Twitter Under Fire For Censoring The Bisexual & Transsexual Communities

Twitter is under fire for censoring LGBTQ terms while updating its polices on adult content.

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Twitter presented information on Friday, November 3 concerning what content will get banned on the site.

Some of the statement said:

“Online behavior continues to evolve and change, and at Twitter, we have to ensure those changes are reflected in our rules in a way that’s easy to adhere to and understand. Today, we’re publishing a new version of the Twitter Rules to clarify our policies and how we enforce them. While the fundamentals of our policies and our approach have not changed, this updated version presents our rules with more details and examples.”

“In the weeks ahead, we’ll launch separate pages for each of our policies to provide even more context about what each policy covers and our rationale for enforcement.’

Some of the content that’s going to be filtered includes:

  • Spam and related behaviors
  • Graphic violence and adult content
  • Self-harm
  • Abusive Behavior
  • And more.
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The problem is, while working out the kinks of this updated censor system, Twitter ended up censoring the bisexual hashtag (this includes erasing content connected to #bisexual).

 

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But guess what? That’s not all. Twitter also erased content connected to the transsexual community as well.

 

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Perhaps the reason why Twitter chose to censor (and basically delete) content connected to these two communities is because so many outside of the communities sexualize them.

Kate Harrad of The Bisexual Index spoke with GayStarNews about the situation and said:

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"Bisexuals have historically been hypersexualised and associated with porn and promiscuity. Every bi activist knows the problems of trying to search for bi content on the web – some public wifi systems block it altogether, even when it’s nothing to do with sex, because bisexual is seen as a dodgy word in itself.”

While the intention is understood, the actual action is complicated and in some aspects silly.

“Obviously it’s outrageous to block a term like bisexual,” said trans woman Sophia Banks, “It’s a sexuality. Not a fetish.”

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