Pro-life website regains Twitter account after “offensive” Jonathan Yaniv tweet caused year-long lockout
Pro-life website LifeSiteNews has had access restored to their 60,000-follower Twitter account after a year long saga surrounding an allegedly "offensive" tweet.
The tweet in question was a link to a December 2019 article entitled Trans activist Jonathan ‘Jessica’ Yaniv ‘shocked…confused’ gynaecologist won’t see him. This referred to a December 2 tweet by transgender activist Jessica Yaniv, who complained about a gynaecologist in his area allegedly declining him service on the basis of being transgender.
Yaniv, a male-to-female transwoman, ignited global controversy after starting a series of human rights complaints against salons who refused to provide him scrotum waxing services. The salons were mostly owned or operated by immigrant women of religious backgrounds, and the refusals were based in safety concerns as well as religious ordinances surrounding male-female physical contact. Yaniv lost the human rights complaints in October 2019, and was ordered to pay three salon owners $2,000 each in compensation.
By referring to Yaniv as a male in their tweet, LifeSite was allegedly in violation of Twitter's "misgendering" policy.
Twitter has considered the “misgendering” or “deadnaming” of transgender individuals to be a violation of their platform's harassment rules since 2018.
According to a post published yesterday by LifeSite's Assistant Director of Marketing Rebekah Roberts,
LifeSite remained steadfast that our tweet did not violate any rules, and we sought several appeals with Twitter, while looking into legal action against the company.
After close to a year of multiple appeals and many attempted communications with Twitter, we have decided to temporarily remove the tweet in order to gain access to our account.
...we restored our account, with nearly 60,000 followers, this morning. However, we ensured that by agreeing to remove the tweet, we did not admit to any wrongdoing. We simply stated that we would remove the tweet in order to gain access to our account.
LifeSiteNews has decided to delete the tweet in order to “push out the truth, especially during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett and the upcoming presidential election.”
Rebel News has extensively covered Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv's capers since 2019, and we're suing him in civil court for his assaults on our journalists Keean Bexte and David Menzies. Find out more and chip in to help us fund our suits by visiting YanivTrial.com.