The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, quietly reinstated an anti-harassment policy that once forbade users from misgendering or deadnaming others.
However, it is unclear if the change will stay in place following comments from owner Elon Musk.
Musk, who has sought to portray himself as a proponent of “free speech,” removed the policy in April 2023, responding to users who complained after being banned for expressing anti-transgender sentiment.
In a recently updated section of the platform’s policies, the company says that, where required by local laws, the platform will reduce the visibility of posts that “purposefully use different pronouns to address someone other than what that person uses for themselves, or that use a previous name that someone no longer goes by as part of their transition.”
X’s updated policy also requires that those targeted by deadnaming or misgendering must contact the community to issue a complaint, whereupon the company will determine whether the policy was violated, reports Ars Technica.
X also has policies that could potentially be related to misgendering or deadnaming, such as a prohibition on the “malicious, unreciprocated targeting” of users in an effort to humiliate or degrade someone, including by tagging them repeatedly in posts with “malicious content” over a short period of time; and a prohibition on encouraging off-platform harassment or violence directed at specific individuals or groups of people.
Chaya Raichik, the person behind the Libs of TikTok account, took umbrage at the return of the misgendering ban, and sought to test it by misgendering three famous transgender individuals.
In response to that post, Musk wrote: “You’re not going to get suspended.”
In a subsequent exchange, Musk wrote that the policy only applies to “repeated, targeted harassment of a particular person.”
“Using the correct sex-based pronouns for someone is ‘harassment’?” Raichik responded. “We’re being forced to lie? What about harassment in general? There are accounts that repeatedly target and harass specific individuals in an obsessive way. What constitutes ‘repeated’ and ‘targeted’ and why do only one group of people get this special treatment?”
Another user later asked Musk, “Will you reverse the Pronoun policy on X because it will definitely lead to censorship on this platform?” He replied, “Looking into it,” suggesting that the policy may be repealed or reversed.
The update appears to have taken place around the same time that the LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD issued a report on the misgendering and deadnaming of transgender individuals.
In that report, GLAAD urged major social media platforms to recognize those behaviors as forms of hate speech, noting that, of six top social media platforms — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threats, YouTube, and X — “only TikTok explicitly prohibits misgendering and deadnaming in its hate and harassment policy.”
Other social media platforms have adopted prohibitions on targeting misgendering and deadnaming as part of their “hateful conduct” or anti-harassment policies, including Discord, Post, Tumblr, Pinterest, NextDoor, and Spoutible, according to GLAAD’s report.
The streaming platform Twitch also bans “intentionally referring to someone using a pronoun or form of address that does not correctly reflect the gender with which they identify, such as repeating incorrect pronouns after being asked to stop.”
While expressing a preference for policies that explicitly ban deadnaming and misgendering — thereby making it easier for moderators to intervene and remedy the situation — Jenni Colson, the senior director of social media safety at GLAAD, told Ars Technica that the shift toward adopting policies prohibiting such behavior is moving the needle in a positive direction.
“This is not about accidentally getting someone’s pronouns wrong,” Olson said. “That’s fine. That happens. This is about targeted misgendering and deadnaming with a clear intent of expressing hate and disrespect and contempt.”
It remains to be seen whether Musk — who has been criticized for expressing anti-transgender views and for the alleged proliferation of hate speech on X following his takeover of the company — will keep the recently revised policy on pronoun usage, and to what degree it can be enforced if it does remain in place.
According to an analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, X has made millions of dollars in ad revenues from users who regularly spout anti-LGBTQ — and specifically anti-transgender — views.
But The New York Times claimed last year some of the more controversial content on the site, such as anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, had also led some big-name advertisers to either halt or consider pausing their ads on X over fear of being associated with such content.
X reportedly pushed back on that claim, saying, at the time, that the estimated potential losses in ad revenue reported by the Times were outdated.
After removing all references to transgender people from the Stonewall National Monument website earlier this year, the National Park Service has now scrubbed mentions of bisexual people as well.
As first reported by transgender journalist Erin Reed on her Erin in the Morning Substack, the change occurred on July 10, when the homepage was updated to read, "Before the 1960s, almost everything about living authentically as a gay or lesbian person was illegal."
Subsequent pages, including the site's "History and Culture" section, were also altered to remove broader LGBTQ references. One now reads: "Stonewall was a milestone for gay and lesbian civil rights," whereas it previously noted that living "openly as a member of the Stonewall comunity was a violation of law."
A new Williams Institute report shows LGBTQ adults are more likely to rely on food assistance -- and could be disproportionately harmed by Republican-led efforts to slash SNAP funding.
A new report from the Williams Institute, an LGBTQ-focused think tank at UCLA School of Law, finds that 15% of LGBTQ adults -- nearly 2.1 million people -- received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in the past year.
The report arrives as Congress prepares to pass legislation backed by President Donald Trump that would make his 2017 tax cuts permanent. In exchange -- particularly for high-income earners and corporations -- the Republican-backed bill proposes significant cuts to domestic social safety net programs.
Luke Ash, a Baptist pastor who worked at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library, says he was fired after refusing to use a trans co-worker's preferred pronouns.
Luke Ash, lead pastor of Stevendale Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, says he was fired from his job as a library technician at the East Baton Rouge Parish Library after refusing to use a co-worker's preferred pronouns. He was reportedly dismissed after referring to the colleague by female pronouns during a July 7 conversation with another library employee.
"That co-worker corrected me, said that the person she was training preferred to be called 'he,' and I refused to use those preferred pronouns," Ash told anti-LGBTQ activist and Family Research Council President Tony Perkins during an interview on the conservative Christian political show Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.
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