THE ARTICLE
BEHIND THE SCENES:
The topic of Filipinos being called Filipinx in order to be more inclusive always seemed ridiculous to me even in the past. It was unnecessary since the term “Filipino” has also always been considered as gender neutral, so I didn’t really get the point of making another label to call those who lived in the Philippines or considered themselves as Philippine citizens. That is why I pitched it to my features editor back then as I deemed it a topic worth talking about, and after running through it and explaining why I wanted it to be the topic of my article at that time, it got approved to be written.
Since it was more on the ‘serious’ side of feature writing, making sure that I had enough research was one of my priorities then. Of course, I had to really understand what Filipinx meant beyond the shallow and initial knowledge I had of the term, and to know what the majority thought of it so that I can impart my information about it through my article—but also make sure that I wasn’t making it seem like I wanted to influence them in a certain way of thinking, just giving them more background so that they can form a conclusion themselves.
