On “todxs”, “tod@s”, and “todes”

In recent years, there has been a significant push by some Spanish speakers to replace the gender-neutral use of masculine plural words like “todos” (“everyone” or “all”) with true gender-neutral alternatives such as “todxs”, “tod@s”, and “todes”¹. The point of this short text will not be to argue whether we should change this aspect of the language, but rather to discuss what I consider a weird preference most people seem to have on which option to use as an alternative.

In my experience, while “todxs” and “tod@s” are not commonly used in fully formal settings, they seem to enjoy ample usage in semiformal and informal written contexts, often when addressing large audiences. I have rarely seen any pushback against this. However, the same is not true of “todes”. Every time I’ve seen it used, it was largely met with either anger or ridicule by the same people who didn’t bat an eye when presented with the other options. For some reason, the people around me appear to have agreed that “todxs” and “tod@s” are acceptable (at least in certain contexts) but “todes” is not.

Usually, the arguments against the use of “todes” I have heard fit into 2 categories. The first one is that it sounds bad or ridiculous. Of course, this is kind of subjective, and I don’t really agree, but most importantly, I sincerely can’t see how “todxs” and “tod@s” could sound okay and less ridiculous than “todes”, specially pronunciation-wise.

The second one is that “todes” is, in some way, “going too far”. The people arguing this may even agree that using gendered plurals is not ideal, but the intentional modification of language is too much of an effort for it to be worth it. Setting aside whether that’s the case, I would have to argue that “todxs” and “tod@s” are more transgressive to traditional Spanish than “todes”. For “todxs”, you would either have to pronounce it as /’todks/, which does not fit with the rest of Spanish phonotactics at all, or as something else, which would not fit with the very straightforward Spanish orthography. In the case of “tod@s”, it is not even composed purely of letters, it contains a symbol with no obvious way to pronounce. “Todes”, on the other hand, breaks only the minimal amount of Spanish rules necessary to deliver what it attempts to do.

So, even though the use of “todes” is generally judged worse than the use of “todxs” and “tod@s”, I fail to see how that makes sense. I find strange that “todes” is not unanimously agreed to be better than these other options.