Elon Musk, a cis man who was assigned male at birth and uses the pronouns he/him/his has long championed the right of Free Speech™ on the flaming hellmouth that was once Twitter. In fact, he is so dedicated to people being able to say whatever they want on the platform that he liquidated Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council in order to establish himself Content Moderator Supreme. It appears however that his Free Speech cis-tem has broken down, as slews of slurs have popped up across Twitter like a many-headed hydra of hate. But Elon Musk isn’t worried about those slurs. He’s set his cites on what appears to be the deadliest slur of all: “cisgender.”
That’s right, Elon Musk recently tweeted that “cisgender” and “cis” are now considered “hate speech” on Twitter. This means that I am now guilty of an internet hate crime. So if I’m going to Twitter jail, I might as well dig myself into an even deeper hole since I have nothing more to lose. Musk choose this hill to die on after another cis man claimed that he was being harassed by trans activists for rejecting the term “cis.” According to that cis man, James Esses, who it seems has built his entire career on being an anti-trans bigot, the activists called him a “cissy” and told him he was cis “whether he liked it or not.”
Online harassment is wrong, even if it’s really funny online harassment like calling someone a “cissy.” You can tell “cis” is indeed a terrible slur because J.K. Rowling felt the need to jump into the conversation, calling the term “ideological language.” A real meeting of the minds here:
“People overwhelmingly reject this obvious slur that bigots are trying to impose” said Musk in a follow-up tweet to his original statement. It’s unknown whether or not there will be penalties for saying the term “cis” on the platform, so you better start doing it now. He did, however, say that people are free to identify as cis on the platform, because people love to unironically call themselves slurs.
Twitter’s lackadaisical response to regular hate speech makes me believe that people who use the word “cis” and “cisgender” will not be unfairly targeted by the platform, but that could change. It may be that the only “official” slurs on Twitter are “cis” and “cisgender” while all other former slurs continue to be de facto fair game. Be warned, it is likely that Twitter will continue to add to the list. Hateful words like “straight” and “heterosexual” may soon fade from Twitter’s acceptable lexicon. Other slurs like “manchild who owns a rocket company” may soon follow.
(featured image: Chesnot/Getty Images)
