Yesterday, Jill Biden spoke at the LatinX IncluXion Luncheon, and — actually, wait a moment, what are the rules here, again? The “LatinX IncluXion Luncheon”? What in the hell is going on with that name?
The stated purpose of the neologism “Latinx” is to remove the gendered part of the Spanish word “Latino”/“Latina” and replace it with something more “inclusive.” The obvious purpose of the neologism “IncluXion” is to match the “x” that results from the degendered “Latino” in the following word, “inclusion,” even if “inclusion” itself isn’t actually gendered. But what can explain the event organizers’ failure to match this pattern in the final ungendered word, “Luncheon”? And why, if the existence of gendered words is so problematic, didn’t Jill Biden apply the same practice throughout her keynote speech?
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