Late on Tuesday night, Elon Musk, the richest person in the world and a self-proclaimed defender of free expression, took to Twitter to reveal a new low in his stooping behavior.
In response to a tweet from a user who was offended by the term “cis,” which is an abbreviation for “cisgender” and means “not transgender,” Elon Musk said that both of these phrases will henceforth be regarded as offensive within the context of the social network.
Repeated, targeted harassment against any account will cause the harassing accounts to receive, at minimum, temporary suspensions.
The words “cis” or “cisgender” are considered slurs on this platform.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 21, 2023
It’s no secret that Elon Musk Triples DownTwitter as a disdainful attitude toward transgender persons. It was in part due to his annoyance that the conservative satire account The Babylon Bee was suspended for using incorrect pronouns to refer to Rachel Levine, an official working for the United States Department of Health and Human Services, that he decided to invest $44 billion in the social network in the first place.Since then, he has, as was to be expected, removed the safeguards that were previously in place on Twitter to protect the transgender community.
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Musk’s newest transphobic foray comes in the heart of Pride Month, a time when LGBTQ Americans are feeling particularly beleaguered in light of a rash of potentially lethal anti-LGBTQ legislation and empowered conservative speech that supports open discrimination against the queer community. Musk’s latest transphobic foray comes at a time when LGBTQ Americans are feeling particularly embattled in light of a spate of potentially deadly anti-LGBTQ legislation.
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Because of Elon Musk’s antipathy for transgender people, Twitter removed a section of its policy prohibiting users from deadnaming and incorrectly gendering transgender people in April. This was a change that many members of the LGBTQ community anticipated, given Musk’s particular hostility toward trans people.
Musk’s most recent proclamation takes his transphobic position to its illogical conclusion, saying that it is reverse discrimination when transgender persons use a common, neutral phrase to discuss people who are not like them. This is an example of how Musk’s position is transphobic.
The outcome predictably restricts free speech on the social network, but only the speech of those believed to be Musk’s ideological adversaries. These individuals face a very real risk of violence in state legislatures, healthcare settings, and public life in a manner that their cisgender counterparts cannot even begin to connect to.
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