Hmm, am I way off base here?
It is entirely anecdotal (I'm not about to do a comprehensive study) but I certainly notice more people using the first names of female politicians moreso than the first names of male politicians (I mentioned Trudeau in my initial post. In my opinion people use Justin or Junior to belittle him, to make him seem like a lightweight; Ralph portrayed himself as a man of the people and wanted to be seen that way)
Do we see Mulcair referred to as Tom? Or Scheer as Andrew? Or Kenney as Jason? and so on. I'm not aware of it. Someone brought up the example of Sean Chu, that referring to him as Sean wouldn't make sense because we wouldn't know who was being talked about, but even then, he has his own dedicated thread so there would be no question of who's being talked about, yet nobody calls him Sean in there. The other argument is that the male names are commonplace names, but then Rachel or Alison aren't rare either.
Like I said, I think there's a hint of sexism to it. Evidently others disagree. Anyone care to post as to why they use female politicians' first names? I'd genuinely be interested to know.
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