Turning Point USA founder suspended from Twitter for misgendering Rachel Levine
Charlie Kirk’s suspension follows a similar suspension of satirical website The Babylon Bee a day before after it declared Levine the publication’s 'Man of the Year.'
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk has been suspended from Twitter for identifying Rachel Levine as a biological man who now identifies as a transgender woman. Kirk’s suspension from the platform follows a similar suspension of satirical website The Babylon Bee a day before after it declared Levine the publication’s “Man of the Year.”
“Truth is banned from Twitter,” said Kirk in a Tuesday interview with the Daily Wire. Adding that, the Big Tech platform has declared itself the “arbiters of truth regarding society’s most controversial topics.”
“Rather than allowing Americans to have these debates, they punish defiance, demand that you delete the tweet, and if you do, they get to say, ‘see, we are nice, reasonable tyrants,'” the conservative commentator added. “They want submission. We must not give them what they want.”
The tweet that led to Kirk’s suspension concerned Biden’s Assistant Secretary for Health of the Department of Health and Human Services, Rachel Levine. Levine was also commissioned as a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commission Corps.
As the first openly transgender four-star officer in any of the uniformed services, Wikipedia claims that Levine “is also the first female four-star admiral in the commissioned corps,” implying that transgender women are biologically female when they identify as women.
“Rachel Levine spent 54 years of his life as a man,” tweeted Kirk on March 15. “He had a wife and a family. He ‘transitioned’ to being a woman in 2011. Joe Biden appointed Levine to be a 4-Star Admiral and now USA Today has named ‘Rachel’ Levine as a ‘Woman of the Year.'”
Kirk asked: “Where are the feminists?”
In a statement to the Daily Wire, a Twitter spokesman said that Kirk’s tweet violated the platform's rules against “hateful conduct.” Twitter informed Kirk that he is required to delete the tweet and spend 12 hours in read-only mode should he choose to regain access to his account.
A spokesman said that Twitter's hate speech policy prohibits “targeting others with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category.”
The policy also covers “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
Deadnaming refers to the outrageous act of calling a person by the name they were born with, which can cause “trauma” according to HealthLine and the Cleveland Clinic.
On Saturday, The Babylon Bee was suspended for the same reason after it published a satirical piece mocking Levine as “Man of the Year.” Twitter also imposed a suspension on Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who referred to Levine as a “man.”
In response to Paxton’s suspension, the Texas AG slammed the social media giant for censoring accounts that dare to state an “irrefutable scientific fact.”
He wrote:
Yesterday I stated an irrefutable scientific fact: Rachel Levine is a man. I pointed this out after USA Today named him a “Woman” of the Year. But Levine is not a woman. He has one X and one Y chromosome and other male-sex characteristics. I just follow the science.
For simply saying this matter-of-factly, Twitter blocked it as “hateful.” Users can now only access my statement through a trigger-warning filter. And even then, users can neither like it nor comment on it. At the same time, hundreds of other verified accounts saying the exact same thing remain untouched and unfiltered.
This whole insane episode represents a two-pronged attack from the left — both of which I’m vigorously fighting against. First is the left’s war against human biology, and especially against women. Second is their weaponization of Big Tech against conservative voices.
But Big Tech is not only anti-conservative and anti-Republican. It is now apparently anti-truth and anti-science. I will continue to use all my power to hold them accountable. Even now, I’m exploring legal options to stop their one-sided censorship.
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