You have to admire the alphabet crowd. They exhibit more than a little creativity and histrionic aptitude. Just when you think they have found the limits of absurdity in language and/or behavior, they find a way to keep the creative juices flowing.

Over the past year, most liberals have figured out that using the term “Latinx” to describe Latinos is a political dud. Worse for them, most Latinos find the term offensive or at least off-putting because it amounts to a direct attack on their language, which is gendered.

While gendered language seems odd to English speakers, it is extremely common. English itself used to be gendered, although the practice died out centuries ago. It has nothing to do with sexism; it is just grammar.

The alphabet crowd, though, is not as concerned with winning votes as with winning power struggles, so they have yet to concede the language wars. In fact, they are stepping it up, with a new explanation for why everybody else should sit down, shut up, and do what they say.

See? Last year Latinx had to be used because “Latino” is sexist. Since nobody on the Left cares a whit about women anymore, the alphabet crowd has used their trump card: transphobia!

It bears noting, since I am so critical of the alphabet people, that I suspect that most people with actual gender dysphoria aren’t actually in on this particular grift. Until a few years ago we almost never heard a peep out of truly trans people about much of anything, except perhaps pleas for compassion and understanding.

No longer, though. This is a social justice juggernaut, and the goal is power, not tolerance of difference.

The claim of transphobia is absurd, of course. Not a single sane person even thought for a moment about a connection between “Latinx” and trans issues. It is simply invented.

The debate over the use of Latinx (and more recently, Latine, which I prefer) to refer to people with origins in Latin America has become a source of fierce disagreements among Latine people of all races, ages, genders and sexual identities.

But the debates largely miss the point: Whether one prefers to use Latinx or Latine, both terms recognize and honor the presence of gender-fluid identities. What is most striking about these “debates” is that they rarely (if ever) center the voices and experiences of the transgender, nonbinary and gender-fluid Latine people who do identify with the term.

The linguistic debate on Latinx, then, serves as a useful example to understand the transphobia prevalent in our community and the importance of adopting language that better reflects our communities writ large.

It never seems to occur to the SJW crowd that forcing other people to speak and behave exactly as they want is not inclusive and tolerant; it is dictatorial and bullying. Demanding everybody in society bow to one’s own wishes, without even an attempt to persuade, is the sort of behavior that earns one scorn.

Interpreting that scorn as the result of prejudice may be ego-stroking, but it is self-deception. The scorn didn’t precede their demand, but rather is a result of it. They earned the scorn, and deserve every bit of it.

Not that they will learn. Social Justice Warriors know all, see all, and can detect your secret thoughts. They have the keys to the moral universe, and we must bow to their superior wisdom.

Alas, most of us are too ignorant to comply. If only we did, more of America would become paradises like San Francisco.