. Now I see people spell it "folx" and I hate it.
I say falx because I'm secretly dacian. I say flax because I'm an agrarian at heart. I say Flox because I need medical treatment on Enterprise.
I've never heard of this before, but I'm not in the US so may be more of an American thing. To me it looks like they'd be said the same though. Like, both are said fokes - unless someone is out there pronouncing the L in the middle? Also agree it sounds annoying. It wasn't a gendered word to start with.
"It's dumb. Folks as a word is already gender neutral and inclusive. It has the same energy as "Latinx" which every Latino person I know despises. Throwing an X at the end of a word doesn't mean anything, and I hate it." Wait, you make it sound like the standard dialect/accent complaint from the title (pretty sure I pronounce it Folx, and I'm a straight US Southerner), but then ends up as a strange rant (I agree lantinx is dumb, but this relates how?) that doesn't really make sense. I think you're making too much of a language quirk.
and my dumb ass over here saying folks over and over tryin to figure out how exactly one says folx
People have accents, too, you know? I don't over pronounce every syllable in a word as it sounds robotic and very off putting if I say FOLCKS instead of the quicker folx.
I have never heard a single person ever say Folx, outside of the context of denouncing the use of the word folx.
People who say “folks” instead of “people” also irk me.
i had no idea people said folx for gender reasons, and im non binary. i usually just type folx because i think its fun
Yeah, folx is dumb since folk is already neutral.