Republican suspended for ‘misgendering’ Rachel Levine applauds Twitter reversal
Christopher Hutton
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A Republican lawmaker who was banned from Twitter for “misgendering” a high-ranking transgender official said he was pleased to see the company this week end the policy that silenced him.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) had his account locked in October 2021 after he referred to Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, who was born male but identifies as a woman, as a man. His account was restored two weeks later, but the ban became a moment of scrutiny for Twitter over its ban on referring to transgender people by the sex they do not identify with or using the name they used prior to transitioning — known as “deadnaming.”
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Twitter, now under the ownership of Elon Musk, removed the policy on Tuesday. Banks said he was glad.
“To equate calling someone by the name their parents gave them with hate speech is completely ridiculous, and I’m glad to see Twitter reverse this silly policy,” Banks told the Washington Examiner.
In the tweet that led to Banks’s suspension, he had written, with reference to Levine being elevated to a four-star admiral, that “the title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.”
The policy against misgendering and deadnaming led to the suspensions of several prominent Republican and conservative accounts. Notably, the satirical publication the Babylon Bee was suspended in 2022 for a post about Levine winning a “Man of the Year” award. The CEO of the publication later said Musk contacted him to ask about the circumstances of the ban and suggested that he might need to buy Twitter.
The reversal of the policy, though, was met with criticism from gay and transgender advocates. “Twitter’s decision to covertly roll back its longtime policy is the latest example of just how unsafe the company is for users and advertisers alike,” GLAAD President Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.
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Twitter has slowly changed its policies under Musk, who has said he favors more free speech. The company announced on Monday that it would now attach labels to tweets violating its rules regarding hateful content instead of removing them.
Twitter’s labeling practices have drawn some ire from users. NPR quit the website last week after being labeled a “government-funded entity.” Musk attached the label to several national news networks worldwide on Monday.