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Probably in an effort to embrace or promote transfeminism, some US politicians now list their pronouns on their twitter pages, e.g. Elizabeth Warren lists "she/her". (It's a big cultural trend to ask and tell it in many US campuses at least in the Democratic-leaning states.)

Do European politicians typically do this too, i.e. list their pronouns on their social media pages? If the answer depends on where the particular politician sits on the political spectrum in Europe, please qualify.

I see that Juncker is not listing it. And neither does Ursula von der Leyen (she does have "Mother of seven" in her brief profile though, but I'm not sure that qualifies as a pronoun [hint].) Hopefully there's some kind of survey on this pronoun declaration issue among (European) politicians.

the gods from engineering
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    I'm honestly struggling to see how pronouns relate to politics. This is a question about politicians lives not anything else – Alex Robinson Oct 16 '19 at 12:02
  • @AlexRobinson: it's not about their lives. Those pronouns are a political declaration of support for the transfeminist movement. – the gods from engineering Oct 16 '19 at 12:08
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    @Fizz maybe i'm just being cynical, but i don't quite see how some cisgender politicians posting their assigned pronouns translates to support? – Alex Robinson Oct 16 '19 at 12:21
  • @AlexRobinson It's the context. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/11/cnn-chris-cuomo-apologizes-for-joke-gender-pronouns-kamala-harris or https://twitter.com/kamalaharris/status/1182469669082546179 etc. – the gods from engineering Oct 16 '19 at 12:30
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    Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation about gender-related grammar in various European languages has been moved to chat. – Philipp Oct 16 '19 at 20:28
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    Worth remembering that English has an uncommon relationship with gender in pronouns, and this might be subtly influencing culture: in many other European languages, all nouns have grammatical "gender", and get gendered pronouns accordingly. In particular, with the exception of humans, this is almost always independent of the gender/sex of the individual - for example a dog might always get feminine pronouns, unless a specific male dog is had in mind - so the learned association between gender identity and gender of the pronouns is subtly different in most languages than in English. – mtraceur Oct 17 '19 at 22:45
  • @Fizz Clicktivism is big in America, especially with the left. although seems like the right was much more effective by outsourcing their "social media strategy." It's just a gesture, but it's a gesture the deplorables, either the right wing ones or the left wing ones, will not make. No gesture whatsoever has been made by the current administration, – chiggsy Oct 18 '19 at 13:02

6 Answers6

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Do European politicians typically do this too

(Emphasis mine)

Politicians who sport a pronoun in their profile are not typical in the US. I'm struggling to imagine how they might be more common in Europe.

If we consider the Democratic candidates for 2020 as a sample, only Warren, Booker, Castro, and Steyer have a pronoun tucked into their Twitter profiles as I write this answer. Biden, Sanders, Harris, Buttigieg, O'Rourke, Bennet, Bullock, Delaney, Gabbard, Klobuchar, Messam, Ryan, Sestak, Williamson, and Yang do not. (I'm sure I forgot a few others.)

Even among the more progressive Democrats it's not the rule. AOC and Pressley sport a she/her; Omar and Tlaib do not.

I can't think of any Republican that might boast a pronoun on their profile off the top of my head. But there might be a few outliers that do.

As to the other side of the pond, I sincerely doubt you'll find many European politicians that sport a pronoun either. You could arguably check by compiling a big list of European politicians and going through their profiles for pronouns one by one. If you try this, I'd be sincerely surprised if you find more than a few across the entire continent.

Denis de Bernardy
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    A sample of 1: I have never encountered such a thing in Austria. – Dohn Joe Oct 15 '19 at 11:11
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    Just checked a handful of Twitter profiles of German Greens. No pronouns anywhere. Also the UK MP for Brighton Pavillion (Green) does not have pronouns in her Twitter either. – Jan Oct 15 '19 at 12:51
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    @Jan: I checked a few twitter profiles from Europe-based transgender office holders (aside: it's really creepy that such a page exists to begin with) and didn't locate much pronouns on their profiles either. – Denis de Bernardy Oct 15 '19 at 13:00
  • @DenisdeBernardy - not to be insensitive, but it's the same as with all other personal info someone decides to make public - it becomes a basis for aggregating/targeting people (most usually, for commercial purposes, see phone directories. Or more on topic see Wiki list of atheist politicians that I once found answering a question here). If someone does not wish their gender/sexuality to be used to profile them,keep it private, don't stick it into public view like it makes you someone special. I completely agree that it's creepy, but totally predictable and easily avoidable. – user4012 Oct 27 '19 at 14:14
  • @user4012: No quibbles, my answer was a frame challenge first and foremost. Insofar as I've anecdotally observed, the premise that US politicians often put their pronoun in their profiles is simply wrong. – Denis de Bernardy Oct 27 '19 at 17:41
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Interesting question. I compiled a partial answer for Sweden. Swedish is rather similar to English with regards to pronouns and genders.

