Topline
Twitter’s executive chair Elon Musk said late Tuesday the words “cisgender” and “cis” are considered “slurs” under the social media platform’s content policy, the latest ad-hoc policy change implemented by the billionaire who has previously made controversial remarks on gender identity.
Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of Twitter, Elon Musk attends the Viva … [+] Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France.
Key Facts
Musk tweeted the two words are “considered slurs on this platform” and warned that “targeted harassment” against any person would result in “at minimum, temporary suspensions.”
Musk’s comment was in response to a user’s tweet claiming they were harassed after tweeting they reject the word “cis” and don’t wish to be referred to as such.
Twitter’s hateful conduct policy page does not explicitly mention what words the platform considers slurs, but notes it prohibits “targeting others with repeated slurs…that intends to degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category.”
Musk did not clarify when Twitter began considering those words slurs, and it is also unclear whether the platform has handed out any suspensions.
Surprising Fact
Despite Musk’s labeling of the term “cisgender” a slur, the word has been part of the Oxford English Dictionary since 2015. The dictionary defines cisgender as “designating a person whose sense of personal identity corresponds to the sex and gender assigned to him or her at birth.” Dictionary.com uses a similar description “noting or relating to a person whose gender identity corresponds with that person’s sex assigned at birth.” Neither dictionaries use the label slur or offensive to describe the word.
News Peg
Musk has made multiple controversial remarks on gender identity issues and even promoted transphobic content since buying Twitter last year. In April, Twitter altered the slurs section of its hateful content policy page to remove a line that prohibited “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” Earlier this month, the billionaire shared conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s documentary What Is A Woman?—which has been deemed by many as transphobic—with a tweet saying: “Every parent should watch this.”
Key Background
Since his acquisition of Twitter last year, Musk has attempted to position the platform as a “free speech” haven. But the billionaire has not shied away from implementing ad-hoc policy changes around content he does not agree with. Last year, Twitter suspended an account that tracked the movements of Elon Musk’s private jet based on publicly available data. Musk later justified this suspension with a policy change that banned real-time tracking of a person’s current location. He also referred to the sharing of public flight data as “doxing” and a “physical safety violation.” Twitter also attempted to ban Twitter users from sharing links from other social media platforms on the site, but the move was eventually overturned by Musk after it received widespread criticism.
Further Reading
Elon Musk Personally Elevates Transphobic Video Originally Flagged as Hate Speech (The New Republic)
