English-speaking learners of Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, and many other languages are often confused by the grammatical feature of gender. Why is it el libro (the book) but la llave (the key)? It seems illogical to assign inanimate objects to masculine or feminine categories. Because of this mentality, people often see these languages as restrictive and binary.

The truth is much more complicated. First, these languages may seem binary, but they can contain a “neuter” gender. For example, Romanian’s neuter nouns act masculine in the singular and feminine in the plural. This complexity reveals that grammatical gender has little to do with literal gender and is simply an arbitrary categorization of nouns into two or more buckets. It’s not an entirely predictable system, and it certainly does not reflect human gender norms.

The two buckets that languages like Spanish provide are nonetheless seen as restrictive by some. Thus, terms like “Latinx” or “Latine” were developed by queer and feminist Spanish-speaking communities in the early 2000s to be gender-neutral. The Real Academia Española—the organization that standardizes the Spanish language—has rejected the use of these terms, asserting that the term Latino is sufficient for inclusivity.

Latino is defined as masculine, so people see it as being exclusive of women and non-binary people. However, the Spanish language is more complex than people think. For example, when referring to a group of only females, one would use ellas (they). When talking about a group that includes both males and females, one would default to the use of the masculine ellos (also they) despite the fact that females are also included in the group.

Defaulting to the masculine form is another topic of controversy, but those who see it as problematic must be reminded again that grammatical gender is not the same as human gender. Gender in language developed naturally, resulting in “vestido”—meaning dress—being a masculine noun. Is it more likely the creators of the Spanish language deliberately made “vestido” a masculine noun to encourage crossdressing, or did the word simply come about by the irregular evolutions of language? The answer should be clear: there were neither crossdressers nor oppressive patriarchs involved in creating the Spanish language. It simply evolved the way it evolved.

What is important to realize is that the Spanish language is not as binary as people think and that the masculine form of a word can, in fact, include the feminine. The word Latino is perfectly inclusive of all groups, and of course, when referring to only women, Latina can be used instead.

If Latino is inclusive already, why do people feel the need to create new terms instead of adapting the language that already exists? In English, non-binary people began using the pronoun they, a pronoun that already exists and is used in colloquial language to refer to singular people. Instead of doing the same in Spanish and adapting existing language to be more inclusive, some found it better to create new words that only 4% of the U.S. Latino population actually use. 

In fact, by the very act of creating new terms, these people further cement the binary into the Spanish language. They create a reality where Latino and Latina must exclusively be used to refer to men and women respectively, and Latinx is the only gender-neutral term. Language is fluid, and attempting to solidify it by forcing a single view of inclusivity onto it will fail.