just like a casual psa: as a filipino born and raised in the philippines, nothing pisses me off more than my ethnicity being collectively called “filipinx” like. we are not latinxs whose language is gendered or whose language history has led to the use of “latinxs”. filipino is a gender neutral language. we don’t use “she” or “he” for pronouns, we simply use “siya”. we don’t use the words “wife” or “husband”, we simply use “asawa”. FILIPINO IS A GENDER NEUTRAL LANGUAGE. stop applying western standards to make up some new collective term for filipinos. our identity as a people is fucked enough as it is with colonial mentality. nobody from the philippines actually uses “filipinx” in reference to themselves. using “-x” as a suffix in an attempt to be gender neutral while referring to my ethnicity as a whole does more harm than good bc it makes it seem like my own language is not enough when it, in fact, is. why make up a new term under the guise of gender neutrality when the language itself is already gender neutral to begin with? it doesn’t make sense.
if you wanna identify as “filipinx” bc of diasporia, that’s cool. that’s for YOU. but all i ask is to not use it to collectively refer to my ethnicity as a whole. it feeds into the colonial mentality that is so ingrained in our culture, where many filipinos conform to western standards in everything, from language to fashion to beauty, and it needs to end. we don’t need westerners making it harder for us to embrace ourselves. it’s hard enough as it is.
back in 2015, tumblr made me start using “filipinx” to refer to my people under the guise of gender neutrality. this made me forget this small but significant part of my own culture. it made me forget my own language. thank god there were people who made me stop and think and get out of the western mentality that is so deeply ingrained in me by society. what i don’t understand is how this trend is still being used to this day.
just. please. it’s 2017. call us who we are: filipino.
