Dreams of a Queer Utopix
The film Arrival (2016) absolutely mesmerized me when I saw it in the theater. Smashing the clichés of the genre, this story is not about aliens coming to Earth to conquer our planet, turn us into food, steal our water, or exterminate us, even though it certainly plays on the fears elicited by those expectations. Instead, it uses the aliens to make language a key element of the plot and lead viewers into a deep examination of humanity and an existential question about free will. Specifically: how would people go about living if they knew their fate?
To the delight of my not-so-inner nerd, the unlikely hero of this tale is a linguist named Louise Banks, who, by learning the aliens’ nonlinear written language, gains the ability to transcend linear time, see into the future, and save the world. In the process, her own destiny is also revealed to her, which she decides to embrace, tragedies and all. It was a beautiful and bittersweet examination of the human condition, but when I got home I started to wonder: could language really affect us this way? Is it truly so powerful?
Questions about the power of language have recently been at the forefront of my mind regarding the English-speaking use of the term “Latinx”, which over the past few years has gone from complete obscurity to widespread acceptance in educated left-of-center circles. Champions of the term have sold it as a more progressive alternative to “Latino", incorporating a grammatically gender-neutral ending as part of a larger effort to correct the ostensibly male-centric and patriarchal grammar of Spanish, thereby making both the language and culture more inclusive. Much like the plot of the film Arrival, these arguments are grounded in the belief that language fundamentally shapes a speaker’s view of the world. But although this idea makes for compelling fiction, it is scientifically unfounded. For all the lofty intentions behind "Latinx", tinkering with a grammatical ending in this way is an ineffective strategy for social engineering (which is precarious and unpredictable even under the best circumstances) that ultimately represents a non-consensual effort to inject queer activist beliefs into mainstream discourse.
The belief that language is the lens through which we see the world has been a part of American popular culture since the 1940s. Given its tremendous influence, I was surprised to learn that its origins are a hypothesis proposed by an insurance fire inspector named Benjamin Whorf, who wrote about linguistics as a side hobby. As our hero Louise tells us in Arrival, his hypothesis (known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) holds that “The language you speak determines how you think, [and] affects how you see everything.” If you have ever heard the story that “Eskimos” (i.e. Inuits, Aleuts, and Yupiks) have dozens of words for snow and ice and can therefore perceive frozen water in ways the rest of us cannot, you have encountered Whorf’s idea in one of its many viral forms.
Precisely because this notion is so compelling and pervasive, researchers have been testing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for decades. Although there are some defenders of what is known as the "weaker Sapir-Whorf", that is to say very modest and limited effects of language on thought, the balance of research shows that language does not, in fact, have the power to create the kind of change the general public seems to believe it can. As Ben Panko notes in his review of "Arrival" for Smithsonian Magazine, well-known linguists, including luminaries such as Steven Pinker and Noam Chomsky, have persuasively discredited Sapir-Whorf. Even Whorf’s own colleague and collaborator, Edward Sapir, co-namesake of the hypothesis, expressed doubts about Whorf’s ideas, and (fun fact) the two never actually published a paper outlining the hypothesis together. To his credit, Whorf himself referred to his ideas as linguistic relativity, which implies more modest effects than the linguistic determinism more broadly believed.
So, if the way that popular culture understands the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is based on a misunderstanding, why has the term "Latinx" gained such widespread acceptance among the Anglophone intelligentsia?
To answer this question, we must first go back to the origins of the "Latinx" and the issue it was intended to address. In Spanish, a group of ninety-nine female pilots would be referred to as “las pilotas”, whereas a group of ninety-nine female pilots and one male pilot would be called “los pilotos”. Feeling erased and sidelined by such features of their language, in the 1970s, Argentinian, Paraguayan, or Uruguayan radical feminists (and/or Communists depending on whom you ask) began the practice of crossing out the -o ending of Spanish words with an X. They did this to protest the fact that the -o ending in Español serves both as the masculine and, in many instances, as the generic or gender-neutral form.
