OK, Groomer: Phrase Calling Out Predators Banned on Twitter

Editor’s note: This commentary, originally published March 23, has been updated to reflect Twitter’s suspensions of James Lindsay and the parents’ rights organization Moms for Liberty, as well as Twitter’s new policy surrounding the word “groomer.” 

Of the many topics the radical left has sought to render verboten, there is none more contentious than gender ideology. At the mere suggestion that a man cannot become a woman or that there are only two genders, the Twitter harpies take flight to seek and destroy their targets.  

Twitter is all too happy to support the mob in its quest for ideological and information dominance. The following is a list of 15 individuals and organizations censored by Twitter for questioning gender ideology.  

1. Moms for Liberty 

On Monday, Twitter suspended the account of the parents’ rights group Moms for Liberty after it tweeted criticism of California’s bill pushing for “gender-affirming health care” for minors.  

“Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults,” the group tweeted. “Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?” 

California’s proposed legislation has come under fire from critics who say it encourages out-of-state children dealing with gender dysphoria to come to California to receive surgery and risky hormone treatment. 

Twitter quickly removed the group’s tweet and suspended its account.  

In a comment to National Review, Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice said, “My options now are to delete the tweet or appeal it. I’m not deleting the tweet. This is just madness, and our children are paying the price.”  

2. James Lindsay  

American cultural critic James Lindsay was briefly suspended from the platform last Thursday after he called a Media Matters for America employee a “groomer.” 

“Groomer” has become a frequently used term online to refer to adults in positions of authority who attempt to entice children into sexually explicit or confusing gender ideology. Teachers and drag queens who seemingly revel in pushing LGBT material on children are frequently accused of being groomers. 

In order to regain access to his account, Lindsay was forced to delete his tweet. 

Following Lindsay’s banning, Twitter announced it would begin treating the word “groomer” as an anti-LGBT slur and would ban accounts using the word. 

The Daily Dot reported Twitter executive Lauren Alexander as saying, “Use of this term is prohibited under our Hateful Conduct policy when it is used as a descriptor, in context of discussion of gender identity.” 

3. Jordan Peterson  

On June 22, 2021, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson tweeted: “Remember when pride was a sin? And Ellen Page just had her breasts removed by a criminal physician.”   

Page, an actor, was born a female but obtained a double mastectomy, changed her name from Ellen to Elliot, and began identifying as a man.   

Peterson’s tweet reportedly fell afoul of Twitter’s “hateful conduct” rule surrounding gender identity.  

Twitter suspended Peterson’s account and told him to remove the tweet or be permanently locked out of his account.  

In response, Peterson posted a video on YouTube saying that he “would rather die” than delete his tweet.   

“Twitter’s a rat hole, in the final analysis. And I have probably contributed to that while trying to use, understand, and master that horrible, toxic platform,” Peterson said in a video posted on YouTube. “No doubt, I owe some apologies for that, and I’m trying to learn, but it’s a relief in some real sense to be banned. And I regarded it under the present conditions as a badge of honor.”  

4. Dave Rubin  

After suspending Peterson, Twitter then suspended conservative commentator Dave Rubin for sharing a screenshot of Peterson’s tweet.   

In a message to Ben Shapiro, another conservative commentator, Rubin wrote: “I have been suspended by Twitter for posting a screenshot of Jordan Peterson’s tweet, which got he himself suspended.”  

Rubin added of Twitter: “While it is unclear how I broke their terms of service, it is clear that they are breaking their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders by letting a bunch of Woke activists run the company.”  

5. The Babylon Bee  

Seth Dillon, CEO of The Babylon Bee, tweeted March 20 that Twitter had locked the satirical website’s account over a story with this headline: “The Babylon Bee’s Man of the Year Is Rachel Levine.”   

Levine, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since March 2021, is a biological man who identifies as a woman.   

Twitter cited its policy against “hateful content” as the reason for banning The Babylon Bee.  

Dillon wrote that Twitter said it would lift the ban 12 hours after the Bee’s tweet promoting its story was deleted. But Dillon has refused to comply.  

In a tweet thread posted to his personal Twitter account, Dillon wrote: “We’re not deleting anything. Truth is not hate speech. If the cost of telling the truth is the loss of our Twitter account, then so be it.”  

Dillon has since had his account reinstated.  

6. Charlie Kirk  

Twitter suspended Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk the day after suspending The Babylon Bee.   

Mary Margaret Olohan of The Daily Wire reported that Kirk was suspended after he posted this tweet about Levine:  

“Richard Levine spent 54 years of his life as a man. 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’ Where are the feminists??”  

Kirk regained access to his account in late April.  

7. The Christian Post  

The Christian Post received an email March 20 from Twitter saying its account had been suspended. The news outlet reported that Twitter took the action over a tweet saying Levine is a man.  

As with The Babylon Bee, Twitter offered The Christian Post the opportunity to delete the tweet to end the suspension and to appeal.  

The outlet decided to appeal, but hasn’t posted anything since March, meaning it’s likely it is still unable to access its account.  

8. Ken Paxton  

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responded to an article in USA Today lauding Levine as one of its “Women of the Year” by simply tweeting March 17: “Rachel Levine is a man.”  

Twitter slapped a warning label on Paxton’s tweet reading, “This Tweet violated the Twitter Rules about hateful conduct. However, Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”   

Paxton’s tweet remains visible, but users can’t interact with it by liking it, commenting on it, or retweeting it.   

