Fully disagree. They publicly mocked a trans person, in clear violation of the TOS that all users agree to as a condition of use of the platform. They were then temporarily suspended, as clearly laid out in the TOS.
Twitter says "Hey, if X, then Y." Babylon Bee says "Yeah, ok." Babylon Bee does X, and experiences Y. They are not victims, and there is no "violation of free speech" here.
>They publicly mocked a trans person, in clear violation of the TOS
Unless the ToS specifically calls out misgendering, then the slight of hand here is the presumption that all misgendering is hate speech. Looks like Twitter may have decided that this isn't the case.
Well, Elon changed the TOS. He can now make shit you like against the TOS. You can't rely on unelected rich people to determine speech even if they make decisions you like
I don't think the parent argued that it was compliant with the TOS, he's more likely saying that the TOS was inappropriate and is glad that's been corrected.
The difference is a highly engaged set of authoritarian activists who will assassinate your character and get you fired. Other groups don't have the equivalent of a Red Guard to enforce their ideology or religion.
I’m pretty sure trans people are a protected minority in most jurisdictions. So you are wrong. The judicial system has evaluated that—for some valid reason; according to our laws—mocking trans people is worse then mocking cis people.
> "I’m pretty sure trans people are a protected minority in most jurisdictions. So you are wrong. The judicial system has evaluated that—for some valid reason; according to our laws—mocking trans people is worse then mocking cis people."
lol I don't know what "jurisdiction" you're living in, but "mocking trans people" is in no way a legal matter in the U.S. I can mock "trans" people as much as I want and there's not a damn thing you or the government can do about it as long as I am doing it on my own dime and on my own time.
I don’t think you can—or at least there are limits, I’m pretty sure targeted harassment is a crime, and I think targeted harassment against a protected minority approaches a hate crime. So mocking trans people is definitely a more serious issue then mocking cis people.
Regardless of dictionary definitions, when judged by the tone and context of common use, "cis" is primarily a slur which is used to de-legitimize and insult the people it is directed at. Of the people who are ostensibly "cis", exceptionally few will choose to self-describe using that word. Kindly refrain from using it.
The only people who would have cis used to "delegitimize" them would be ones who are saying something innacurate about trans people and are being told that they do not have relevant frame of reference for that comment.
Slurs are made by context, tone, and perception by the target. I have never been called "cis" except by people with antagonistic tones trying to get a rise out of me. Furthermore the overwhelming majority of the roughly two billion English speakers around the world who aren't trans do not self-describe as "cis".
- Add an unnecessarily complex psuedo-intellectual layer to the discussion in order to catch normal people off guard and make them feel "uneducated" so that they can be "educated".
- Decouple the idea of normal from heterosexuality, which is, frankly, normal due to it being the most common state for of existence for people.
Overall it is a purposeful attack on the status quo. In summary, "cis" as a term is unnecessary.
The obvious response is that that that shouldn't result in a ban either. There's a right not to be physically threatened, but there is and should not be no right to not be offended.
I agree. The marketplace of ideas and opinions should be protected to the greatest extent possible. Restrictions should be limited to things such as actual threats, doxxing of private information, and illegal content.
Otherwise, allow people to use the block, mute, and unfollow buttons as they see fit as a form of personal moderation.
Sure I’d hate it if you called me a TexanLady instead of a TexanFeller. But I will defend your right to call me names. Speech that offends someone doesn’t imply speech that shouldn’t be allowed.
I've been called a sissy on many an occasion. That is in fact, being misgendered, and I cared a lot when I was young. I no longer care about being mocked and I reject gender norms in general, but I'm just old enough to just realize a bully being an asshole is a tale as old as time.
I realize though that it isn't always on option for people. This can be much more challenging if it's in the workplace, or when people are younger and social acceptance is more important.
I think the trans movement would be helped massively if we just focused on that being anti-trans is just being bullying. The focus on edge-cases and ontology and essentialism of gender makes the debate much more muddy.
a simple example: people who get mocked for being bald don't typically get killed for their baldness. People who get mocked for being trans ARE FREQUENTLY killed for their transness. We don't need to protect bald people from mocking, because the consequences are minimal. We need to protect trans people from mocking because the consequences are _maximal_.
trans people are an endangered (in the most literal sense) minority that is not doing anything to hurt others and yet is frequently targeted for many heinous things. Thus, they are special and need our protection.
I see single digits per year. Worldwide. What is your definition of frequently?
If you know of more cases with reliable sources then perhaps the article should be expanded.
While Wikipedia is of course not the most exhaustive source, it ranks quite high in Search Engines.
