Home » Twit Awards for the Week 5/27/24

Twit Awards for the Week 5/27/24

ceciliab | May 27, 2024

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GLAAD released its 2024 Social Media Safety Index report. TikTok received a D+, while Facebook, YouTube, and X all received grades of F. Not only were the grades all low, but only TikTok improved from last year. For failing to take its failure in last year’s report as constructive criticism, and for allowing LGBTQ+ users to be subjected to hate and extremism, social media companies get a Twit Award. The Advocate has this story.

X has regressed from protecting transgender people on its platform to the point that several people reported getting a message telling them that their account was being restricted or in danger of being restricted for use of the word “cisgender.” The word “cisgender” is not itself a slur, but some cisgender people are so sensitive to the term, largely because they see it used in criticizing their prejudices. For rushing to ban the term “cisgender” without looking at why they feel that it is a slur, X gets a Twit Award. This story comes from Them.

The Colorado Republican Party has issued a call for its members to remove their children from public school, saying that Democrats use the pubic schools to “turn more kids trans.” No amount of telling school children that transgender people exist and that they are not crazy will make a cisgender child become transgender. For displaying a prejudice which goes to the point of accusing others of impossible behavior, the Colorado Republican Party gets a Twit Award. KUSA-TV has this story.

A new legal response to the appeals court’s decision that a transgender athlete should be allowed to compete in girls’ athletics claims that one transgender middle-school athlete (Becky Pepper-Jackson) has “defeated girls in track events over 700 times” in three seasons. No, she could not possibly have participated in over 200 races per year. Obviously, some alternative math is going on here. Even the idea that she defeated over 700 opponents in the last three years seems very difficult to believe. More likely, they are including those who lost to someone else in a qualifying heat, where the winner of that heat went on to face her in the final heat. Even that seems to be questionable, but at least plausible. For statistical hyperbole, and for trying to use the law to stop a really good competitor, the people behind this claim get a Twit Award. This story comes from Fox News, which does not mention how far-fetched the statement is.

Snopes has debunked a myth that President Biden recommended allowing eight-to ten-year-olds to get gender-confirming surgery. It turns out that the statement never mentioned surgery, but merely meant to say there should be zero resistance to children declaring that they feel that they are transgender. While the exact wording from President Biden was not optimal, many conservatives read into it an approval of surgery for transgender minors that just was not there. For reading their prejudices into a statement where surgery was never mentioned, those who responded as if he mentioned it get a Twit Award.