I won't be Irishx for Saint Patrick's Day
How about Saint Patrix Day, for a change? Well, maybe just go with "paxxy" — as that could go either way. It would certainly be more gender-neutral — and inclusive — than the patriarchal and "gendered" form.
But then, the Irish, like myself, might object, since it's objectionable to deny objective reality — and even worse to insist that others do, too.
A recent poll of people of Spanish and Latin ancestry object to being told they must "identify" as "Latinx" — a neutered malapropism that subsumes them all into the same androgynous set. Cue Boy George's "Karma Chameleon" song from back in the '80s — one of the first attempts to get people to think in such terms.
Or rather, to get them not to think.
There are men — and there are women. This is sex. This is biology. The sexes aren't interchangeable, irrespective of how a person of a given sex elects to "identify" — or dress.
Just as St. Patrick was a man.
Similarly, there are people who are Spanish or Mexican. Or South or Central American. Of both sexes, too. There is no such country as "Latin America" and therefore no such thing as a "Latinx" person. Anyone who understands the diversity of the region knows that it encompasses a rainbow of different people and cultures — though once again, just the same two sexes.
That's why it's insulting as well as ungrammatical to refer to these different people generically — and androgynously.
But never mind that. It's ok to insult "people of color" when it suits the agenda of the radical left — that being to collectivize people by making them fungible. Just the same as making objective reality — male and female — a fungible thing.
The good news is that the people being insulted aren't having it.
WPA Intelligence and Visto Media recently conducted two polls of people of Hispanic, Latin, and Central and South American ethnicity and asked them — as opposed to the leftist elites telling them — how they prefer to identify themselves. Barely one percent indicated they'd like to be identified as "Latinx" — which of course is no identify at all, being non-specific as well as androgynous. It is impossible to discern from that term whether the person is male or female — or what his ethnic background is.
This is precisely the point of using such terms, of foisting such terms on people who never asked to be so "identified." The arrogance — and condescension — of this is halting. It is like naming a pet. Except we are talking about people — whom the left regards as their pets.
The other 99 percent polled said they'd like to be identified as Hispanic or Latino or — gasp! — American. Better get out the smelling salts.
A few dozen leftists just hit the floor.
"This is pretty much consistent with everything we've seen from Gallup and from other polls that show most Hispanics want to be called Hispanic," said Giancarlo Sopo, who is a media strategist associated with the pollsters.
The malapropism Latinx is "not very popular in our community," he added.
Unsurprisingly, people on the left (many of whom are white) attack Latinos and Hispanics — many of whom consider themselves Americans — for not "embracing" the malapropism and being good little doggies. An article in the Daily Wire has Democrats screeching that "machismo culture" is to blame. Also "too much homophobia and transphobia" among Hispanics and Latinos and Americans generally.
The demeaning framing is of a piece with everything the left does — to those who do not agree with the left. To Those who fail to obey the left.
Well, thank God for "machismo culture," then.
The Daily Wire piece goes on to point out the obvious: that Latinos and Hispanics have more pressing things to worry about — like the surge in violent crime that's ruining their neighborhoods, the inflation that's eating away their wealth, and the porous border. More Hispanics and Latinos are worried about that than the left wants you to think are worried about paying homage to the latest leftist pieties.
A clear majority of those polled — 56 percent — believe that the country is headed in the wrong direction. In the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump increased his share of the Hispanic/Latino vote. The same pattern seems to be forming again in the aftermath of the midterm elections.
Something that truly worries the left is that Hispanics and Latinos — people from Central and South America, generally — are fundamentally family-oriented and traditionally minded. In other words, they are not reliable, reflexive leftists. They do not believe that "topics such as gender identity and sexual orientation should be discussed with kids," Sopo said.
Except at home and with their parents.
And they are catching on to the semantic games played by the left.
"I think Hispanic voters are incredibly smart and nuanced," Sopo says. They are "sophisticated enough to decipher fact from fiction." Like the fact that a man isn't a woman because he "identifies" as one. And that to "identify" as Latinix is to lose one's identity in a miasma malapropism invented by leftists to trivialize the diverse range of people who are Hispanic, Latino, Mexican, Honduran, Bolivian, Salvadoran...and American.
A.J. Rice is president and CEO of Publius PR, editor-in-chief of The Publius National Post, and author of the #1 Amazon bestseller The Woking Dead: How Society's Vogue Virus Destroys Our Culture.
Image via Pxhere.