For many people it is frequently their sole source of information for such issues, which is why I see merit for people who know more than I do about the issue to make the necessary edits to expand the article.
I don't see why you think that everyone should be blamed for what a handful of others do. Their crimes are not my crimes. That's not the way a free society works.
Also, mocking "trans" people is not a gateway to murder. I mock "trans" people all the time and I've never murdered one or even thought about doing so.
It is indeed. But my experience from what I saw from Twitter was a clear bias towards certain... authoritarian ticks? u know. It is a private company anyway, just mentioning the had those. They could do whatever.
Just an observation :)
I hope it is more balanced from now on. Now is when we will be able to see if Elon delivers on his words.
Just coz it's hard to do it well doesnt mean they were trying to do it well.
Neither will Musk, most likely. Im sure we will be regaled with "unappreciated subtleties" about why tweeting about his private jet flights is a no no.
Transphobia is pretty clearly against twitters rules. They weren't really banned, they were locked out until they deleted their tweet. All they had to do was delete the tweet.
He could've gotten a lighter sentence if he just accepted the plea deal! Do you understand how silly this sounds.
Moreover, they awarded Rachael Levine "Man of the Year" as a parody because they are a parody website that is right-leaning. Of all the things you could class as so-called "transphobia" this is what you choose? They never deserved to be banned. Additionally, I can go, right now, to Twitter and find a literally gold mine of rule breakers who lean far left that seem to never get touched. Strange, that.
I personally am excited for the reckoning. Twitter is absolute disaster and hopefully the left leaning bad actors get the bans they have deserved since 2016. I've read absolutely disgusting things, especially regarding white people ("white"-phobia in your terminology?) that should be banned and in many times investigated by the FBI. Hopefully we see those bans come down soon. There's a huge difference between Parler and what gets banned on Twitter. To the point you could consider Twitter a very good approximation of Parler for the left. It's time these bad actors get the bans they deserve.
While I agree that the Bee should never have been banned, the answer to this problem is less censorship, not more. It sounds like you are calling for people who have different ideological views from you to be banned, but that is not how a healthy society should function.
There are already tools you can use on Twitter and other platforms to ignore content you don’t want to see (mute or block, for example). Banning someone should only be done in extreme circumstances like if someone is breaking the law or making literal calls to violence.
> It sounds like you are calling for people who have different ideological views from you to be banned, but that is not how a healthy society should function.
It only sounds this way because I targeted the left here. I only did that because it’s Twitter. I would rather have the extremes removed from the platform regardless. It’s already enough of a mess as it is.
The argument that a person can be a different gender than the one that all their physical biology points to is absolutely not an open-and-shut case. I know many people believe that it is, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t valid opposing arguments. To me, that means that you shouldn’t be banned for contesting the idea of transgenderism.
I think a more reasonable argument is that people should be allowed to present themselves how they want without prejudice, but that there are still some undeniable facts about the world. Clearly there are people who want to have this discussion and silencing one side of the discussion doesn’t resolve it. It just causes the tension to fester. Get it out in the open and the truth will come out.
> To me, that means that you shouldn’t be banned for contesting the idea of transgenderism.
While I'm mixed on the ban, this is a mischaracterization of what they were banned for. They were banned for misgendering a specific person not questioning transgenderism. There is a significant distinction between questioning an idea and targeting a specific person.
Toleration is a funny thing isn't it? If you have a problem with transgenderism how much do you need to support it to be tolerant? If you have a problem with people who have a problem with transgenderism how much do you have to support them to be tolerant?
There are great yard sticks to this question in theory "I tolerate everything except intolerance. Your right to swing your arms stops when they come into contact with someone's nose." In practice though it's always easy - on every side - to pick out the things we don't like and decide that they're violent or intolerant.
Everyone is tolerant of the things they like - and they ask everyone to join them in that if they like those things or not.
I see what your saying here, and it might be a relevant discussion in a different context, but here it's really not. If they wrote a deep thoughtful article about Rachel Levine, but simply misgendered her because they don't believe in trans people for religious or whatever reasons it'd be worth asking " If you have a problem with transgenderism how much do you need to support it to be tolerant?". But they didn't. The entire point of their post was to misgender her. Not misgendering her didn't require showing any kind of support for transgenderism, it simply required... doing nothing. Instead they deliberately singled out an individual person to mock for being transgender.
If this was some random trans Rachel from Boring, Oregon, I'd call this a clear case of bullying and say the ban was 100% justified and shouldn't remain, but I think there is a much, much higher bar when the target is a government official or celebrity. But that doesn't change the fact that the entire point was singling out an individual for mockery.