I assumed that if there where any pronouns on twitter pages they would be most common for politicians in the Miljöpartiet (Greens), or Vänsterpartiet (Left). Working from the list of people in the Riksdag we have

Party    Total    Found Profiles    Found Pronouns
Mp       16       13                0
V        27       17                0

It's worth noting that there where several rainbow pictures or statements about LGBTQ rights in these profiles.

I also looked up 3 people from Centerpartiet (Center), Feministiskt Initiativ (Feminist Initiative) and Socialdemokraterna (Social Democrats). I didn't find pronouns there either.

So I guess for Sweden at least, the answer would be no, Not typically.

Community
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monocell
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Warning - Polish-centric answer:

TLDR: No one tried this in Poland, it would be politically a bad move and linguistically total horror

  1. In Polish language we indeed have genders: "kubek" (mug) is "he", "klawiatura" (keyboard) is "she", "drzewo" (tree) is "it". To make everything more complicated "dziecko" (kid) is "it", "osoba" (person) is "she".

  2. Gender also influences the ending of verbs or adjectives. Example: "green" can be translated as "zielony" (he), "zielona" (she), "zielone" (it, they). That's in nominative; there is also declination on top of that, which would change the ending even further. If anyone wants to create their own gender, they would have to create all those endings, which are already not very logical and, judging from foreigners' reactions, are already a nightmare to learn.

  3. Unless one is a foreigner (or a Polish who was born abroad), name selection would be validated by Polish authorities. It means the chosen name is deemed suitable by civil servants, not only banning "Adolf" but also ensuring that the name would clearly imply a specific sex. Even if someone changed their sex, then they would still have to select a government approved name, thus any extra explanation would anyway be considered superfluous.

  4. Judging from freshly counted votes in parliamentary election, support for any classical left wing in Poland is below 20%. So I don't see how it is supposed to impress a rather traditional society (from left wing policies we like handouts and free services), especially since a big part of those left wing voters are older electorate which, because of some inertia, tends to vote for former communists.

  5. First name would clearly indicate sex of a person. It's a quite clear and deeply ingrained rule, I've seen already... well... misgendered foreigners because their name sounded like suitable for the opposite sex and no-one thought about checking that. With a second name it would be in over 99% of cases the same, except because of some Roman Catholic tradition it is acceptable to choose name "Maria" (Mary) also for a boy.

  6. With surname it's a bit more complicated. First, as pointed out, majority of surnames have a different variant for male (e.g. Kowalski) and female (e.g. Kowalska). Secondly, if someone is calling a Pole using only surname, then it's considered rude. If someone is "Michał Kowalski", then the right address in nominative would be "Pan Michał" (after adjusting for declination, to start a conversation one would call him "Panie Michale"). Sure, we already got used to idea that when sometimes e.g. international companies address us by surname, they are not intentionally rude, they just only disregard local cultural norms.

  7. Idea of using non-binary gender "we" is generally unknown in Poland, the only case where I saw it, was in historical texts, and it was pluralis maiestatis. "We, from divine grace, the king of Poland...". To be honest, in such case it would be simpler if person insist that his preferred gender is actually "jego wysokość" (His Majesty), because it would be at least linguistically straightforward. Otherwise I would not know should I address such person by singular you "ty", or plural you "wy". If we accept that we go in to plural, in Polish we effectively have linguistically two plural genders "męskoosobowy" and "niemęskoosobowy" (literally male-person and non-male-person), none of which is fully neutral, as male-person would be suitable for mixed groups.

