Becoming increasingly frustrated by the way this conversation is taking a turn to "if few people use this elitist term we shouldn't be using it". Mini-thread:

The non-binary/genderqueer Latinx community is marginalized. And, as someone pointed out, none of the Pew respondents IDed as non-binary - that is important because this is the community that is most likely to self-identify with this term.

What people choose to personally ID with may also differ from what their choose to ID their community with. E.g., I will always ID as Latina but, to be inclusive to nb folx, I will use Latinx (or even Latinx/o/a) to refer to my community as a whole.

There's also often a generational gap in the use of this term. The people most likely to know and use this term were younger Latinx folks (esp women), but does that mean we should continue to make the case that it shouldn't be used?

Re: the notion that this is an "academic" term, that is elitist and used primarily by White people. The use of "x" in these colonial gendered terms may be historically recent but non-binary folks have long existed. Yet, their ability to safely ID themselves was/is constrained.

E.g., the muxe community (from "mujer"), originating in the indigenous Zapotec culture in Juchitan, Oaxaca, Mexico. similarly rejects the colonial gender binary. Real people engage with these terms because they mean something to them and their identity. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pgq7yy/muxes-documentary-mexicos-third-gender

Likewise, Latinx is not just some fancy academic jargon and this narrative erases the work that activists have done so that we may now engage with this word in academic spaces. https://www.oprahmag.com/life/a28056593/latinx-meaning/

Not everyone will agree with this & that's OK. But, I'm not going to constrain people's ability to use the terms they want to use to ID themselves, even if they are few in number. Numbers don't validate our identities & a strategy like this will likely privilege those w/ power.

Lastly, y'all, please: don't be Hispanic, be his peace Lol jk, but some of y'alls commitment to the colonizer's language is gross. Spanish is a gendered, colonial language and the way some of us cling to it for Eurocentric validation is odd. But that's another convo...

Okay also all of this was supposed to be a QT to that Pew tweet, don't yell at me pls its my week off and my two brain cells are working hard: https://twitter.com/pewresearch/status/1293246644864143361?s=20