A Texas woman alleges she was removed from a United Airlines flight after she accidentally misgendered a flight attendant.
Jenna Longoria, a women’s health and hormone expert from outside Austin, was traveling with her 16-month-old son and her mother. The incident occurred as Longoria was boarding her flight around 9 a.m. Wednesday at San Francisco International Airport.
“When [the flight attendant], who identifies as a woman, gave me our boarding passes, I said, ‘Thank you, sir.’ That is it. That is it,” Ms. Longoria told the New York Post.
“She got upset. I walked to the plane to go down the aisle. Then she held my mother back and wouldn’t let her come with me [past the gate],” she said.
Once on the plane, she asked a male flight attendant for help, saying that ’he’ — in reference to the other flight attendant — had detained her family at the gate.
“He said, ‘He?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’ He then said, ‘She’s wearing a dress,’” Ms. Longoria said.
“My son is in my hand crying, I’m trying to get on the plane,” she said. “As a mother, my prerogative is to get my son safely on the plane and not what the pronouns that someone goes by,” she said, adding she is “not very versed with pronouns.”
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