The transgender movement still has not recovered from Elon Musk’s purchase of X (formerly Twitter). While the platform still has obvious flaws — from Musk’s difficulty in policing the posting of pornography to the clearly prevalent practice of shadow-banning primarily conservative-leaning figures — it is possible to tell the truth about gender ideology on one of the world’s largest social media platforms. In a world where the public square has become (unfortunately, in my view) digital, that matters.
It is also significant that the transgender movement’s attacks on Elon Musk — like their targeting of J.K. Rowling — appear to have backfired completely. Previously, the bullying of corporate leaders generally elicited a climbdown in short order, especially when combined with potent accusations of “threatening the existence of trans people” or claims that free speech on the issue caused suicidal ideation in young people. But Musk, if he ever cared, now appears to view the transgender movement with the same hostility they view him.
But with the loss of X, LGBT activists are ramping up their efforts to retain their grip on other platforms, notably YouTube. Last month, Media Matters — a “watchdog” group that works with LGBT organizations such as GLAAD — released a report titled “YouTube and right-wing creators are profiting from anti-trans vitriol.” The strategy works like this:
- Media Matters, cosplaying as a neutral watchdog, releases “evidence” of hate speech as defined by the LGBT movement.
- This report is fired off as a press release to mainstream media outlets, many of which reliably run stories on “surges” of “anti-LGBT hate speech” on their platforms.
- Media Matters and LGBT groups now point to these stories as evidence of their initial claims, and use them to pressure the social media giants — in this case, YouTube — to take action.
- Any response — or lack thereof — from the social media platform is also viewed as a story. No response is presented as an indication that the executives in charge do not care about the safety of LGBT people; any promise to take action is stingily praised as “a step in the right direction” along with quotes urging them to go further.
- If executives do promise to move “in the right direction,” they have encouraged the bullying, and the strategy is repeated in an infinite loop.
Here is how the Media Matters report, authored by Payton Armstrong, begins:
YouTube is allowing right-wing creators with millions of subscribers to misgender and deadname trans people on its platform — and monetizing that content through advertising. YouTube has claimed for years to be committed to protecting trans people from hate speech and harassment on the platform while resisting advocates’ calls to explicitly prohibit intentionally deadnaming or misgendering trans people — forms of harassment that involve using a trans person’s former name or incorrect pronouns.
For the uninitiated, by “incorrect pronouns” Armstrong means “correct pronouns”; by “deadnaming” he means referring to someone by their given name prior to “transition.” According to Armstrong, referring to Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner correctly as “he” would constitute “harassment.” Suppressing speech is a key tactic of the LGBT movement, and Media Matters works to list all those they believe are guilty of this truth-telling “harassment.”
In Armstrong’s report, he pinpoints a number of YouTube content creators as particularly offensive violators, including Matt Walsh (of course), Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, Michael Knowles, Brett Cooper, the Hodge twins, and Brandon Tatum. Four of those named work for The Daily Wire, which, as one of the most successful conservative media outfits and the company that produced the documentary What is a Woman? is naturally a primary target. The Daily Wire, Armstrong writes, “likely profited” from “bigotry.”
Armstrong concludes: “Though YouTube has temporarily suspended or demonetized accounts in the past for violating its hate speech and harassment policies by promoting bigotry against LGBTQ people, the platform’s lack of explicit rules around misgendering and deadnaming has left YouTube rife with monetized anti-trans vitriol.” His demand is simple: That YouTube immediately rectify this by taking action against the content creators in question. He provides a handy list of hyper-linked videos for the convenience of any YouTube content reviewers to speed up the process. GLAAD promptly posted the report to X.
Thus far, these creators have not been removed from YouTube entirely — although plenty of others have been. With X permitting open discussion on the transgender issue and many of the LGBT movement’s premises now being challenged even in the mainstream press, it will be interesting to see how long this particular tactic retains its potency. I expect to see a massive push to reassert control over the narrative, particularly through censorship, over the next year as the LGBT movement attempts to stomp out the debate. I also expect them to fail. Too many of their previously enforced dogmas have been debunked, and too many mainstream outlets — including The New York Times — have begun to cautiously allow dissenting opinions. The winds are changing, and I don’t think they can be stopped this time.