Vem tycker om hen?

Swedish is the first language that has a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun, hen, that has spread from transgender and queer communities to the broader society and now exists in parallel with the two traditional gendered pronouns representing ‘she’ and ‘he’. Many strong emotions have arisen during this process, both for and against hen. This study aims at analyzing what background factors may explain the attitudes towards hen. In total, 240 individuals participated in our online questionnaire where they indicated their attitude towards hen, as well as responded to questions assessing attitudes towards sexist language (i.e. gender discriminating language), modern sexism (i.e. the belief that gender-discrimination is no longer an issue), political views (from left to right), interest in gender issues and their identification with their own gender identity. The results show no gender difference in attitudes towards hen, but participants strongly identifying themselves with their gender identity had a tendency to be more negative towards the word. Political view was not a significant predictor. However, participants with sexist attitudes had a tendency to dislike hen, whereas those who were interested in gender issues and were negative towards sexist language had a tendency to like the word. Finally, younger age implied a stronger tendency to like hen