Twitter quietly drops bans on 'misgendering', 'deadnaming' transgender individuals

Social media platform Twitter has eliminated policies that barred "deadnaming" or "misgendering" transgender individuals and has further softened its policies against hate speech.

"Deadnaming" refers to the use of someone's name they used prior to transitioning and assuming a new one. "Misgendering" refers to identifying someone by biological sex rather than by their gender identity, when the two do not correspond. It might also include using pronouns in reference to a transgender person other than those they prefer.

LGBT advocates argue that such practices constitute hateful conduct and forms of harassment.

The platform enacted the bans in 2018 but now appears to have deleted the lines in its policies that forbade "targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals," according to the Associated Press. Twitter further announced on Monday that it would no longer delete tweets that "potentially" run afoul of its hate speech rules and instead merely attach warning labels on some of them.

The policy had led to the suspensions of numerous conservative accounts, including Christian satire site The Babylon Bee, which lost access to the platform over a tweet dubbing U.S. Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine the outlet's "Man of the Year."

Levine is a biological male that identifies as a woman. The Bee refused to the delete the tweet and later regained access to its account after Elon Musk purchased the platform.

Some critics of the transgender movement refuse to use a transgender person's chosen pronouns or selected name, with many arguing that gender reassignment surgeries and treatments are not actually genuine sex changes, but merely chemical and aesthetic adjustments that make the recipient more closely resemble the sex with which they identify.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on Twitter.