I keep seeing this argument for some reason, so I want to clarify:

1) Gender-neutral x in Spanish ("latinx") is not externally imposed. Plenty of native Spanish speakers used it, some still do. I don't know who first came up with it (it's kinda hard to know that for words, and in any case seems likely to have been independently invented multiple times), but I have seen no indication it was not, y'know, a native Spanish speaker objecting to the genderedness of their language, and in any case it subsequently proliferated via other people using it to speak Spanish. To the extent white progressive Americans use it, they mostly only use it for that one word (because they mostly don't speak Spanish!), whereas the usage in Spanish is widely attested in more or less every gendered word that can describe a mixed group.

2) Gender-neutral x is bad, in my opinion, because it is an inferior unpronounceable version of the current winner of gender-neutral Spanish, gender-neutral e. This is of course subjective. Nevertheless still worth saying.

3) Lots of native Spanish speakers object to gender-neutral Spanish. Lots of native Spanish speakers don't (hi). This is because there's half a billion of us and we accordingly do not agree on everything (or, indeed, anything). It would be ridiculous to take one of these groups and say one of them represents the true will of the population and the other doesn't; it's a live matter of disagreement (as is, for that matter, gender-neutral English among those who speak that language. "It is grammatically incorrect to use singular 'they' instead of 'he or she'" is still a position some people hold).

If you are tempted to say "In Spanish the gender neutral term for people from Latin America is literally just “Latino”", as I just saw on tumblr, you might think you are respecting other cultures by not imposing your own values on them and acknowledging their self-determination. You are not. You are wading in the middle of a cultural conflict and deliberately taking the regressive side. If you heard someone from another culture say "actually homophobia is a valued tradition of ours and we don't want Westerners trying to impose their values here", you would (I dearly hope) not just take their word for it that everyone in their society, including e.g. gay people, agrees. Considering applying that here as well.

TIL:

1) some people use the word "boni" instead of "bonuses"

2) they're wrong to do so, aesthetically, because "boni" is a very ugly word. i guess on some level i've known this for as long as my aesthetic considerations have had their current form, and so i didn't learn it today, but i did notice it today

3) they're separately wrong by the rules of the game where you import Latin plurals into English, because "bonus" is not a Latin noun, it's an adjective.

(there is, also, a Latin noun "bonus". but the English word derives from the adjective)

i love this entire section from Spanish wikipedia article on neutral Spanish

Alrededor de la hispano-esfera hay muchos lugares que se atribuyen tener acento neutro.​ Tal es el caso de México, en especial su capital, donde dicen tener acento neutro, su argumento se basa en la cantidad de doblaje en cine y televisión.​ En Bogotá, la capital de Colombia, sus habitantes dicen tener un español puro y sin acento,​ según ellos (los bogotanos)​ se habla el mejor español del mundo.​ En Perú, se suele afirmar que el español de la costa (español ribereño), especialmente el de Lima sería el más neutro. La creencia es debido a que en la década del ochenta, el país fue muy solicitado para realizar doblajes.​ Según un estudio de actitudes lingüísticas coordinado desde la Universidad de Bergen, en Noruega en colaboración con Darío Rojas, magíster en lingüística de la Universidad de Chile, los chilenos creen que en Perú se habla el mejor español debido a su pronunciación y vocabulario. La malinterpretación del objetivo de dicho estudio por parte de algunos medios de comunicación ayudó a afianzar dicha creencia entre los ciudadanos peruanos.​ En Guayaquil, Ecuador, dicen que su tono no tiene forma cantada y su pronunciación es clara.​ Respecto a España, en Madrid, la capital, dicen que los acentos pertenecen a los gallegos, los catalanes o los andaluces, mientras Madrid no tiene acento.

(citations removed)

you could replace this whole paragraph with "lots of people think the way they speak is unaccented and everyone else has an accent, this a predictable result of how accents work and also completely incoherent". this is incidentally equivocating "neutral spanish" (the actual subject of the article, a more-or-less real thing) with "neutral accent" (meaningless).

(ok admittedly the bit where people in Chile think people in Peru speak objectively better Spanish is weird)

I have by now seen multiple Spanish-language articles on Elliot Page using he/they pronouns that translate 'they' as 'éllos'. Which, in case you don't know any Spanish, does not in the least capture the use of gender-neutral they and is just literally translating it as a third person plural (masculine) pronoun.

Dear the media: this is a problem. We have a solution. You could probably have patched that particular instance of the mistake without it, but there is a larger pattern of your failures with talking about trans people, especially but not exclusively nonbinary trans people, that you need to fix and aren't. We've been telling you about the problem and the solutions we've come up for it for years now. Some of you listened; good for you! Others said things like "it's an aberration" and "we don't need gender-neutral grammar, Spanish already has perfectly useful gender-neutral grammar with no problems whatsoever". You were wrong. You will continue to show how wrong you are whenever you try to report on this subject. You can grow up and join the conversation we've been having and maybe you'll come up with something you like more than 'elle', or you can continue to fail because you lack the linguistic tools to do your job and refuse to acquire them. Up to you, really.

Well, that was frustrating.

I needed to download an app for something, but when I looked it up on Google Play it had really bad ratings. Concerned, I decided to look at what the reviews were saying, but google just said "no reviews in your language". by which they meant "all the reviews are in Spanish, because this app is for something in Argentina and all users speak Spanish". As it happens I am perfectly capable of reading Spanish, but I typically default to setting my language on various devices and bits of software to English if possible (much easier to e.g. look up how to do something when the instructions you found on the internet and the labels on the menu options are using the same words)

I tried to get it to show me reviews anyway. No success. Tried to look through the app's preferences to change the language. Nothing. Tried to look at the web version of Google Play. Nope. Tried to log in with a different google account that does have Spanish set as its preferred language. Google Play remained in English.

Eventually what worked was changing my phone's language settings, from English primary and Spanish secondary to the other way around. I could see what the bad reviews had to say, figure out if that problem applied to my situation, and move on with my life.

I'm still kind of angry at Google, though. This whole thing could have been obviated with an option to look at reviews even when you don't speak the language. It could also have been obviated by Google, company famous for both knowing everything and for organising information, to notice the fact I had directly told them, twice, that I speak two languages, both when setting up my google account and in my phone's language settings. But no, they decided bilinguals do not exist and also people need to be very thoroughly protected from ever looking at content in a language they can't read.

Yes, I'm a weirdo who sets zir phone to English while living in Latin America. You could blame this on me making bad life choices. Of course, if I hadn't, I would have had this exact same problem in reverse when dealing with the various apps on my phone whose primary audience speaks English, which is most of them, so there's no winning move for me here.

re: that one tumblr post about how English doesn't have a phrase like 'bon appetit', i am reminded that my language does have a word for that (provecho*) and also: it makes me weirdly uncomfortable

i am not sure why. maybe because i did not really grow up with it, and an unfamiliar courtesy (which, by default, i rarely engage in) means you have risked offending someone. maybe because of my general distrust of people marking my actions ("yes, i am eating food. yes, you have noticed this. why are you remarking on it. what's your agenda"). maybe it just reminds me of another food-related courtesy, blessing the meal, and I know why that one makes me uncomfortable.

anyway actually the idea of other people being uncomfortable by the absence of such a phrase is a reminder of the rich tapestry of diversity that is human experience and also fuel for the ever-burning anxiety fires.

*actually usage is more complicated. some people say it before a meal, some after, some if they arrive somewhere where someone else is eating but they are not. the latter is the version i'm most familiar with.