Feminist journalist Meghan Murphy filed a lawsuit Monday against Twitter after she was banned from the social media site for posting tweets referring to transgender people by their biological sex and writing “men aren’t women.”
Murphy was booted off Twitter permanently in November, when she was told her tweets violated the website’s “hateful conduct policy.”
The Canadian writer was locked out of her account just weeks after Twitter quietly added to its list of prohibited behavior the “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals,” a rule applied retroactively to the journalist’s tweets.
Murphy wrote about the ordeal on her website, Feminist Current, and now she’s going after Twitter:
The feminist activist’s lawsuit, filed in San Francisco, home of the Twitter headquarters, accuses the tech company of “false advertising.”
“The big tech giants are counting on users to quietly accept their bans and not stand up for their rights,” Murphy’s legal team said in a statement. “But Murphy is fighting back against the attempts of powerful social-media conglomerates to silence her and millions of others.”
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All of the issues for Murphy began when she referred to Jonathan Yaniv, a transgender female, as “him.” Ever since the interaction, Yaniv has actively worked to silence Murphy and frequently takes credit for the journalist’s ultimate removal from Twitter.
This is the person who has been harassing #MeghanMurphy, admitting at a city council meeting to being responsible for her Twitter ban, and asking that she be prosecuted for hate crimes: pic.twitter.com/A9n7UG1UJw
— Benjamin Boyce (@BenjaminABoyce) December 18, 2018
In an email to The Christian Post, Murphy wrote it’s important for her to take Twitter on because, whether intentional or not, the social media network is an undeniably linked to the public square, and as such, is an important part of free speech.
“Social media platforms control our access to information — it is where we communicate, debate, and follow news stories,” she explained. “These companies and platforms have an incredible amount of power over what the public may discuss and have access to, which means they absolutely must be unequivocal in their commitment to free speech and free expression.”
Murphy went on to argue it’s imperative people keep social media companies from becoming “the thought police or the arbiters of truth, which is exactly what Twitter is attempting to do.”