The transgender movement captured the institutions of Big Tech almost overnight, and the cultural power this granted them was extraordinary. Now, they are losing that power — and fighting back desperately.
When both Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter (now X) enforced their ideology, the terms of the cultural debate over gender ideology became not only incredibly narrow but was essentially limited to vocabulary pre-approved by the transgender movement.
On Twitter, for example, referring to trans-identifying males as males — such as referring to Bruce Jenner as a “he” — could get you permanently banned from the platform. “Deadnaming” — calling Jenner “Bruce” rather than “Caitlyn,” for example — would also get you evicted from Twitter and, thus, the public debate about gender ideology. The terms set by the social media giants ensured that opponents of gender ideology could not tell the truth without being removed from the debate.
It is clear that the cultural impact of these gatekeepers was enormous. When Elon Musk purchased Twitter, eliminated the speech rules, and restored the accounts of many influencers who had been banned for “misgendering” or “deadnaming,” the ripple effect was almost immediate. J.K. Rowling used the platform to launch a near-incessant rhetorical war against the transgender movement — to devastating effect. Previously silenced voices could suddenly get their message out to millions. This played a significant role even politically.
To cite just one example: When trans activists claimed last year that Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act applied to “misgendering,” Rowling promptly “broke” the law on X and challenged authorities to arrest her. Shortly thereafter, the police sheepishly affirmed that she had not broken the law — although there is doubt that absent any platform, they would have been willing to continue quietly suppressing dissenting voices.
Now Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, has announced that it will be ending its relationship with fact-checkers, moving back to its free speech “roots,” and — most importantly — ending censorship around gender ideology. Unsurprisingly, trans activists and their media allies are responding with panic. The headline in The Independent is a good example: “Facebook lifts restrictions on calling women ‘property’ and transgender people ‘freaks.’” They noted that the new policy includes “new clauses apparently designed to explicitly allow common anti-trans arguments, such as advocating for trans people to be banned from public bathrooms, school sports, or certain jobs.”
It is certainly true that allowing a genuine debate on gender ideology was part of the motivation behind the changes in policy. New Meta rules include:
People sometimes use sex- or gender-exclusive language when discussing access to spaces often limited by sex or gender, such as access to bathrooms, specific schools, specific military, law enforcement, or teaching roles, and health or support groups. Other times, they call for exclusion or use insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality. Finally, sometimes people curse at a gender in the context of a romantic breakup. Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of speech.
We do allow content arguing for gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs. We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs.
We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.
Major LGBT groups have already condemned the changes, with GLAAD claiming that the platforms are now “unsafe” for users. The reality, however, is that they are furious that they have lost control of yet another major social institution. This is evidence, once again, that the Overton Window is shifting away from gender ideology rather than toward it, and Musk’s free speech regime on X has already illustrated that allowing an open debate on transgenderism puts trans activists at a massive disadvantage. Zuckerberg has read the writing on the wall and acted accordingly. It is now likely that other companies will follow suit.