kubanczyk
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Shadow1024
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  • Interesting perspective! Are there really no gender-neutral or ambiguous names in Polish? In the US, at least, there are tons of them as well as names that used to be Male and are now Female (or vice versa). It's mostly just a natural process that comes from people freely picking their names, so maybe that doesn't happen if the government must approve all names? – divibisan Oct 15 '19 at 20:28
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    Already stated this on meta, that with other languages than English, which may feature gendered nouns, this is a way more effort and is generally considered as useless complexity. Also in British English, the pronoun they (singular) is reserved by the nobility and does not refer to someone undecided about their gender. –  Oct 15 '19 at 20:41
  • You outline in (2) that Polish has gender-based inflections on adjectives and verbs. Why do you mention creating their own gender in this section? In (3), you state that "even if someone managed to change their sex", as if this was impossible in Poland. According to Wikipedia, legal gender changes exist since the 1960s. Can you comment on the veracity of that statement? – Schmuddi Oct 15 '19 at 20:55
  • @Schmuddi Rare thing and as usual in Poland excessively bureaucratic procedure. But doable. My point: even in such rare case, you still don't need to specify what's your gender as everyone could figure it from your name anyway. – Shadow1024 Oct 15 '19 at 20:59
  • @divibisan Under normal conditions - not. (Single dominating culture, traditionally selecting names of saint patrons) The only exception that I can think of, is that's possible to give boy for second name "Maria" (Mary). Most of common names would have separate variants for both sexes – Shadow1024 Oct 15 '19 at 21:06
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    Okay. But what about a transgender person that doesn't want to undergo the bureaucratic procedure, say a female-to-male person. This person might prefer to be treated by the people in their surroundings like a biological male. In order to help people to realize this, they might put the masculine pronoun on (i.e. English "he") in their Twitter profile. Now, others who are willing to respect the wish of this person to be treated as male will know to use zielony instead of zielona to refer to the green color of the transgender person. In how far would that cause "linguistic horror"? – Schmuddi Oct 15 '19 at 21:06
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    @divibisan This doesn't apply only to personal names, but to family names as well. Mr Kubikowski's Polish wife is not Mrs Kubikowski, but Mrs Kubikowska. – alephzero Oct 15 '19 at 21:11
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    @Schmuddi Apparently the number of genders in English language is skyrocketing. That would be problem in Polish, as they all would need separate flexion. If someone just want to be called he/she, then it would not be a linguistic problem. But again, in such a case it would be much simpler to just select for any online account proper name and don't have to explain that. – Shadow1024 Oct 15 '19 at 21:13
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    @Shadow1024: But the case that I've just described is exactly what the English preferred gender pronoun debate is about. People who state the preferred pronouns typically don't use invented ones (these were never really accepted by speakers). They state "he/him" in their profile if they identify as male, "she/her" if they identify as female, and "they/them" (with corresponding plural verb endings) if they identify as non-binary. So you're saying this would, in theory, work in Polish as well, only that nobody really does that, right? – Schmuddi Oct 15 '19 at 21:17
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    @Schmuddi it just annoying to use a female given name within a male sentence - a simple name change fixes the syntax of the sentence, since the gender is being assigned by the given name... that's alike "das Tisch" or "die Baum" in German (gendered prepositions for neutral things do not exist in English and non-native speakers usually have a hard time with learning these). –  Oct 15 '19 at 21:18
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    @MartinZeitler: What you mean is it's annoying to combine a noun with a non-congruent article (das Tisch instead of der Tisch). This is not what the English preferred pronoun debate is about either – to my knowledge, nobody is asking anyone to do that. By stating the preferred pronoun in your Twitter profile, a person simply states the gender they want others to use in reference to them. – Schmuddi Oct 15 '19 at 21:22
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    @Schmuddi I think it's annoying in gendered languages, because it is quite confusing and to some degree grammatically incorrect - while most Latin/Hebrew names even have male & female forms, so it's often just about adding or removing a single letter, in order to indicate the gender one wishes to be addressed with... and this is cultural thing, which Americans might lack with ~ 243 years of history. –  Oct 15 '19 at 21:31
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    @Schmuddi the point probably is that as the grammatical gender is implicit in names, someone who wants to be adressed as a different gender would not have to specifically indicate a pronoun, but they would have to (slightly) alter their name. E.g. if Mr. Kubikowski wants to be addressed as female, then she would have to use Kubikowska as her name. And if they want a nonbinary choice, then that's tough, because they can invent a new pronoun but they can't make up a new grammatical gender with appropriate inflectional system for all the language, so it will always imply "he" or "she" or "it". – Peteris Oct 15 '19 at 22:32
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    Polish speakers declare their gender by how the conjugate nouns. A male would say "I went" as "poszłem", while a female would say "poszłam". There is no third option. – Adam Oct 16 '19 at 03:14
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    Whether or not a non-binary pronoun fits the language is a bit of a red herring, because a vanishingly small number of people fits one. Acceptance of gays and lesbians is hard enough as it is. Bundling that with upending the language would just play into the hard right-wing's talking points. – Adam Oct 16 '19 at 03:20
