A family was reportedly denied boarding by United Airlines after one member failed to use a flight attendant’s preferred pronouns. In a video shared to X, Jenna Longoria explains that she, her 16-month-old son, and her mother were abandoned at an airport in San Francisco without any formal explanation from the airline.
“Okay, so we were boarding. Myself, my 16-month-old son, my mother,” begins the video. “They took our luggage on the plane, which has my thyroid medication, which I’ll be very sick without. My mother’s medication. They basically said: ‘Tough luck.’”
Noting that her young son was becoming distressed while she was speaking with a flight attendant, she adds that the airline didn’t specify exactly what she said that was offensive other than referring to one of the staff members with the wrong pronouns.
“I was speaking to one of the flight attendants and got their pronouns wrong. The other flight attendant didn’t like it. I said I am really sorry, ‘they,’ I’m not very versed with pronouns,” she continues, adding that she had been preoccupied with trying to get her son’s car seat on the flight because it was his nap time.
“They’re saying that it’s a hate crime that I did, that I might not even be able to ever fly United. We don’t even know how we’re going to get back today. I don’t know what to do. I really don’t know what to do. I don’t know what my rights are here,” concludes Longoria, a nutritionist who goes by the moniker The Period Guru on social media.
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