@lina Of course, intent matters. I forget where I first learned the idea from but "intent matters" is something I've been holding onto. Even the intention behind intentions; like when someone does something malicious and then feigns ignorance (it was just a prank, bro).

>and a whole other thing when you're ignorant and you call someone latinx because you think that's inclusive
That's the tragic part to me. People who don't know any better end up using the term and causing confusion. The way I see things, it's superficially innocuous or benign, but there's an extra layer of insidiousness that I don't think most people care to realize; not necessarily out of malice but just because there are other things demanding their attention.

One of my friends is actually taking a "Latinx Studies" class as (I presume) the general ed portion of his degree, and he has vehemently voiced his hatred and boredom of that class. Ultimately though, he just suckers up and does the work so he can proceed in his... something medicine and therapy related degree. I'm very curious what the other students think of it. I think most people would rather move on with life rather than bring up the issue and stop it. Like I mentioned before, I can't blame him because that's far above his goal in that institution, but yknow, that's also how stupid ideas like that proliferate. A strange philosophical conundrum; are we duty bound to challenge stupid ideas like this no matter where they spawn? Perhaps it's easy to say yes if you have a lot of time on your hand, but some people are probably just way too busy and don't have the mental affordance to.

Part of me actually thinks "Latinx" is a spawn of academia rather than online mental illness. The latter is the disseminator, since academics tend to have a mental/social space utilizing social media.