Twitter,
Over the last year the world has become a hotbed of transphobia, largely as a result of your platform and a lack of moderation and oversight. We are a group of Transgender people and their allies and today we are here to ask you to put an end to this.
Many Transgender people are leaving twitter as we cannot bare the Hatred and abuse that is directed at us on your platform from so called “Gender Critical” people. The latest to leave being Munroe Bergdorf, one of the most visible and respected members of our community.
Transphobic groups have been growing rapidly on your platform, many of them originating in the UK for the purpose of harassing our media, politics, education and healthcare influencers. They have now created a large network of fake accounts with which to spread their hate throughout the rest of the world. They have been allowed to attack and denigrate us. They have been allowed to stir up hatred. They have been allowed to openly mock us. Twitter has largely ignored the rising tide of hatred directed at our community from your platform.
During this pandemic Transphobic groups have flourished on twitter, making an already difficult situation for our small community even harder. This is no longer an issue of free speech, this is no longer a political debate, this is no longer a disagreement of ideas, this is an assault on our community and our lives that is severely affecting our health, our happiness and our wellbeing every single day.
The effect’s on the mental health of the Transgender population around the world during the pandemic are staggering. Wait times on the NHS in Britain have been extended up to five years. Youth must now go to court in order to receive life saving puberty blockers. The media has become so hostile that many of us feel destitute. This is largely a direct result of your inability to remove this disinformation and hatred campaign from your platform. Our small community is being decimated by the relentless bullying on social media by “Gender Criticals", besetting a barrage of attacks upon our community while we have no recourse of protest during lockdown. These disagreements have now spilled from twitter onto the streets of our cities, with Transphobic graffiti and signs being placed in public bathrooms, changing rooms, and on streets not just in the UK, but internationally - all clearly using the language of this twitter mob. This hatred is bleeding into and now seeding itself in most other western countries. We cannot let this hatred keep spreading.
These groups have created a coded language in order to mask their transphobic bigotry in plain sight and avoid the ban hammer. So far it has worked exceedingly well in the UK. We stand accused of being misogynists and homophobes simply for being who we are. This is a recurring theme among these groups, spouting bigotry while simultaneously launching claims that we are in fact the bigots simply for being ourselves. They may call themselves Gender critical but how is this any different from Race realist if the outcome of their hatred, however coded it may be, is the same. They have manufactured a climate of hatred and disgust, pitting feminism and gay rights against the Transgender community in an attempt to tear our communities apart and isolate us. They bully us. They relentlessly hound anybody who so much as mentions our community without disparagement. They advocate for conversion therapy for trans youth. They claim we are mentally ill and confused. They call our life saving surgery mutilation. They use the names of our past lives against us. They seek to agitate by referring to us by pronouns they know will upset us. They search for photos of before our transitions that they can laugh at and degrade us with. They spread disinformation and lies about our community, framing us as child abusers, perverts and sexual predators. They claim we are part of a conspiracy theory, manufactured by large corporations to sell medicine. They eviscerate any trace of us from our own history. They trivialise and laugh at our days of remembrance. They work every day to make our lives harder and harder. They claim censorship and cancel culture if we talk about them. They sue us if we call them Transphobic. They deny us our dignity and seek to erase us by claiming that who we are, which we cannot change, is a dangerous fiction.
Over a year ago Reddit took appropriate action to address the issue of rising transphobia on their platform under the “Gender Critical” guise, those same groups moved their bigotry to twitter where their hatred has been allowed to flourish unhindered and with renewed energy. Twitter has largely ignored this rising tide, we believe now it is time to put an end to the dog whistle politics and stirring up of a torrent of hatred and abuse towards our small community. All of us believe in free speech, robust debate and an open democracy. This however is just Transphobia repackaged for the mass market and it is effective in convincing the laymen that we are a threat to society.
There are several accounts, growing in number each day and hiding behind faux feminism and gay liberation to promote Transphobia in Britain and across the globe. I would very much like to link them here, however these groups have decided on a joint strategy of extreme litigiousness and I fear reprisal at their hand. This is just further evidence of how sinister these groups have become, so much so that they will attempt to sue anyone who criticises them.
These are Hate groups by any other name, verifiably so and we call upon you to act by ensuring that we are not victim’s of their hatred on your platform where it appears that for sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia and religious prejudice there is one set of rules but for transphobia there is another.
The undersigned:
" and basically went on a full rant about how bad they were. He basically cut all contact with almost everybody I knew from my university groups and got kicked out of his old flat for leaving his room in an entire mess and living like an absolute slob. Meanwhile, he had an entire "fetish" for transgender/transsexuals (actually full blown autogynephilia) and stated it proudly. Fast forward a few months later, he troons out and gets lavishing and worship from those (especially the women) whom he treated like absolute trash.
