Twitter outright bans misgendering and ‘deadnaming’ in effort to avoid offending trans people

Twitter has banned the practice of misgendering, as well as a term it calls "deadnaming," in an effort to crack down on offending transgender people.

Wait, what are these words?

"Misgendering" is the practice of referring to a person with a pronoun (he, she) that does not correlate with the person's gender identity (for example: calling a woman a woman if she says she's a man).

The term "deadnaming" means to use a transgender person's former name instead of their new, chosen name.

Oh.

In response to the myriad offenses engaging in such practices cause, Twitter has decided to ban misgendering and deadnaming.

The company reportedly rolled out the policy in October, but the update only gained momentum over the last couple of weeks.

The social media giant's "hateful conduct policy" now includes acts such as "[r]epeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone."

"We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category," Twitter's code of conduct now reads. "This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals."

Punishment for such infractions include, but are not limited to, suspension of a person or entity's Twitter account.

"When determining the penalty for violating this policy, we consider a number of factors including, but not limited to the severity of the violation and an individual’s previous record of rule violations," the guideline reads. "For example, we may ask someone to remove the violating content and serve a period of time in read-only mode before they can Tweet again. Subsequent violations will lead to longer read-only periods and may eventually result in permanent account suspension. If an account is engaging primarily in abusive behavior, or is deemed to have shared a violent threat, we will permanently suspend the account upon initial review."

Anything else?

Many of the platform's users celebrated the move, calling it long overdue.

Other users, however, were adamant that the notion stepped all over free speech and heavily promoted censorship.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro wrote, "So Twitter is now banning people for stating the basic scientific fact that men are men and women are women, and that men cannot become women simply by thinking themselves so. Twitter vs. reality."

So Twitter is now banning people for stating the basic scientific fact that men are men and women are women, and that men cannot become women simply by thinking themselves so. Twitter vs. reality. https://t.co/Ur6ap8zNUN

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 25, 2018