Radical Gender Theory and Twitter Bans

This is my first post here in over 10 years. This post is not about Elliot Page, the new name chosen by the actress formerly named Ellen Page. I neither care if Ms. Page ever sees nor presume she ever will see this post. This is about Twitter and their stupid site rules.

Twitter locked my account because I tweeted:

Eliot Page is a woman.

In an eyesight-induced mistake, I thought her name had only one L. My bad. But, of course, that wasn't the problem.

In an explanatory email, Twitter said, 

You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.

Twitter is notoriously oblique about their "safety" policies, which makes them seem arbitrary and unevenly applied. 

For instance, accounts on Twitter giddily endorsed the violence against Salmon Rushdie, (allegedly, as of this writing) stabbed by a religious zealot onstage after the Iranian Ayatollah put a bounty on Rushdie's head. Those tweets, as of this writing, are still active.

Clearly some minion, or a minion's bot, at Twitter thought my five words were enough to promote violence against someone, threaten them, or harass them, while literally calling for someone to be killed was not.

Saying "Elliot Page is a woman" does not promote violence against Elliot Page or anyone else. 

The argument may be that since people who want to be the sex they aren't commit suicide at a higher rate than normal people, addressing them as their biological sex risks them killing themselves and is therefor promoting violence against them.

But no one has shown that to be the case.  While social acceptance and especially familial acceptance are factors in the suicide rate among people confused about their sex, there's a difference between social acceptance of a person and affirmatively agreeing with a person's false beliefs. 

Furthermore, if it is the case that people who believe themselves to be a sex they are not commit suicide at a higher rate, we should make every effort to minimize the number of people who think that. Gender dysphoria is the problem, not the solution.

If people are so fragile that the mere use of the wrong pronoun or the mere suggestion by some stranger online that their biology overrules their presentation causes them to spiral into suicide, they are in fact not well mentally. 

We should strive to accept one another socially. We don't have to affirmatively agree with each other's false beliefs to do that.

We accept the religious and political views of people without adopting those beliefs ourselves. We can rejoice that other people like strawberry ice cream or broccoli, both of which are horrid non-foods, even if we ourselves do not like them. We can be happy that there are sports or theater events or television shows that other people like. We do not have to like those things ourselves to accept them, tolerate them, or to readily admit they exist.

We can accept people who are attracted only, or almost only, to a particular sex that we are not, or any level in between.

We can accept that people have schizophrenia without telling them to believe the voices in their heads. We can accept depression and manic depression as problems with real physical, emotional, and neurological causes without cruelly endorsing the depressed person's feelings of worthlessness.

Some men like to wear women's clothing and makeup; OK. That doesn't make them women.

It is not always kind to affirm a person's false belief.

Saying "Elliot Page is a woman" is not threatening Elliot or anyone else. 

Saying "Eliot Page is a woman" is not harassing anyone

I use Elliot's new name because people should be able to name themselves as they wish. People change their names all the time, such as when getting married, divorced, adopted, or simply deciding they don't like their first names and want to use their middle or nicknames.The former Miss Ellen Page could even have said, "It's spelled e-l-l-e-n but pronounce 'Elliot,' and I'd have used that pronunciation.  

Using someone's former name is not an attack on them. It's a personal slight that could rise to the level of rudeness if done to them in person, but faces a steep slope to be called rude in writing, even in a public forum.

Since people can change their names arbitrarily, I'll happily use that name when someone changes it, whether I agree with their reasons for the change or not. 

But what people cannot do is change sexes. We're born either male or female, and remain that way until our bodies return to dust. I don't care if people want to pretend they're something they're not, but I don't have to pretend along with them. A name is one thing; a description is another.

Some people conform to the appearance of the opposite sex so well that no one knows their true identity. That's fine, who cares? Pretend all day if you want.

But to force me to pretend is to force me to lie, and I decline.

I deleted the tweet, following the stupid site rules. 

Elliot Page is still a woman.

 

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