Your girlfriend's attitude generally reflects those of Hispanics in the US, most of whom prefer to be referred to as "Hispanic". The rationale behind Latinx is that it covers both Latino and Latina, while also acknowledging the trans/nonbinary/genderqueer contingent. But I think the term "Hispanic" covers everybody as well...
"Latinx" was so obviously created by an English-primary speaker.
Edit: Wikipedia traces "womxn" back to the 1970s, but it seems unlike "womyn" it didn't get much currency in ordinary feminist usage, only finding purchase when the queer angle was added.
Latinx is much better. It (1) avoids acknowledging that Spain was once a world power, (2) intentionally introduces an unwanted misspelling of a common Spanish word that accentuates the Castilian lisp (3) intentionally misgenders the vast majority of people from those regions and (4) denies the existence of non-European South American languages and cultures.
Let’s rewind 900 more years to the 5th/6th century and play madlibs: “English (demonym) is offensive because it focuses on the subjugation of the Romano-British people by the Angles.” Does this example still fit, or is it too far back in history to be offensive?
So as soon as you have to discuss what they speak, you're bringing in Spain.
As opposed to... checks notes the Holy Roman Empire?
> (2) intentionally introduces an unwanted misspelling of a common Spanish word that accentuates the Castilian lisp
That's just how the linguistics do. This is the same drivel that tries to argue chop chop and long time no see are somehow offensive, instead of just loanphrases from Chinese pidjin.
> (3) intentionally misgenders the vast majority of people from those regions
No, again this demonstrates a profound ignorance of how language actually works in practice. -o does not imply "default male" in Spanish. There's tomes on this stuff. Grammatical gender is not social gender. A mesa doesn't identify as female.
> (4) denies the existence of non-European South American languages and cultures.
Again, Latin/[aoex]?/ is better in this regard how exactly?
The real rationale is one of imperialism: everyone should use a non gendered language. Like English, things would be so much more simple if everyone used English.
So going for latinx to erase part of a gendered language is a sneaky first attack on this language.
I mean, the whole """Latinx""" thing is just non Latino whites replacing a Spanish word (Latino) with an English word, then telling the demographic it refers to to use this English word to refer to themselves
I have no idea how this dynamic doesn't manage to piss off more people
It's very much the same sort of situation that we've used words like "mankind" and "peace on Earth, good will towards men" and women have always understood that "men" included them implicitly. It's only recently that women have chosen to take linguistic offense and rise up and complicate the language in search of manufactured equity.