Does Twitter hate the transgender community? It seems that it does after it has recently – quietly and covertly – removed a particular statement in its policy that had been protecting transgender people from hateful conduct on the worldwide social media platform.
Quietly removed
Prior to the change in this policy, Twitter’s Hateful Content Policy read, “We prohibit targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
The last sentence, specific to Twitter’s transgender users, has been deleted. Deadnaming, according to the non-profit academic medical center Cleveland Clinic, “is referring to someone by a name that they didn’t ask you to use.”
That specific sentence providing protections against misgendering and deadnaming transgender users of Twitter was placed in 2018, before Elon Musk’s takeover, and news website The Verge noted the removal of the line happened around April 8th or around the time the social media platform announced changes to its policies on targeted harassment.
‘Unsafe’
One of the groups that noticed this change is GLAAD, the acronym for Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, an American non-governmental media monitoring organization.
GLAAD’s President and CEO, Sarah Kate Ellis, issued a statement regarding this stage, saying Twitter is now “unsafe” for users and advertisers alike.
“Twitter’s decision to covertly roll back its longtime policy is the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike. This decision to roll back LGBTQ safety pulls Twitter even more out of step with TikTok, Pinterest, and Meta, which all maintain similar policies to protect their transgender users at a time when anti-transgender rhetoric online is leading to real-world discrimination and violence,” Ellis said. “The practice of targeted misgendering and deadnaming has been identified by the ADL and other civil society groups as a form of hate speech. Social media companies committed to maintaining safe environments for LGBTQ people should be working to improve hate speech policies, not deleting long-standing ones.”
Good move
However, netizens’ reactions to this Twitter policy change are mixed. Some say it is a good move, while others decry it.
“Twitter lifts its policy on targeted misgendering and deadnaming and the freaks are out gleefully misgendering and deadnaming every prominent trans person as an achievement. It’s not about speech, it’s about bullies wanting to harass people because of who they are,” tweeted gender activist Alejandra Caraballo.
Meanwhile, attorney Nora Benavidez lambasted Musk, tweeting, “Every decision Musk makes is bad for free speech, safety, business.”
Others are pretty happy about this change.
“Great news. This is a step toward living in reality and having policy rooted in Truth instead of emotion,” tweeted netizen @alx.
“Good being Transgender doesn’t give you the right to be a cunt and thats what’s going on. Everyone can get the smoke equally if you don’t like it, don’t use Twitter,” meanwhile tweeted netizen @Jriggity247.
