Twit Awards for the Week 6/26/23

Elon Musk announced a new policy on Twitter: the words “cis” and “cisgender” are now considered to be slurs, and will be treated as such. He warned that repeated use of the terms would be grounds for suspending the user. For rushing to label “cisgender” a slur while removing protections against harassment of transgender people, and for defending “free speech” only when the speech agrees with him, Elon Musk gets a Twit Award. Out.com has this story.

Media Matters For America broke the story that Fox News has altered wire service stories from the Associated Press and Reuters, often to replace the term, “gender-affirming care” with older terms that carry a negative connotation. For deliberately altering the wire stories to use terms that violate the wire service’s guidelines, Fox News gets a Twit Award. The Advocate has this story.

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing entitled, “Protecting Pride: Defending the Civil Rights of LGBTQ+ Americans.” Some people with known anti-transgender views were invited to testify, and they predictably tried to insert questionable claims into the record. The Advocate reports that these claims got called out by some members of the committee. Not all of the committee recognized the lies as untrue. For defending untrue statements and thanking those who made them, Senator Ted Cruz gets a Twit Award, which he shares with the witnesses who spread the questionable claims.

LGBTQ Nation reports that Walgreens pharmacist refused to fill a transgender man’s prescription for testosterone, citing his (the pharmacist’s) “religious beliefs.” For using his religion to deny someone else a legal medication that was prescribed by a doctor, this pharmacist gets a Twit Award.

A fifth grade teacher in Georgia was fired for reading a book which promotes acceptance of others to her class. The book is titled, My Shadow Is Purple,” and it concerns a boy who exhibits characteristics of both males and females. For sending a message that acceptance of others is not a priority of the school, the administration of the Due West Elementary School and the school board and legislators whose policies they are enforcing share a Twit Award. LGBTQ Nation has this story.

Liam Morrison, a student at Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts, is suing his school for the right to wear a t-shirt that says, “There are only two genders.” He was told that the shirt violates a ban on t-shirts which are “likely to be considered discriminatory, harassing, and/or bullying to others.” For demanding the right to wear a shirt which is “likely to be considered discriminatory, harassing, and/or bullying to others,” Liam Morrison and his lawyers (members of the Alliance Defending Freedom) share a Twit Award. This story comes from LGBTQ Nation.

Videos resurfaced this week which show Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, making the claim that “If you in a lab put atrazine and (sic) a tank full of frogs, it will chemically castrate and force forcibly feminize every frog in there, and 10 percent of the frogs, the male frogs will turn into fully viable females able to produce viable eggs.” That is his explanation for the existence of transgender people. The 2010 study in question does not extrapolate from frogs to humans, who are members of a very different class of animals. Not-a-scientist blow hard Alex Jones made that connection. The fact is there are no reports of people changing gender because of exposure to atrazine. For bad science, and for the implication that transgender people are a new and unnatural phenomenon, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gets a Twit Award. The Advocate has this story.

Tags: featured, opinion, politics, Transgender

Category: Transgender Opinion