Twitter Is Removing Tweets About ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ After Conservatives Go Into a Fearmongering Frenzy

In a tweet posted on Wednesday, Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of Trust and Safety, noted that more than 5,000 tweets had been removed from the site for promoting a poster for “trans day of vengeance,” which is a protest in support of transgender rights slated to be happening in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

In her tweet, Irwin explained that Twitter does not “support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them.” She went on to write that the word “vengeance” doesn’t imply that a protest will be peaceful and that organizing or supporting peaceful protests is “okay.”

The poster, which has been restricted by Twitter so it will be not appear if anyone decides to post it, is mostly text-based and reads, “we want more than visibility” on top, followed by ‘trans day of vengeance’ and ‘stop trans genocide’ as well as the date and time of the planned protest,” as reported by the Associated Press.

The move to remove the poster seemed to upset mostly conservative Twitter users as they were sharing it as an attempt to showcase how “dangerous” the trans community is as they tried to link the protest with the horrific shooting at a Nashville elementary school, which was allegedly carried out by a trans man. However, as the police are still investigating the incident, no evidence has been presented that proves that the shooter’s gender or gender identity played any role in their motive.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped right-wing pundits and politicians, like U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, from latching onto the shooter’s gender identity and painting the entire trans community as “evil” or “vile.” This poster was just another way for them to promote the idea that the trans community is out to seek “vengeance” on anyone who “disagrees” with their identities.

However, many trans activists were quick to express their anger at the unfair treatment promoted by Twitter as they pointed out that “trans day of vengeance” is a meme that has been used within the trans community for years and is not a call to violence. One such activist who spoke out was Evan Greer, the director of the nonprofit liberal advocacy group Fight for the Future, who said that Twitter’s decision to remove these kinds of tweets was “the latest example of Big Tech companies employing double standards in content moderation.” Greer also, correctly, pointed out how Twitter is slow to moderate and remove content that is directly harming trans people, but quickly silences trans people when they speak up or push back against the harsh treatment they deal with on a daily basis. In their words:

Context is everything in content moderation, which is why content policies should be based in human rights and applied evenly, not changed rapidly based on public pressure or news cycles.”

The group organizing Saturday’s protest, TRAN or the Trans Radical Activist Network, said that they do not condone violence and vehemently rejected any connection between the Nashville shooting and their protest. However, in a recent post to their website, TRAN leaders said that the protest will not be taking place on Saturday anymore due to “a credible threat to life and safety.” The group explained that they unfortunately “lacked the resources” to ensure the safety of everyone in attendance and, while they still believe in and will continue to fight for trans rights, they are prioritizing the “safety of our community and the people that make it up” and have turned over all credible threats to the proper agencies.

This type of censorship is just another way to silence trans voices and force trans people back into obscurity. The community as a whole was already under attack before the Nashville shooting, but now trans people are facing discrimination almost on a level akin to genocide. One person from a group doing a horrible thing should not be shouldered by the rest of the group. Trans people deserve to live their authentic lives without the fear of being targeted at school or work or a protest where they’re fighting to be treated like human beings.

Trans lives matter. Period.

(featured: Ted Eytan/Flickr CC BY-SA)