Jeis Whittaker says they cannot tell what the pronouns line is meant to communicate
Private individual interviewed by KXAN; a native Texan who identifies as non-binary
“Republicans are using people like me and my friends as a wedge issue to distract from their own failings - on that much, I agree with Hinojosa. But it's really easy for commentary about that problem to descend into complete apathy about trans issues. I'm unsure what 'my pronouns are mom, Texan, and soon-to-be Governor' is supposed to communicate. And I don't think actual swing voters will get it, either.”
Source and context
Interview
About this source
KXAN interviewed transgender and non-binary Texans about Hinojosa's "Pronouns" ad and James Talarico's separate Fox News remarks. This record captures the Whittaker passages specifically; the campaign's own statement to KXAN in the same article is recorded separately. Whittaker is an interviewee rather than a public officeholder or commentator. KXAN blocks automated access; the text was read from the syndicated copy at the archived URL.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Before the quotation
KXAN interviewed transgender and non-binary Texans about the "Pronouns" ad and about James Talarico's separate Fox News remarks the same week.
After the quotation
Other Texans in the same report said the messaging dampened their enthusiasm to vote while they still preferred the Democratic candidates to their opponents. The Hinojosa campaign's own statement to KXAN did not mention transgender Texans.
How this statement is classified
Case context: Did Gina Hinojosa’s “Pronouns” ad mock transgender Texans?
The label describes this statement’s response within the context above.
Why this label?
The case asks whether the closing line of Hinojosa's September 9 "Pronouns" ad — "My pronouns are Mom, Texan, and soon to be: Governor" — mocked transgender Texans; that line is the fixed reference point, not Abbott's attacks on her record. Whittaker's response to the line is critical throughout: it is unintelligible, it will not land with the voters it targets, and the genre it belongs to tends toward apathy about transgender people. The closest competing label is mixed_or_conditional, because Whittaker expressly agrees with Hinojosa on one point. That loses because the agreement is about Republican tactics, a different target from the ad, and DI does not reverse a label by treating agreement with a speaker's diagnosis as support for the conduct at issue. Whittaker does not say the line mocked transgender people, which is why condemns rests on the criticism actually made rather than on the case question's strongest form.
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- People and groups discussed
- Gina Hinojosa
Did Gina Hinojosa’s “Pronouns” ad mock transgender Texans?
Explore the case context, sources and public responses.
More from this case
Read the full case“Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, spawned an online backlash from some lefty trans posters by appearing to mock pronouns. "My pronouns are mom, Texan and soon-to-be governor," she says in a recent campaign video posted to YouTube. When I made a post on Bluesky pointing out that none of those words are pronouns, and implied that it was wrong to mock trans people's pronouns with this style of joke, a bunch of Bluesky liberals took umbrage.”Read statement
“Yes, I saw the 'my pronouns are' ad, and yes. I also think that was a bad move that didn't consider the reality trans people living here face; but Governor Abbott wants to erase trans people altogether.”Read statement
Gina Hinojosa for Texas
“Culture wars are over in 2026. 99.9% of us lost, and corporates power won. While we fought each other at Thanksgiving, 15 billionaire tech dudes won; they amassed power and now they are about to blow up the planet if we don't come back together to save ourselves.”Read statement