One of the first things I teach in #Filipinx Lit class is that language has always been malleable. If there is no known word for you, then rather than accept your own invisibility and non-existence, you have the agency to create a new word.

Re: malleability of language for Filipinx folks, the word "Pinoy" is a century old, first coined by Filipinos in the USA, to describe themselves as distinct from Filipinos in the Philippines. Today, the word is used internationally, as if the word has always been, in perpetuity.

Historian and all around Great Pinay Dawn Bohulano Mabalon wrote about this, after finding the first known written usage of "Pinoy" in an issue of the Filipino Student Bulletin in 1926. She wrote about this in her book, Little Manila Is in the Heart.

Re: #Filipinx, here's Karen Hanna, "A Call for Healing: Transphobia, Homophobia, and Historical Trauma in Filipina/o/x American Activist Organizations," from Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy (2017):

I am by no means the authority on #Filipinx; that authority goes to folks who choose to call themselves Filipinx.