Like universities that create “safe zones” to protect people from speech that might upset them, Twitter is protecting us from thought and speech that might bother someone.
In October, Twitter created new rules effectively categorizing anti-transgenderism commentary as hate speech.
A Canadian writer named Meghan Murphy who does not accept that transgender people have the right to decide which gender they will be called got herself permanently banned from Twitter.
Ms. Murphy was cited for the speech crime of “misgendering” by saying, “Women aren’t men,” “How are transwomen not men?,” and “What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?” She also committed the offense of “deadnaming,” which means referring to someone by the name he or she used prior to adopting a new sexual identity.
Some of Ms. Murphy’s comments related to the controversy taking place in Canada in which a number of female beauticians are being sued by a transgender woman (a person born a male who now identifies as a female) because the beautician would not service this person.
The plaintiff in that case wanted the beauticians to perform a bikini wax. Ms. Murphy described the proposed service in more graphic terms with reference to the plaintiff’s genitalia. That part didn’t bother Twitter.
It is appropriate for Twitter to enforce hate speech rules. But this was clearly not a case of hate speech. It may have been controversial speech, or even insensitive speech. But it was not hate speech.
Speech that offends someone or some group is not, per se, hate speech, or else most of the monologues on late-night TV would be deemed hate speech.
Twitter is a private enterprise and has a right to police its site as it sees fit. But we can’t have real discussions if people cannot be honest and forthright, and even outspoken. That’s what freedom, indeed communication, is about. And that should matter more to us than being politically correct or being offended at someone else’s views.
One would hope that Twitter, as part of mass communication and of the media in our age, would err on the side of free speech and free expression.
First Published: December 15, 2018, 10:00 a.m.
