Twitter banned misgendering and deadnaming transgender people in an update to its terms of service.
The rule change, which was officially implemented late last month, was recently spotted on Twitter’s “hateful conduct policy” page.
“We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category,” the policy states. “This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
The term deadnaming refers to when someone uses a transgender person’s pre-transition name.
“Research has shown that some groups of people are disproportionately targeted with abuse online,” Twitter adds. “This includes: women, people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual individuals, marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.”
News of the change received increased attention last week after Meghan Murphy, founder and editor for the website “Feminist Current,” was suspended from the platform for referring to a trans woman as a man.
Other changes to Twitter’s policy also include bans on using “media that depicts victims of the Holocaust” as well as “media that depicts lynchings.”
Twitter has faced increased criticism not so much for its policies, but for what some across the political spectrum see as unfair enforcement.
A Teen Vogue writer was permanently banned from the platform last July for condemning TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists) in a jovial manner.
Similarly, Twitter also received negative attention after it declined to ban Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan for comparing Jewish people to termites.