Paxton fired back the next day by releasing an official statement on his Twitter account, claiming that Twitter was censoring him and other conservative voices for stating “an irrefutable scientific fact.” Twitter slapped the same warning label on that tweet and also prevented users from interacting with it.  

That same day, Twitter struck again, quarantining a tweet Paxton posted to congratulate University of Virginia swimmer Emma Weyant as the real winner of a race called for Lia Thomas, a biological man who competes as a woman.   

9. Jim Banks  

Last November, Twitter censored Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., after he expressed criticism that “the title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.”   

Banks’ tweet referenced a decision to promote Levine to the position of four-star admiral, a decision that made Levine the first transgender person to attain that position.   

More controversially, Levine claimed to be the first female to attain the position.  

Although Banks didn’t explicitly state whether he would delete the tweet calling Levine a man, Twitter eventually suspended his account.    

Two weeks later, Banks had his account restored.   

10. Allie Beth Stuckey  

Back during the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Twitter temporarily suspended conservative podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey after she criticized New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard.   

Hubbard is a biological man who competed in the women’s weightlifting division. Although Hubbard placed last in the relevant group at the Olympics, in the past Hubbard received gold and silver medals in various other women’s weightlifting competitions.   

In a tweet commenting on Hubbard’s performance, Stuckey wrote, “Laura Hubbard failing at the event doesn’t make his inclusion fair. He’s still a man, and men shouldn’t compete against women in weightlifting.”  

Following that post, Twitter suspended Stuckey’s account for 12 hours.  

11. Erick Erickson  

Those who defended Stuckey weren’t spared from Twitter’s wrath. Popular radio host and blogger Erick Erickson came under fire after tweeting his support for Stuckey and reiterating that Hubbard is a man.    

Erickson’s tweet criticizing Twitter for suspending Stuckey said: “This is absurd. Laurel Hubbard is a man even if Twitter doesn’t like it.”  

Twitter temporarily suspended, then reinstated, his account.   

12. Esther O’Reilly  

Conservatives are acutely aware that Twitter is inconsistent in how it doles out bans for content that goes against its rules. Quillette author Esther O’Reilly is the perfect example.   

O’Reilly is another conservative caught up in the Stuckey incident. Following Erickson’s tweet and subsequent suspension, gay conservative Chad Felix Greene reposted Erickson’s exact words and added the hashtag  #StopSuppressingSpeech.   

Although Twitter took no action against Greene, it did suspend O’Reilly for her own post including the new hashtag and saying: “Laurel Hubbard is a man, get over it.”  

Like Stuckey, O’Reilly temporarily was locked out of her account. Twitter gave her the option to delete the post to gain back access sooner, which she took.   

Immediately after she regained access to her account, O’Reilly began blasting screenshots of the tweet that prompted her suspension.  

13. Lindsay Shepherd   

Canadian journalist Lindsay Shepherd was banned from Twitter after she got in a fight online with Canadian transgender activist Jessica Yaniv.   

Yaniv is a biological man who identifies as a woman and has filed lawsuits against various groups, accusing them of anti-transgender discrimination.   

In July 2019, Shepherd and Yaniv began arguing on Twitter after Yaniv made vulgar comments about Shepherd’s genitalia. Yaniv began mocking Shepherd’s medical condition, which causes a higher-than-normal rate of miscarriages.    

Yaniv wrote: “I heard @realDonaldTrump is building a wall inside of your uterus aka your ‘reproductive abnormality’ hopefully the [wall] works as intended.”  

Shepherd responded: “At least I have a uterus, you fat, ugly man. Of course, he thinks reproductive issues are something to be mocked.”  

That tweet resulted in Twitter’s imposing an (at the time) permanent ban on Shepherd. Yaniv, who had instigated the conflict, remained unpunished.   

Shepherd got her account back later that month.   

14. Meghan Murphy  

Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy was permanently banned from Twitter after she referred to Yaniv by using male pronouns such as he and him.   

Murphy previously received temporary suspensions in 2018 for tweeting remarks such as “Men aren’t women” and “How are transwomen not men?”  

Twitter permanently banned Murphy after she referred to Yaniv specifically as a man. After a story about Yaniv’s suing a beauty parlor for refusing to wax Yaniv’s male genitalia started making the rounds on Twitter, Murphy replied to an image of Yaniv by tweeting, “Yeeeah it’s him.”   

Twitter quickly banned her account for life.  

Murphy filed an appeal to get her account reinstated, but Twitter denied that appeal.  

Murphy currently runs a feminist website where she posts commentary critical of the gender ideology movement.   

15. Matt Walsh  

Twitter temporarily suspended Daily Wire host Matt Walsh in January over tweets critical of unnamed transgender individuals.   

As reported by The Daily Wire, Walsh tweeted, “The greatest female ‘Jeopardy!’ champion of all time is a man. The top female college swimmer is a man. The first female four-star admiral in the Public Health Service is a man. Men have dominated female high school track and the female MMA circuit. The patriarchy wins in the end.”  

Walsh was referring to Levine, Thomas, and Amy Schneider, all biological men who claim to be women.  

Additionally, Walsh tweeted, “I am not referring to an individual person as if she is two people. Everyone else can run around sounding like maniacs if they want, but I will not be participating. No, thank you.”  

Twitter temporarily suspended Walsh’s account and told him that he would not get his account back until he deleted the tweets.  

Walsh deleted the tweets, and Twitter restored his account.  

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