Elon Musk is cisgender but you could get banned for saying so

The latest out of Elon Musk’s Twitter is just as absurd and ridiculous as the rest of it; he has stated he believes the word “cisgender” to be a slur and that saying something like “Elon Musk is cisgender” could be harassment.

Elon Musk’s Twitter has been on a pretty dedicated warpath against transgender people ever since the unfunny billionaire took the reigns of the platform. Twitter was never particularly trans friendly however showed signs of improving and nonetheless became an important lifeline in international and even national trans communication.

I for one have been using Twitter since before 2017. Over the last year of my account my analytics show that my tweets received over 56 million impressions – over the course of my account that’s about 300 million times my tweets have been seen. A good chunk of which have been information about trans lives and the debunking of anti-trans disinformation.

Across that time I have seen trans people banned for responding to vitriol with vitriol whilst anti-trans accounts continue to abuse relentlessly. I’ve seen suspensions given and reversed over and over again. And more importantly I’ve made friends, built community and tried to put something positive out into the world. Including helping to create Trans Writes. (2 million Twitter impressions in a year, not bad lil baby!)

But Elon Musk has repeatedly shown that he wants to take the platform in a transphobic direction. Rules protecting trans people from harassment were quietly removed, users banned for obsessive transphobia were reinstated, users who literally called for the executions of healthcare professionals who work in trans medicine were unscathed and Elon Musk happily rubbed shoulders with numerous transphobes – sharing and engaging in anti-trans conspiracy theory on his platform.

His latest tweets state that he regards “cisgender” to be a slur and that using it to describe people who are not transgender could be viewed as harassment. Users who do so may receive temporary suspensions.

There has been no tweets by Musk or Twitter regarding the use of anti-trans slurs, which seem to go unpunished.

I could give you the whole speech about how Elon Musk bought the platform under the promises of free speech or I could even go right ahead and make fun of him for the fact that his wife left him for a trans woman and his trans daughter disowned him. There’s probably a hundred other low hanging fruit things I could say to damage the ego of the billionaire who spends all of his time on the internet trying to make the worst examples of humanity think he’s a funny meme guy – it wouldn’t even be difficult.

And I guess I did, but it’s not really the point of this article at all. The point is that through the ups and downs of that forsaken platform I have made some amazing friends and even managed to pull a gay wedding out of my ass in less than three months thanks to their support. The point of this article is to say thank you for being there, helping me become a better person and helping me create this bad ass website full of bad ass trans people saying whatever their bad asses want to.

If I get banned for the amount of times I’m going to say “Elon Musk is Cisgender” on Twitter or the fact that my screen name is “Elon Musk is cisgender” or that any time I see someone tag him into a tweet on my feed I’m going to make a joke about how Elon Musk is cisgender; you can find me on Mastodon!

Note: I don’t want your bluesky invite. Jack Dorsey’s Twitter wasn’t much better for trans people and I have no reason to expect Jack Dorsey’s bluesky will be any better either.