Sure. But Twitter has said "we want to make sure that we have trans voices on our platform, so in the interest of a broader marketplace of ideas, we're going to say no to one particular idea - making fun of trans people, who typically face a much higher level of violence, rejection, discrimination, and hate than most".
If Babylon Bee makes a joke about trans people how is that removing trans voices from the platform? If making a joke about a group is the same as encouraging violence or whatever then you can't make any jokes about people.
If you think trans people shouldn't be allowed to be berated online then why not ban berating of Trump or whites? Why should their experience on Twitter be a "shitty experience"?
Regardless, you didn't answer my question: "If Babylon Bee makes a joke about trans people how is that removing trans voices from the platform?"
People voluntarily leaving is not removing voices.
Galileo wasn't really under house arrest. All he had to do was recant.
The comparison seems apt because while the magnitude of the punishment is out of proportion the refusal to yield to orthodoxy by taking the simple way out is similar.
Babylon Bee isn't under house arrest. This analogy is absurd. They weren't allowed to target hate towards a specific, named individual on their Twitter account. Everything else they were saying was more or less ok.
And they still had plenty of other outlets, including their very successful website.
This is like a single book publisher telling Galileo, "we won't print this one page, but the rest of the book is ok".
It's hateful in the sense that it's very derisive in the culture of the target and Babylon Bee has a large enough audience that the individual is likely to receive targeted threats as a result.
Reach and influence are important, because they impact the magnitude of what a derisive comment can do to a target.
You saying, "lol, man!" In your living room has no reach, it won't cause harm. The Bee saying it has huge reach, and when aimed at a specific minority individual can lead to serious harm.
> derisive in the culture of the target
> the individual is likely to receive targeted threats as a result.
Obvious and simple solution here:
1. Allow people to say whatever offensive jokes they want.
2. Keep banning the actual problem: those who make the targeted threats.
The entire concept of "incitement" is ridiculous. We have agency. Nobody can force me to go threaten someone. Go after the ones who commit actual harm, not the ones who make jokes.
They targeted a public person who exists at the upper echelons of power and privilege. For a group of people so obsessed with comedy only “punching up” it’s ironic to see the justification.
And they didn’t which means they’ve earned gobs of respect because of their principled and dignified stance to refuse to be bullied. They won and showed the world you don’t have to lick the boots of elitist corporate oppressors.
A joke about trans people may or may not be transphobia. There's a ton of context to consider - who is telling the joke, whi is the punchline, etc.
But this case was not that. This case was specifically targeting a specific individual and making fun of them being trans. That's absolutely transphobia.
>A joke about trans people may or may not be transphobia.
That is good. A lot of people don't agree.
>who is telling the joke,
Not true.
>whi is the punchline, etc.
Maybe. The problem is the inconsistent standards on that. Punch lines that are anti white or anti male aren't considered sexists or racist, but anti trans ones are.
We need a consistent standard and we don't have it.
>But this case was not that. This case was specifically targeting a specific individual and making fun of them being trans. That's absolutely transphobia.
That was not the case. They were parodying the newspaper or magazine that said Levine was the woman of the year.
The right of free speech doesn't apply to a private company. A company has every right to dictate what services it will provide and the conditions for using those services. It is not a public communications carrier.
This is to conflate (as so often) the USA's legal/constitutional codes with the principle of free speech. That principle has to do with promoting criticism of ideas, and preventing the suppression of criticism. The US codes are (just) one instance of a way to support that principle. The principle applies to all criticism, and all suppression of criticism.
They were suspended with a little Maoist struggle session setup that they were required to go through to repent their sins, and included is an admission that they were sinners for doing it, in order to get their account back.
They had to delete the tweet which awarded a specific named transwoman "man of the year award". The tweet was cruel identity-based harassment and not worthy of defense, but it for some reason seems to have radicalized a certain segment of the tech elite. In fact it may very well have been the inciting event that led to Musk's purchase of twitter.
Anyway, having to delete your harassment tweet in order to keep tweeting is not a Maoist struggle session
Twitter could have just deleted it for them. But no, they literally went to the trouble of building and testing code where you have to delete your own tweet, and part of doing is to so admit that what you did was "wrong". This is a textbook Maoist struggle session.
What were they banned for? Looking through the content, I don't see any of the egregious hate speech or incitement of violence that we've seen in other bans like Trump.
They gave a trans woman their man of the year award and tweeted about it. Twitter said misgendering is against their rules and blocked the account until they deleted the tweet.
Babylon Bee felt attacked and refused to delete the tweet, so they just left their own account locked.