For over a generation, this practice languished in complete obscurity. It addressed an issue very few Spanish-speakers saw as a problem and provided a solution that is extremely unwieldy. Aspiring to make their societies fairer, these feminists sought to raise the linguistic visibility of women and the feminine, challenging grammar that could erase women or imply that masculinity was the default. Resultant words like "lxs pilotxs" were (and still are) unpronounceable and unusable in speech, but that was not considered a problem because the point was to make a political statement.
Even so, over the following decades, the influence of such feminists helped transform linguistic practices in Spanish. Alternative forms like "l@s pilot@s" began to emerge, with the intention of openly including both male and female grammatical gender. But this too has its critics. Not only is it still unpronounceable, critics complain that the “@” symbol encloses the feminine -a inside a larger -o, once again solidifying the supremacy of maleness.
More recently, in response to the increased prominence of non-binary gender identities, some Spanish-speaking queer activists began to argue that the -a/-o meaning of the “@” also reinforces the idea that there are only two genders. Their solution was to resurrect the -x as a signifier of inclusion by acknowledging non-binary people.
One of many problems with this practice is that the way it frames the use of the -x seems contradictory. If, as the argument goes, it is discriminatory to use the male -o ending because it excludes the female half of society, how is it suddenly desirable to use an essentially non-binary -x ending that excludes the 99.8% of the people who do identify within the male-female paradigm? This issue is likely the reason why -x is usually sold as "gender-neutral" rather than the non-binary ending that it actually is.
But what is gender in the first place?
Up until the 1950s, the word "gender" was used almost exclusively to refer to grammatical categories. In English, we don’t encounter grammatical gender other than as third-person pronouns (he, she, it). These three pronouns correspond to the three grammatical genders — masculine, feminine, and inanimate/neuter-of Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the ancient language spoken over 5,000 years ago that is great-great-great-grandparent to every Indo-European language today from Portuguese to Greek to Hindi. In PIE and most of its descendants, all nouns are assigned to a class that corresponds to the masculine-feminine-neuter tertiary.
Modern Romance languages, including Spanish, have done away with the inanimate gender. English, except for personal pronouns, has combined all three genders into one. In Spanish, houses and tables are feminine, whereas in German, houses are inanimate/neuter and tables are masculine. While there are sometimes reasons why a noun belongs to a certain class (e.g. The Spanish word for moon is feminine because of the Roman moon goddess Selene, while in German it is masculine because of the Germanic moon god Máni) it is important to note that these genders are simply noun classes. Since one could easily argue that the nature of gendered nouns teaches that gender is arbitrary, it is unclear that using an "X" to de-gender "lxs estudiantes" ("the students", otherwise masculine) and "lxs personxs" ("the people", normally feminine even when referring to an all-male group) will create a more just and inclusive society. But like the actions of their radical feminist predecessors in the 1970s, this is about making a political statement. It is about increasing the salience and awareness of gender identity, specifically non-binary identities.
But again, what is gender?
Contemporary English is unusual in that human gender and sex mean separate things. That is a recent development thanks to John Money, a sexologist who repurposed the grammatical term "gender" and highlighted the ways that our bodies and society's expectations (gender roles) based on perceptions of those bodies function separately. Money needed this distinction in order to help him explain his research on intersex people. Humans are a sexually reproducing species, and so we have one large group of people that produces ova (female), another large group that produces sperm (male), and a small group who have differences of sexual development that make them atypically male, atypically female, a mix of the two, or, rarely, neither. Money highlighted how society places all kinds of expectations on people based on whether they are perceived as male or female. He separated sex and gender in order to reveal the many ways in which they can function independently of each other, which was a necessary point to explain the lived experiences of those who are visibly intersex.
In the 1970s, radical feminism popularized Money’s use of the word gender and argued that what created the feminine gender was societal oppression of female bodies. More recently, this position has brought some feminists into open conflict with trans activism because the radical feminist interpretation of gender excludes women born with male genitalia.
