Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is proud of her roots — but don’t call her a Latina: she prefers the gender-neutral pronoun “Latinx.”
The 28-year-old democratic socialist upset House Democratic Caucus chair Joe Crowley (D-NY) in the New York primary on Tuesday.
“Latinx,” as HuffPost explained in 2016, is the new, progressive way to refer to people of Latin American descent, replacing the traditional -o or -a for male or female, respectively” (original links):
Latinx is the gender-neutral alternative to Latino, Latina and even Latin@. Used by scholars, activists and an increasing number of journalists, Latinx is quickly gaining popularity among the general public. It’s part of a “linguistic revolution” that aims to move beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of Latin American descendants. In addition to men and women from all racial backgrounds, Latinx also makes room for people who are trans, queer, agender, non-binary, gender non-conforming or gender fluid.
According to Google Trends data cited by HuffPost, the term was virtually unknown in Internet searches before 2016.
Ocasio-Cortez is a big fan of the term, judging from her Twitter feed:
It is not clear whether Ocasio-Cortez herself identifies as gender-neutral. If so, she could become the first gender-neutral member of Congress, should she win the general election in November.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.