Meghan Murphy is a Canadian feminist writer and journalist. She is the editor and publisher of Feminist Current, which won the “Best Feminism Blog” award at the 2012 Canadian Blog Awards. She is a leading writer on feminist issues, and holds an M.A. in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies from Simon Fraser University.
On November 23, 2018, Twitter permanently suspended her account. The reason? She referred to a trans-identified man using a male pronoun—even though this individual identified using a male name on multiple social media platforms.
Twitter had previously locked Murphy’s account for posting such seemingly innocuous statements and questions as “Men aren’t women” and “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?” According to Twitter, even questioning certain beliefs is “hateful conduct”—even though a majority of the public believes that one’s gender is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth.
Twitter grew to prominence by advertising itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” It repeatedly promised its users in its Terms of Service and elsewhere that it would not censor their speech. Its Terms of Service state that any changes “Will not be retroactive,” and that it will provide 30 days’ notice to users of any changes. But Twitter inserted a highly controversial new policy against “misgendering or deadnaming” transgender individuals without providing notice to anyone—a clear violation of its promises to users.
Meghan Murphy is a Canadian feminist writer and journalist. She is the editor and publisher of Feminist Current, which won the “Best Feminism Blog” award at the 2012 Canadian Blog Awards. She is a leading writer on feminist issues, and holds an M.A. in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies from Simon Fraser University.
On November 23, 2018, Twitter permanently suspended her account. The reason? She referred to a trans-identified man using a male pronoun—even though this individual identified using a male name on multiple social media platforms.
Twitter had previously locked Murphy’s account for posting such seemingly innocuous statements and questions as “Men aren’t women” and “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?” According to Twitter, even questioning certain beliefs is “hateful conduct”—even though a majority of the public believes that one’s gender is determined by the sex they were assigned at birth.
Twitter grew to prominence by advertising itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” It repeatedly promised its users in its Terms of Service and elsewhere that it would not censor their speech. Its Terms of Service state that any changes “Will not be retroactive,” and that it will provide 30 days’ notice to users of any changes. But Twitter inserted a highly controversial new policy against “misgendering or deadnaming” transgender individuals without providing notice to anyone—a clear violation of its promises to users.
The big tech giants are counting on users to quietly accept their bans and not stand up for their rights. But Murphy is fighting back against the attempts of powerful social media conglomerates to silence her and millions of others. She has filed a lawsuit on behalf of everyone who has had their voices silenced by social media censorship. You can help fight back by donating here:
All funds raised will be used to pay the out of pocket litigation, case management costs and then attorney fees needed to bring this public interest lawsuit.
MONA CHAREN
She tweeted that “men are not women,” and for that, Meghan Murphy, feminist journalist, was banned from Twitter. An anodyne statement of biological reality qualifies as “hate speech” for some of the gnomes at Twitter HQ. Murphy received a rote notification that “you may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”
Brandon Showalter
A feminist journalist who was permanently booted from Twitter for tweeting such things as “men aren’t women” and referring to a biological male as “him” is suing the social media giant for unfair censorship.
Julia Diana Robertson
Meghan Murphy, who runs FeministCurrent, Canada’s leading feminist website, is suing Twitter for banning her for her personal beliefs. The lawsuit, filed on Monday, says she was banned because her beliefs don’t align with the company’s politics.
Charlie Nash
Meghan Murphy, the founder of the radical feminist blog Feminist Current, has filed a lawsuit against Twitter after the social network blacklisted her in November for stating that men are not women.
Peter Hasson
Canadian feminist writer Meghan Murphy is suing Twitter after she was banned for her tweets about transgender people.
Attorneys for Murphy on Monday filed suit in the Superior Court of California for the County of San Francisco, accusing Twitter of deceptive trade practices and breach of contract.
JAMES BARRETT
In a widely reported interview last week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey declared that his company could no longer “afford to take a neutral stance anymore” when it comes to hot button social and political issues. Pressed on why his site seems to laser focus on conservatives while largely ignoring voices on the Left — like radical racist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan — Dorsey cited the case of Canadian progressive feminist Megan Murphy, whom his company recently banned after a series of tweets arguing that transwomen are not women.
MAIREAD MCARDLE
Journalist Meghan Murphy on Monday filed a lawsuit against Twitter after she was banned from the platform over tweets referring to a transgender individual by their biological sex and opining that “women aren’t men.”
Cassandra Fairbanks
Armed with a trifecta of leading tech lawyers, Murphy is now suing the Silicon Valley giant for breach of contract, promissory estoppel and violation of the unfair competition law.
JOSEPH BREAN
A feminist writer in Vancouver claims in a new lawsuit that Twitter banned her for using a male pronoun for the transwoman complainant in a human rights dispute over access to genital waxing at beauty salons.
Julie Bindel
I woke up this morning to a private message on Twitter from a young student. She had been warned that her account would be suspended if she ‘violated the rules’ again. Her crime? Tweeting details of Sheila Jeffreys’s book, Gender Hurts: A Feminist Analysis of the Politics of Transgenderism. Refusing to accept the mantra ‘Trans women are women’ is, in the eyes of many now, a crime, for which there must be punishment. Everyone from massive corporate social media machines to well-meaning liberals seem to be toeing the line.
FRANK CAMP
Meghan Murphy, founder of the Feminist Current website and podcast, has been suspended from Twitter. Murphy, a self-described socialist and radical feminist, has been an outspoken critic of the transgender activist movement, claiming that it has an outsized sociopolitical influence, especially in her native Canada.
Canadian Feminist Network
Meghan Murphy is one of Canada’s pre-eminent feminist journalists and the editor and publisher of “Feminist Current”. Feminist Current’s reach is international.
Kenan Malik
It is better to debate a question without settling it,” observed the 18th-century French writer Joseph Joubert, “than to settle a question without debating it.” How naive that sounds today. In this age of echo chambers and filter bubbles, it is, many insist, better to settle a question than to debate it, better to be certain that one is right than to risk being proved wrong.
Nicole Russell
Despite its CEO telling Congress the contrary a few months ago, Twitter has amped up its pattern of politically one-sided application of its terms of service. Last week, the social media giant permanently banned Meghan Murphy, a writer based in British Columbia, for critiquing transgender ideology online. The platform repeatedly suspended her account for this then ultimately banned her last week, saying such behavior “violated [its] rules against hateful conduct.”
Julie Bindel
Canadian feminist writer, Meghan Murphy, who was permanently suspended from Twitter last November, is suing the social media site for deceptive trade practices and breach of contract. ‘Twitter would never have attracted the hundreds of millions of users it boasts today had Twitter let it be known that it would arbitrarily ban users who did not agree with the political and social views of its management or impose sweeping new policies banning the expression of widely-held viewpoints and perspectives on public issues,’ Murphy’s lawyers submitted. Good for her!
MADELEINE KEARNS
When should a person be banned from Twitter? When they breach copyright laws? When they incite violence? How about when they express a view shared by the majority of the American public, according to a 2017 Pew Research poll: that whether or not someone is male or female depends on their sex at birth?
Meghan Murphy
Progressives who claim that “reality has a liberal bias” may be correct on certain issues. But problems emerge when the facts don’t co-operate with the liberal narrative. We saw an example recently, when it emerged that actor Jussie Smollett had been formally charged with making up a hoax hate-crime involving MAGA-hat-wearing men assaulting him with bleach, a noose and racist, homophobic epithets. As Quillette’s Andy Ngo noted, Smollett’s original claim attracted an outpouring of performative sympathy from an all-star cast of liberal grandees.