Maya Contreras tells Hinojosa’s campaign the pronouns line is “giving anti-trans”
Maya ContrerasWriter and political strategist, replying on her personal Threads account
Writer and political strategist Maya Contreras replied to the Hinojosa campaign's own Threads post of the "Pronouns" ad, saying she hoped Hinojosa would win but that the words named in the ad are nouns rather than pronouns, asking the campaign's social media team not to repeat the line, and calling it conservative and anti-transgender.
“I hope you win. But those are not pronouns (mom, Texas, and Governor are nouns). I don't know who your social media team is but please tell them not to do this again. It's giving conservative, it's giving anti-trans.”
Original text
Original video
Where this statement fits
Did Gina Hinojosa’s “Pronouns” ad mock transgender Texans?
On September 8, 2026, Greg Abbott’s campaign opened a transgender-focused line of attack on Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for governor of Texas, nicknaming her “Gender Bender Gina,” cataloguing her votes against Texas restrictions on gender-affirming care and school policy, and posting an altered screenshot of one of her own public-schools ads in which an American flag had been replaced with a transgender pride flag. The next day Hinojosa released a campaign ad titled “Pronouns,” which her campaign said would run statewide and in which she is the only speaker. In it she said Abbott wanted to run a campaign calling her “too woke” while she would run one about working people being “too broke,” closing with the line “My pronouns are Mom, Texan, and soon to be: Governor.” Whether that closing line mocked transgender people is the matter in dispute. Transgender writers and advocates said it borrowed a mocking right-wing joke about pronouns at their expense, while the campaign defended the pivot away from culture-war argument. Hinojosa has voted against the Texas restrictions Abbott cites, and the criticism of her is about the ad’s rhetoric rather than her legislative record.
Source and context
Original text
About this source
Contreras's reply posted about an hour after the campaign's Threads post, at 12:00 p.m. Central on September 9, 2026. It is the most-engaged reply on the thread, with roughly 16,300 reactions.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Original video
About this source
The campaign's own Threads post carrying the ad video, published at 10:54 a.m. Central on September 9, 2026. It is the post Maya Contreras replied to, and it drew more than 6,000 reactions and 1,700 replies. A Threads community note written by another user was attached to the post; its text was not readable without an account and is not relied on here.
Before the quotation
The Hinojosa campaign posted the ad video to Threads at 10:54 a.m. Central on September 9, 2026, a day after Greg Abbott's campaign opened a transgender-focused attack on her.
After the quotation
The reply became the most-engaged response on the thread, with roughly 16,300 reactions. The campaign did not reply to it; it answered a KXAN question about transgender voters two days later.
How this statement is classified
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, not Abbott's attacks on her record. Contreras rejects it in her own voice, calling it "conservative" and "anti-trans" and asking the campaign not to do it again, which is an express criticism of the conduct at issue. The closest competing label is “Mixed or conditional”, because she opens by saying "I hope you win." That loses because support for her candidacy is not a position on the ad, and a polite preface does not dilute an otherwise uniform present conclusion; nothing in the reply defends the line. “Challenged the characterization” also loses: the grammatical point about nouns is offered in service of the evaluation, not instead of it.
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- Gina Hinojosa
More from this case
Read the full caseHinojosa says the "Pronouns" ad was meant to rebuke culture-war politics
“What I was trying to communicate is to both Greg Abbott and to the culture wars. You can shove it with your culture wars. He had just accused me of working with teachers to try to trans kids. It's just ridiculous, right? … And so that was to say, look, we're not doing your culture wars.”Read statement
Greg Pak dislikes the "Pronouns" ad but credits Hinojosa for not waffling on trans rights
“Didn't like Hinojosa's recent "Pronouns" ad. I *DO* like her actual voting record in Texas for trans rights, and I'm glad that unlike some other politicians, she's not waffling on those stances.”Read statement
Katelyn Burns says it was wrong to mock trans people’s pronouns with this style of joke
“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
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- Maya Contreras tells Hinojosa’s campaign the pronouns line is “giving anti-trans”
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The Dispute Index. "Maya Contreras tells Hinojosa’s campaign the pronouns line is “giving anti-trans”". First published: 2026-09-18. Last updated: 2026-09-22. https://disputeindex.com/events/996-writer-and-political-strategist-maya-contreras-replied-to