Open season for trans hate in Twitter?
Sans fanfare linked with Twitter owner Elon Musk’s every move, the social media platform has quietly removed a policy that protected transgender users from deadnaming and misgendering in the twitterverse.
In 2018, before Musk’s acquisition of the company, Twitter had a content policy that banned misgendering (intentionally referring to someone as the wrong gender) and deadnaming (or calling trans people the names they no longer use or go by).
“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,” the policy said. The line specifically stating prohibiting the “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals” has now been deleted.
Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter will also not necessarily remove harmful posts; instead – from 17 April – it will only place warning labels on tweets that are “potentially” in violation of its rules against hateful conduct, as opposed to removing them entirely.
