When Truth Becomes 'Hateful'.

Twitter Continues Its Orwellian Approach to Language

Last week I received an email from Twitter which said I had been reported for one of my tweets and they had judged it as ‘hateful conduct’. What had I done? Had I demanded that women ‘suck my cock’, like Danielle Muscato had a few years earlier? No. Twitter deemed that tweet to be absolutely fine and it remains up to this day. Had I threatened other Twitter users with aggression and violence for being trans? No. Nevertheless, Twitter allow such tweets made towards women all the time. Had I threatened to dox anyone, report them to their employers or try to harm their business interests? No. Maybe I had indulged in some abusive name calling. Again, no.

My offending tweet? Here it is:

No name calling. No threats. No bad language. No abuse. I simply made a statement of fact. A truthful comment. That a moderator at Twitter took time to look at this tweet and consciously agree it was somehow ‘hateful’ shows the ideologically driven, political organ Twitter have become and have been for a long time.

The point of my tweet was to address the gaslighting way in which a male had been allowed, to not only be nominated for an award intended for females but, to go on to win the award. Surely, the whole point of having a female category is to ensure a female wins and is acknowledged and celebrated for the highly skilled way she performs in her role? Also not lost on me, is the way in which the Golden Globe categories went with the more ‘old fashioned’ titles of ‘actor’ and ‘actress’, rather than ‘male actor’ and ‘female actor’, lending weight to the idea that the men who claim to be women, hanker towards the 50’s style stereotypes of what women are supposed to represent. There is however, a more serious problem at play here; chiefly, that when it comes to categories and our ability to name them accurately, sex really does matter for everyone, especially for women.

Male and female pertain to sex, not gender. They refer to our bodies, not what we feel inside. Therefore it is a complete nonsense when you see people talk about identifying as female or notice forms where ‘genders’ are listed as male and female etc.

Girls are subjected to FGM because of their sex. Women and girls are raped because of their sex. They become pregnant because they are the female sex. Female foetuses are selectively aborted because of their sex. Women are sexually and violently assaulted, because of their sex. Women have a separate category in many physically demanding sports, because of their sex. When we look at violent offences and prison time, there are huge differences, between the sexes, hence the need to have prisons segregated by….sex. When women are on a night out, they have take care to protect themselves, because of their sex and because of the way the people of the opposite sex often behave. There are sex differences when it comes to eating and drinking. Men’s bodies can have a higher calorie intake. Men are also able to tolerate more units in alcohol. With regards to health care, there are certain problems like heart disease and lung cancer which attack male and female bodies differently, meaning treatments also differ. There is so much more that could be said about the bodily differences between men and women, male and female, but the point has been made…sex matters. A lot. I would posit that if we were to accept our bodies and sex for what they are, we would be far more happy than if we were to endlessly chase some mythical ideal of what we ‘feel’ our ‘gender identity’ is. As the beautiful book by Rachel Rooney suggests, “My body is Me” and along with that acceptance comes a better contentment.

What this all boils down to - the sex/gender debate - is the eradication of sex to the point of removing women’s ability to name (and fight) their oppression. Without the ability to accurately identify sex, the fight against sexism is lost. Commenting on a recent article about how children in the UK as young as two, are being granted the opportunity to ‘pick their preferred gender’, Stephanie Davies-Arai said,

“It means essentially they cannot distinguish between girls and boys and therefore monitor sex discrimination in schools. This is really serious.”

In a society where 99% of sexual offenders are male and 88% of victims of sexual offenders are female, it becomes evidently clear that our ability to accurately identify the male and female sexes is essential. Twitter have arbitrarily appointed themselves moral gatekeepers of our language and its accuracy. But they are not a dictionary, they aren’t scientists, they aren’t academics, nor are they in any legal position to control truth and facts and yet, they muzzle anyone who steps out of line.

Twitter is silencing the truth in favour of a political agenda which is butchering young girls and crushing lesbians and gays. My hope is that many more people speak up and challenge their power, at least for the sake of everyone’s ability to speak and to utter truths which for so long, we have taken for granted.

Speak up while you can, because by the time you realise you’ve been silenced, it will be too late.

Edit: at the time of writing, I had appealed Twitter's decision and they refused to overturn their decision. I have appealed again and have heard nothing from them since.