Stop Banning Gender Critical Voices on Twitter

Stop Banning Gender Critical Voices on Twitter

Started
24 November 2022
Signatures: 2,934Next Goal: 5,000
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Why this petition matters

Started by Free Speech Union

Dear Elon Musk,

We are writing to urge you to restore the Twitter accounts of all the people who’ve been permanently banned for expressing gender critical beliefs, i.e., that sex is biological and immutable and not a social construct. We applaud your ambition to turn Twitter into a free speech platform, where a broad range of views can be discussed and debated in the digital town square, and welcome your reinstatement of numerous accounts, including that of the Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy. In light of this, there can be no justification for continuing to censor gender critical voices. It is time for Twitter to welcome back gender critical commentators like women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen (@thePosieParker), comedy writer Graham Linehan (@glinner), intersex advocate Claire Graham (@MRKHvoice), barrister Dennis Kavanagh (@jebadoo2), journalist Miranda Yardley (@terrorizerMIR) and philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith (@aytchellesse).

Gender critical views are often characterised as ‘transphobic’, but none of these commentators hate trans people or oppose trans rights in general. Rather, they believe there are some areas in which trans rights clash with sex-based women’s rights – on the issue of whether transwomen should be admitted to women’s domestic violence shelters, for instance – and in those areas they believe women’s rights should take priority. Indeed, they believe the integrity of women’s rights are inextricably bound up with defining sex as biological and immutable and once you abandon that definition – by asserting that men who identify as women are ontologically indistinguishable from biological women – women’s rights become less secure. 

Even though gender critical feminists believe sex-based women rights should take priority over trans rights, that doesn’t make them ‘transphobic’, any more than holding the opposite view makes a person ‘misogynistic’. Rather, they are opposing points of view rooted in two different understandings of how sex should be defined and what the implications are of accepting one definition and rejecting the other with respect to the admission of transwomen to women’s sports, women’s changing rooms and women’s prisons. Neither point of view should be condemned as ‘hate speech’. On the contrary, if we are to reach a settled consensus on these contested issues it is essential that both sides listen to each other and engage in dialogue. That’s why we think it’s so important that these accounts are reinstated.

That gender critical views are within the bounds of acceptable speech and worthy of respect in a democratic society – and not hateful or transphobic – is not just the opinion of the Free Speech Union, but has been confirmed by the Employment Appeals Tribunal. That tribunal recently concluded that gender critical beliefs are ‘protected’ under the Equality Act 2010, meaning it is unlawful in the UK to discriminate against people because they hold those beliefs. Although this hasn’t yet been tested in the European Court of Human Rights, we also think these beliefs are protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Some gender critical accounts have been taken down simply for asserting the view that sex should be defined biologically. Posts such as “Only females get cervical cancer”, “If you have a uterus you will be female”, “If you have periods you are a woman” and “Having a penis is what makes someone male” were all deemed by Twitter to be in violation of the platform’s rules against ‘hateful conduct’. But such views are not hateful. In banning gender critical accounts on the grounds that such views are ‘hateful’ – or banning accounts because they have ‘misgendered’ or ‘deadnamed’ trans people – Twitter is appealing to an imaginary consensus in favour of the view that it is transphobic to define sex as biological and immutable, or that self-declared gender identity should determine access to single sex spaces and services, or that people are entitled to compel others to use their preferred gender pronouns. No such consensus exists, which leads us to conclude that the reason so many gender critical accounts have been banned is because Twitter’s content moderators have taken the side of the transrights activists in this debate. If Twitter is to become the digital town square you want it to be, where free speech is sacrosanct, the moderators must remain above the fray when it comes to matters of ongoing public debate. They should act as holders of the ring, not political combatants.

We hope that you will recognise the cancellation of these accounts as an example of “censorship that goes far beyond law”, which you have rightly condemned. Public debate is impoverished when access to the digital town square is restricted in this way. As you say in your ‘hateful conduct’ policy, “Our role is to serve the public conversation, which requires representation of a diverse range of perspectives.” By reinstating gender critical accounts and recognising gender critical views as a legitimate contribution to an ongoing public debate, Twitter can take a meaningful step towards encouraging a civil discussion between people with opposing views on this important topic. It is only by protecting free speech and allowing open discussion and debate that we can hope to make progress towards resolving the most contentious disputes that are currently dividing us.

We ask you to restore all the accounts that have been banned because they fall foul of Twitter’s content moderation policy that wrongly characterises the expression of gender critical beliefs as ‘hateful’. We have compiled a list of accounts banned for this reason and are happy to share them with you if you contact us on info@freespeechunion.org.

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Signatures: 2,934Next Goal: 5,000
Support now
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