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    @Schmuddi The only case when I saw someone using such non binary gender in Polish, was in historical texts, and it was pluralis maiestatis. "We, from divine grace, the king of Poland...". It would be grammatically correct, just may imply that their preferred gender pronoun is actually "his majesty". Honestly? Theoretically doable, for Polish it would look like some trolling. – Shadow1024 Oct 16 '19 at 05:53
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    it would be politically bad move - no doubt, in a country where the ruling party openly stamps LGBT people as a threat to catholic family values, there is frequent physical violence against that minority and a guy like Korwin-Mikke can get almost 7% in the recent elections... – smcs Oct 16 '19 at 08:33
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    @smcs If you want to run for Polish election you should virtue signal in the opposite way. Example: like our president Duda did you should in front of cameras catch falling Communion bread, so it does not get defiled. // With Korwin-Mikke the issue as bit more complicated as his view are fanatical only in relation to free market and individual freedoms, while his contentious expressions look mostly as an effective way of playing media to get more coverage. Mostly... – Shadow1024 Oct 16 '19 at 08:59
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    Is really the normal name "Adolf" banned in Poland? It is not super-popular in Czechia but it can be met. Most people with the name are older generations, but still born after the war. – Vladimir F Героям слава Oct 16 '19 at 09:47
  • In Polish there is another aspect. The third person addressing. Czy jest pani... Czy jest pan... Well, you can say that once you state the pronoun you state the address, but do you really? If someone would go ahead and state the pronoun it signalizes the status may not be that simple and calling them pan or pani could be a problem. – Vladimir F Героям слава Oct 16 '19 at 09:54
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    @VladimirF Under Polish law you are not allowed to pick for a baby a name that would be humiliating, and as all Polish associate this name one with one specific historical figure who ravaged our country (not Gustav II Adolf ;) ), trying to give such name would end up in legal fight. – Shadow1024 Oct 16 '19 at 10:24
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    I don't agree with 4). Poland has had a transsexual MP and has recently seen a rise of a party led by openly homosexual politician, so it's not like you need to hide your non-heteronomativity to gain support. But of course, introducing one's pronoun doesn't make much sense from a linguistic perspective anyway. – michau Oct 16 '19 at 11:14
  • There are, however, some edge cases, e.g. Rafalala, a pseudonym chosen by a Polish crossdresser, which is a portmanteau of the masculine name Rafał and the feminine word lala `doll'. A Polish speaker may have doubts about which pronoun (and inflection paradigm) this person prefers. – michau Oct 16 '19 at 11:16
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    @michau Robert Biedroń is "he", Anna Grodzka is "she" (nevertheless, photo of her receiving flowers for women's day was circulating on Polish humour websites). I absolutely agree that such electorate exist, just but is a niche and far moderate ideas would turn off median voter. . – Shadow1024 Oct 16 '19 at 11:39
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    @MartinZeitler As a British English speaker, I've never heard of a rule that "in British English, the pronoun they (singular) is reserved by the nobility", and can't see anything at a glance on Wikipedia's page on singular they. Perhaps you're confusing it with the Royal we? – IMSoP Oct 16 '19 at 14:35
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    @IMSoP indeed. As an American who reads a fair amount of writing from the UK, I find singular "they" in cases of indeterminate gender to be farther along its path to acceptance there than it is here. – phoog Oct 16 '19 at 18:22
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    @IMSoP when they refer to themselves as we - it is only logical, that others referred to them as they. Most European languages vastly degenerated since the Americanization since WW2 (as we have it here with immigrant German, called the "neue Rechtschreibung"). And I'd also consider this gender-pronouns as a lingual degeneration, since it provides zero improvement and only adds clutter. This might be a question for English language stackexchange.com. –  Oct 16 '19 at 20:37
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    @MartinZeitler It would be logical for "they" to be used then, but language is rarely logical, and I have never seen any evidence of such a use. It might also be logical for it to be linked to the "polite" second-person pronoun (e.g. "ye" in historical English, "vous" in modern French), but the criteria for the two are very different. If you are imagining that there was some period where "True English" was spoken, and followed such logical rules, you will be sadly disappointed when you learn its long and meandering history. – IMSoP Oct 16 '19 at 20:55
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    @Adam there are three versions! Poszedłem, poszłam i poszłom. Third version is now considered archaic, and was rarely used, but there is a first person form for entities without a gender all right. Just buried in time, but we could un-bury it. PS, it's "poszedłem", never "poszłem" for male! – Mołot Oct 18 '19 at 09:29
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    Hmm. These comments,. read in one sitting, outline a familiar argument pattern. I see this pattern with the people who complain bitterly about "political correctness." Understandable, I suppose, they feel like they are losing something by extending courtesy in this manner, and to be fair, they are. I feel their pain, in a sense, because I used to complain about Unicode, he reason I complained was that it was more convenient to use ASCII particularly when using regex What I wanted was for the world to change so I could stay the same. The price? Paid by others. I can't be like that. So I changed – chiggsy Oct 18 '19 at 11:13
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    " Most European languages vastly degenerated since the Americanization since WW2 " I don't believe this. Degenerated how? Why only americanization responsible? What effect did speaking Russian for decades after he war have? How much of this "Americanization" did Poland see? Communism fell in 1989, before that Poland was a Soviet satellite. Please explain. – chiggsy Oct 18 '19 at 12:22
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For UK MPs at least, the answer sadly is no.

