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Comment by nineplay | Hacker News Reader

I completely agree with you, with the qualifier that the article is very much part of the problem. These sort of issues always start small and then the media picks them up and splashes them on the front page purely as outrage bait.

I have absolutely no reason to care about this issue. I'll bet 99% of the people reading the article have absolutely no reason to care. I don't care if I see Latin(o|a|x) on a form, if I was creating a form and someone asked me to include Latinx I'd say 'sure, why not'. This is an artificial culture war created by a click happy media.

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> I'll bet 99% of the people reading the article have absolutely no reason to care.

but the article says

>while 40 percent [of Hispanics] found it offensive.

The author's numbers are questionable. The study is linked - 800 participants, the actual question

> Does the use of the term LatinX to describe the Hispanic or Latina(o) community bother or offend you?

I'd say there's a difference between "bother or offend" and "found offensive". Breaking it down further

> 20% "Yes, a lot" > 11%, "Yes, somewhat" > 9%, "Yes a little"

20% 'a little or somewhat bothered' is a lot different than 20% offended

If we trust Wikipedia that Latinos are 18% of the US population and 20% of that population is "a lot" offended by Latinx, we get down to 3%. I'll grant that I was incorrect in my 99% assumption, but 97% isn't much better.

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017d-81be-dee4-a5ff-efbe7...

So the author’s claim is correct, that 40% of the population that the slur claims to refer to find it offensive. Although some of that 40% just found it "somewhat" or "a little" offensive.

20% said it bothered them, somewhat or a little. I find "bothered" much milder than "offensive"

Are we really arguing over the validity of a brand new activist word coined to describe a culture where some reasonable percentage of said culture find it bothersome/offensive, and is likely never going to used by 97% of the culture because the predominant language they use is grammatically gendered?

This to me smacks of elitism and making the intention more important than the effect.

The issue with the 97% percent you arrived at is the implicit assumption that only people from the US read the article.

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