On Thursday, an ardent Canadian feminist who has supported the #MeToo movement but has opposed a bill that would encode gender identity and gender expression into Canadian law furiously revealed that Twitter wouldn’t let her say that men are not women.
Meghan Murphy, who founded the feminist blog and podcast Feminist Current in 2012, had tweeted in October, “Men aren’t women tho,” and “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between men and transwomen?”
On Thursday, Murphy revealed on Twitter that she had been notified by Twitter that her language in the tweet had violated their rules against hateful conduct.
Murphy was furious, and tweeted, “This is f**king bullshit @twitter. I’m not allowed to say that men aren’t women or ask questions about the notion of transgenderism at all anymore? That a multi billion dollar company is censoring BASIC FACTS and silencing people who ask questions about this dogma is INSANE.”
Murphy continued on Twitter:
What ARE we allowed to say here??? How tf is simply saying ‘men aren’t women’ hateful??? I am losing my goddamned mind over this. Enjoy your brave new world, sjws. Here’s your f***ing social justice … I’m assuming my account is going to get locked again simply for speaking about this. But this is not f***ing ok and I’m not going to let it go silently … Trans activists have been targeting my account for a few months now. Either someone at Twitter or with an in at Twitter has been combing through old tweets and reporting them for “hateful conduct.” Twitter seems to instantly shut my account down without a second thought.
After Murphy revealed what had happened to her, tons of her followers came to her defense by simply tweeting, “Men are not women.” That prompted Murphy to tweet at Twitter, “Are you going to ban every single user on here who says ‘men aren’t women’?? Actually??? @Twitter Or are you just going out of your way to specifically silence ME?”
One Twitter user responded to Murphy by tweeting, “One more time for those in the back: the right to free speech protects you from the government. Not criticism. You are entitled to say whatever dumb thing you want. You are not entitled to a private company providing you an audience.” Murphy fired back, “Yeah and the government is trying to legislate against our free speech, thanks to gender identity ideology. Pay attention.”
In 2013, Murphy referred to Twitter as “a horrible place for feminism … intellectual laziness is encouraged, oversimplification is mandatory, posturing is de rigueur, and bullying is rewarded.”
When she appeared before the Canadian Senate in 2017 to oppose bill C-16, which encoded gender identity and gender expression into Canadian law, Murphy stated, “Treating gender as though it is either internal or a personal choice is dangerous and completely misunderstands how and why women are oppressed under patriarchy as a class of people. … The rights of women and girls are being pushed aside to accommodate a trend.”