In the 21st century, some strands of queer activism have sought to reunite sex and gender by arguing that these two concepts are one and the same. In this view, because some people are intersex without it being noticeably apparent, their sex is “unknowable”, whereas their gender can be ascertained by asking them. And because some people identify as non-binary, to use either male or female grammatical endings in reference to them is unacceptable.
But how did this queer activist practice make it into the mainstream?
In 2004, "Latinx" first entered the English lexicon through academic writing in the humanities, where it remained relatively unnoticed for over a decade. That all changed when tragedy struck the Pulse nightclub, an Orlando gay bar, in June 2016. In the wake of this shooting, in which roughly 90% of the victims were of Latin-American heritage, English-speaking reporters (particularly from left-leaning media outlets) sought to use respectful terminology, and started spreading the term. "Latinx" was sold to the public as a more inclusive, gender-neutral alternative to "Latino", but the problem is, English already has a gender-neutral adjective for this community: Latin. In any case, nobody on the left wanted to be seen as a boor or as someone who wasn't up-to-date with the latest LGBT terminology. The result was that almost overnight, Latinos became “Latinxs” in the Anglophone American media, regardless of the Latin-American community's opinion or knowledge of the term.
Since this change to "Latinx" was sold as gender-neutral language, let’s ask ourselves for a moment what removing linguistic gender could accomplish.
Thankfully, we don’t have to wonder, hypothesize, or conduct tests to find out what effect gender-neutral language will have on gender equality, because there are already many cultures with perfectly gender-neutral languages that have been so for centuries. One of the most widely-spoken gender-neutral languages is Farsi, (otherwise known as Persian), in which pronouns, nouns, adjectives, and words for professions are all perfectly gender-neutral and the same for everyone, regardless of sex or gender identity. Farsi has already achieved the linguistic goals that queer activists hope to implement in order to usher in inclusivity and gender equality. And yet, in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, very little of that promised utopia exists. Another language, Finnish, is almost as gender-neutral as Persian, except that many professions contain the word mies (man) in them. And yet Finland enjoys one of the most gender-egalitarian societies on the planet. So if gender-neutral language doesn’t result in greater gender equality, what does?
In a word — culture.
Even if one could radically re-engineer a language like Spanish to rid it of grammatical gender, there is no evidence that it would accomplish anything. In order to make society more inclusive, it takes far more than some newly-minted words. Turns out, transforming societies takes a great deal of work and requires the active consent and participation of the culture as a whole.
I suspect that the term "Latinx" has become so popular despite the compelling evidence against its efficacy largely because of social media, which tends to elevate easy, “snack-able” messaging at the expense of more accurate and nuanced understandings. Particularly online, most people like to have their pre-existing beliefs validated and be affirmed as one of the “good” people on the “correct” side of the culture wars. For these purposes, “Latinx” functions perfectly. The idea that the simple and relatively straightforward act of tinkering with a grammatical ending (in this case, changing a single letter in a foreign language) can have such a significant and far-reaching effect is enticing. It offers the promise of growth, progress, and the significance of being a good person with very little effort — we merely need to start using some new, better words and we can transcend our former limitations.
Admittedly, the notion that words can be so powerful is attractive, even if it is unfounded. Words like "Latinx" have spread like wildfire thanks to the power of social media and people’s desire to be seen as "woke". But, there are political costs to the effort to spread gender-neutral language, regardless of how well-intentioned or noble it may be. We on the left so often talk about the lived experiences of the most victimized and overlooked, but we have seemingly failed to give much thought to what happens when we make a sizable faction of society feel similarly overlooked or threatened by our linguistic efforts at social engineering. Given the cultural tension and polarization that such language-tinkering exacerbates (efforts that are likely fruitless anyway), this is a bad investment and poor strategy. If we truly wish to create a world of gender equality and social justice, women and gender minorities deserve better than superficial and ineffectual, quick fixes.
Published Oct 17, 2019
Updated May 15, 2023
Published in Issue III: Language