I wrote a simple script to check bios for each MP as listed on mpsontwitter.co.uk

The results are:

Have pronouns: 0
Out of:        578

You can see my working here: https://github.com/thk123/bio-pronoun-counter

T. Kiley
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    This is interesting. +1. However, I do not understand why not specifying the pronoun is a sad thing. They all seem to have a clear picture of themselves and correlated with the given name the preferred pronoun is unambiguous. – Alexei Oct 18 '19 at 04:36
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    It is sad to me because I think it is important for cis-gendered people to list their pronouns to normalise the whole process for trans, non-binary people, and peoples whose pronouns are not what people might assume from their appearance. You can read more about why it is important here: https://pronounsday.org/ – T. Kiley Oct 18 '19 at 08:04
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This is unheard of in France.

We have pronouns but I would not even know where to look for a position about what pronoun to use. The official site of the Parliament does not have a field for that (http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/dyn/vos-deputes).

WoJ
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  • The question explicitly refers to social media, e.g. Twitter bios, so the official site of Parliament is not relevant. A quick search shows at least a few users listing them in exactly the same way as in English, e.g. https://twitter.com/ArseneMind https://twitter.com/NeonsDemon – IMSoP Oct 17 '19 at 14:27
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    @IMSoP: ah sorry I missed the social media part. This is still a no - politicians do not do that. There are certainly people (such as the ones you linked to) which started to use that as it is fashionable (I am not discussing whether this is good or bad, just that this is a new thing en vogue) but the politicians I casually follow or the ones I had a look at do not list it. This is really not something usual here. – WoJ Oct 17 '19 at 15:41
  • @IMSoP: your answer may be more suitable to something I asked on linguistics SE (because a question not about politicians was deemed off-topic here on politics.SE) – the gods from engineering Oct 18 '19 at 14:21
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Pronoun use as an indicator of support for LGBTQ+ rights is a specifically U.S. thing. Not even Great Britain has adopted the practice.

To be sure, European nations do have controversies about gender-appropriate language, but most European languages don't provide exactly the same background on which to conduct them. For instance, in German the predominant issue is about actor nouns, which are gendered: Arzt is male while Ärztin is female, likewise Professor/Professorin etc. The typical controversy is not "Should we use 'she' to talk about person X?', but 'Should we use 'Professor' or 'Professor (w/m/d)' or 'ProfessorIn' or 'Professor oder Professorin' or... in a job ad?"

Kilian Foth
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  • Could you provide any kind of source or background to your assertion that "not even Great Brita has adopted the practice"? As I understand it, it's not like this is an official thing in the US, so what would it mean for a country (or an island) to "adopt" it, other than individual people talking about it? Where have you looked to compare its usage between the two countries? – IMSoP Oct 19 '19 at 10:38