I'm not sure if they felt 'attacked'- more that they were standing up for their right to do what they do (satire) without being censored and giving into the censorship by deleting the tweet. The 'mis-gendering' in this case was absolutely truthful in a scientific sense, thereby making their point that truth being somehow harmful in today's society. Whether you agree that's a 'good' point or not it seems to fall squarely in the area that should be open for public comment.
It's not "absolutely true in the scientific sense", except at the "I have an understanding of high school level biology and sociology" sense.
Sex and gender are both significantly more complex than just chromosomes, genitalia, or organs. If you are interested, I'm happy to dive into a good faith discussion of where the science actually falls.
If it was a niche viewpoint 7 years ago (which I would quibble with, given third gender and trans people have existed for millennia across many cultures, just not commonly in modern America), then great, we've seen science advance.
We used to think that being gay was a mental disease. We now recognize it as something that many animals have as a part of their population, including humans. 20 years ago, being gay was like, pretty much not accepted in public and the science was developing.
Trans identities are coming a bit later, but we're still learning and developing our models.
I didn't talk down. Genuinely, high school biology teaches us that there are two sexes XX it's a woman, XY it's a man. That's literally what we learn.
It's only after you dive into the science at a collegiate level or higher that you learn there's a small percentage, maybe 1-2% of people, for whom this binary understanding is not a good model.
I'm not saying it's bad to only have a high school understanding, just that it's an incomplete understanding.
What happened to Reimer was a travesty, and an affront to human decency on all levels.
That doesn't change the truth that gender and biological sex are both characteristics of the human experience - usually they line up, and sometimes they don't.
For sure. I've had this discussion many times with many people.
I'd argue that most women, in fact probably 99% or more, fall into a fairly straightforward definition - two X chromosomes, raised to behave like whatever their society expects from women. (I think we can agree that "woman" might have different cultural/social expectations depending on where they were raised? E.g. in some parts of the world a niqab or hajib is expected, for instance.)
But there exists a small group of people who don't fit in with that definition. They might have been born with a penis but two XX chromosomes, they might have been born without functional ovaries or an abnormal set of genitalia.
They might have been born with XY chromosomes but never developed a penis.
These folks are intersex, and are often raised as women.
I would say, in these cases, that we might agree that they are women - their chromosomes might not always be XX, but all their features and body development and social upbringing in the world suggests that they are women.
Then we come to another group. A group whose bodies are functionally male but who feel a deep revulsion at being a man.
But before we dive in to that case, are you comfortable with the other two cases and have any disagreements about the 99% or intersex cases?
Sex, scientifically, is determined by the kind of gametes an organism produces in sexual maturity. Males produce small sex cells, females produce large sex cells. There is no overlap among mammals (i.e. human sex is “binary”)
Gender is a concept made up by feminists with no consistent definition, use mainly to confuse.
Are there peer reviewed papers or something on Arvix that explicitly dive into the "beyond high school level of biology" where sex is not defined at the cellular level (wrt Autosomes)? I am not interested in debating the sociological version, to be perfectly honest.
It's important to remember we're discussing the margins. The XX, XY definition is functionally good enough for nearly all cases.
But there exist people whose sex doesn't work into that model.
Consider some 46 XX intersex people. In these cases, outside conditions (typically an endocrine imbalance in the mother) leads to the development of a penis, and the loss of a vagina. These children may be raised as boys. Similarly, some XY people are born with autosomal defects that prevent them from effectively processing testosterone into dihydrotestosterone. As a result, their bodies develop into what we would consider typically female. They are often raised as girls.
There are dozens of conditions similar to these.
"XX male syndrome" might be one example of specifically what you are looking for - people who are scientifically discussed as male despite having XX chromosomes, a typically female karotype. It can be caused by autosomal origins
Ultimately, we cannot remove the discussion of sociological science from biology, because we make choices for kids in these cases. And those choices differ depending on culture. The US preferentially gives intersex people male gender, while Saudi Arabia does the opposite, even for the same conditions. In this way, even biological sex has some social component.
And if you want to make that argument, fine. But when people are banning those who disagree, I will reflexively side with those banned and against the people doing the banning, whether or not I agree with them.
Saying "the Earth is round" is hateful from the perspective of flat earthers. Would you apply the same logic equally and make it an offense to satirize this particular belief?
Or to bring it full circle, I doubt the Bee would petition to get someone banned for satirizing "God" or saying "God is not real". If they did, we would call it out too.
Let's say you have a big nose and you're out on the town attending a comedy club.
A comedian gets up during his stand up routine and comments on your big nose, which you're sensitive about and wish no one would comment on, since you've always wanted a small, delicate nose, and in fact you've scheduled surgery to 'fix' it.
After they comment on your nose you loudly protest and ask the comedian to cease, since you really don't think the nose represents the true 'you.'
