Twitter is stepping up its protection policy for the trans community.
Deadnaming and misgendering could now get you a suspension from Twitter as it looks to sure up its safeguarding policy for transgender, non-binary and genderfluid people.
The micro-blogging website is home to some of the most abusive conversations over transgender rights with feuds often breaking out between gender critical feminists and transgender activists.
Well-known Twitter users such as Katie Hopkins have often used the site to hit out at, undermine, bully or insight hatred towards transgender people.
Earlier in 2018, Katie Hopkins wrote that transgender women were just “castrated men” as well as calling trans women “sausage smugglers”.
Now people who purposely misgender or dead name a trans person could find themselves suspended or banned from the platform forever.
The policy now includes the wording, “Repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes, or other content that degrades someone…
Including “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals”.
Punishment
The social media giant has said that it will take action against those found to flaunt its policy. It writes,
“We may ask someone to remove the violating content and serve a period of time in read-only mode before they can Tweet again.
“Subsequent violations will lead to longer read-only periods and may eventually result in permanent account suspension”.
What is deadnaming?
Deadnaming is when a person refers to someone by a previous name, it could be done with malice or by accident. It mostly affects transgender people who have changed their name during their transition.
For instance, if a trans woman’s birth name was Martin, but she changed it to Sarah during her transition, calling her Martin or referring to her as Martin would be deadnaming her.
It is very similar to misgendering but focuses more on someone’s name rather than gender pronouns.
