I mentioned this to a transgender Mexican woman I know on Discord, and her response was: So take that for what it's worth :Dget fucked royal academy, we don't have to follow your rules, and your spanish sucks
I mean it is an academy of the Spanish language sanctioned by the crown, like the royal mint or real madrid. And they come up with weird words that no one uses every now and then, like cederrĂ³n (CD-ROM). I don't think anyone cares about them beyond perhaps people who use the language professionally like writers and editors. Fun fact "elle" is the name the double consonant "Ll" which the RAE decided to stop considering a thing some time ago, so it is a weird choice. We technically already have a gender neutral pronoun "Ello" but last time i checked it was rather rude to use on people.
Would "Ello" be kind of like "it" in english? I don't speak Spanish, just wondering what would make it rude. In French, the gender neural pronoun is iel (pronounced yell) but to me just reminds me of the year 2010 pop star Yelle: Maybe i just need to spend time with french speaking gender neutral peeps to get used to it? They in english flows pretty naturally IMO.
Kind of like "it", yes. It is rude because it is used for objects or concepts, not living things, so it is kind of dehumanizing. That said, I don't know people who identify themselves as gender neutral so I don't know how they want others to address them.
Haha yes, although I'd replace that with "the audacity to think they can control a language." Spain does still technically have a king, after all, and the RAE has a long enough history as such I can't really blame them for not giving it up.