Is it 'hate' for the comedian, against your wishes to continue to make jokes that night, and in fact, he finds the whole exchange (and you) so funny that he incorporates the exchange into all his routines going forward?
I'd argue that it is maybe a bit rude, but it is exactly why we have people like comedians- they are the court jesters for our society, they point out when our good intentions turn into pathologies and give us room to reflect on progressive and regressive overreach.
Taking that out of the public sphere removes a good chunk of society's ability to make course corrections.
> What makes you thing they weren't talking about biological sex?
Biological sex is unrelated to the topic at hand, unless of course they were working on some genetics homework, or working on a eugenics project I suppose.
> Which are not applicable in this case, since the sex of the individial in question is inambiguous.
Is it - where do you draw the line? If it's production of gametes, what if she doesn't? If it's hormonal balance, she's now biologicaly female. If it's presence/absence of a penis/vagina, she could have either. If it's X/Y chromosomes, she could be XY, XXY, XX[0], or chimeric.
More importantly, in what way does her biological sex impact her public influence? I certainly hope her chromosomes or genetalia have little to no impact on her public life.
> A man is defined as an adult male.
From Trans Man in Webster:
Definition of trans man
: a transgender man : a man who was identified as female at birth
Making it acceptable per webster to use singular man/woman for a trans individual.
> Yes, the intent of satire is to make fun of absurd situations.
That's The Onion. The Bee is propaganda wrapped up in "it's just a joke bro". The Onion punches both ways, the Bee doesn't.
Language is moving towards a disambiguation between male (as a kerotype or body plan) and man (as a social concept of what it is to be 'manly' in that society.)
This evolution of language has been very rapid in some circles, and slow in others, but everyone uses it to some degree.
For example, when people say, "Be a man!" Or "man up!", they aren't saying, "show your adult male body".
They are saying, "meet our standards for what a man in our culture is!" Mulan's famous song, "I'll make a man out of you" has nothing to do with chromosomes or penises. It has everything to do with the social side of the term "man".
So at the very least, the word man is ambiguous and could mean adult male or it could mean someone who is manly in behavior.
>My hot take is that it's OK to mock senior government officials, actually.
Mocking senior American government officials is the most protected speech in the country, in fact. I do it liberally an encourage others to. It's the most fundamental part of holding them accountable.
Is all mocking fair game? I mean, I hard agree with you, but I think there are things that are gauche or hurtful to mock. Like, I think Obama was a bad president and there are plenty of mock worthy things there, but depicting him and Michelle as apes is beyond the pale for me. Mock his policies, mock his affect, mock his social behaviors in other countries, hell, mock his tan suit. But to bust out racist memes? I dunno... I think that sucks.
Michelle Obama is fairly tall (5'11") and has a masculine jawline. I'm black and I LOL'd the first time I saw her called a Wookie (probably in the dumpster fire comments section of ZeroHedge). I mean, take a look: https://starsunfolded.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Michell...
Alicia Keys or Keri Hilson she ain't....
If she were an absentee First Lady and less proactive, I could totally see someone calling her "Sasquatch" (a big mythical ape-creature rarely captured on camera) as a criticism and I'd be ok with that.
Babylon Bee attacked a high-profile trans public servant in a way meant to (IMO) provide commentary on society's approach to trans issues and the implications for biological females? I'm ok with that too. I think some comedian, maybe Bill Burr or Andrew Schulz, had a similar bit: "Men are so awesome we're even better at being women than actual women. That's why a Man[Bruce Jenner] is Woman of the Year[Caitlyn Jenner], in his first year as a woman." or something to that effect.
For some context, and why some believe that Babylon Bee's suspension was the catalyst for Musk buying Twitter:
Twitter is the defacto online public square for a great number of people in politics, journalism, academia and many other fields.
Twitter's TOS was, for whatever reason, deliberately written to disenfranchise half the voter base, half the country more or less by making it so simply expressing deeply held political or religious views would get half of them banned.
"half the country" overstates things. Roughly 40% of Americans believe that trans rights are good, roughly 30% believe they are bad, and 30% are undecided.
I'd argue that if Twitter has a liberal bias, it reflects the mostly majority opinions. (Speaking as a leftist whose friends are constantly banned for trivial nonsense, Twitter also hates the left. Not the Democrats, they aren't leftist.)
What the 40% figure your citing might represent and what 'woke inc' are actually pushing in legislature and in medicine are most certainly two very different things.
Twitter says "Hey, if X, then Y." Babylon Bee says "Yeah, ok." Babylon Bee does X, and experiences Y. They are not victims, and there is no "violation of free speech" here.