وصف حالة
These two cases concern content decisions made by Meta, on Facebook and Instagram, which the Oversight Board intends to address together.
In the first case, a Facebook user in the United States posted a video of a woman confronting a transgender woman for using the women’s bathroom. The post refers to the person being confronted as a man and asks why it is permitted for them to use a women’s bathroom.
In the second case, an Instagram account posted a video of a transgender girl winning a female sports competition in the United States, with some spectators vocally disapproving of the result. The post refers to the athlete as a boy, questioning whether they are female.
Both posts were shared in 2024 and received thousands of views and reactions. They were reported for Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment multiple times, but Meta left both posts up on Facebook and Instagram, respectively. After appealing to Meta against the company’s decisions, two of the users who reported the content then appealed to the Oversight Board.
Following the Board’s selection of these cases, Meta considered both posts under its Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment policies and concluded that neither violated its Community Standards. Both posts remained up. Meta’s Hate Speech Community Standard prohibits direct attacks targeting a person or group of people on the basis of protected characteristics, including sex, gender identity and sexual orientation, with “exclusion or segregation in the form of calls for action, statements of intent, aspirational or conditional statements, or statements advocating or supporting [exclusion].” The Hate Speech policy does not include misgendering as a form of prohibited “attack.” Misgendering means referring to a person using a word, especially a pronoun or the way in which they are addressed, that does not reflect their gender identity. Meta informed the Board that neither post violated its Hate Speech policy, adding that even if the post in the first case could constitute a call for exclusion, it would still be kept up under the newsworthiness allowance, given “transgender people’s access to bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity is the subject of considerable political debate in the United States.”
Meta’s Bullying and Harassment Community Standard prohibits “cognizable attacks and calls for exclusion” targeted at a private minor, private adult (if reported by the targeted person) or an involuntary public figure who is a minor (including statements advocating or supporting exclusion of a person). The public-facing language of the Bullying and Harassment policy does not consider misgendering a person to be a cognizable attack or call for exclusion. Meta informed the Board that the content in the first case did not violate the Bullying and Harassment policy as there was “no explicit call for exclusion present in the post and because the post was not self-reported by the person depicted in the video.” The company stated that although the second post targeted a minor who Meta considers to be an involuntary public figure, it did not contain a “cognizable attack or call for exclusion” so did not violate this Community Standard. Meta explained that the company allows “more discussion and debate around public figures in part because – as here – these conversations are often part of social and political debates and the subject of news reporting.”
In their statement to the Board, the user who appealed the post in the first case explained that Meta allowed what in their view is a transphobic post to stay on its platform. The user who appealed the post in the second case said that the post attacks and harasses the athlete with language that in their view violates Meta’s Community Standards.
The Board selected these cases to assess whether Meta’s approach to moderating discussions around gender identity respects users’ freedom of expression and the rights of transgender and non-binary people. The cases fall within the Board’s Hate Speech Against Marginalized Groups and Gender strategic priorities.
The Board would appreciate public comments that address:
- The impacts of Meta’s Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment policies on freedom of expression around gender identity issues, and the rights of transgender people, including minors.
- Technical challenges in enforcing bullying and harassment policies at scale, the effectiveness of self-reporting requirements and their impacts on people targeted by bullying or harassment, and comparisons to alternative enforcement approaches.
- The sociopolitical context in the United States concerning freedom of expression and the rights of transgender people, especially for access to single-sex spaces and participation in sporting events.
As part of its decisions, the Board can issue policy recommendations to Meta. While recommendations are not binding, Meta must respond to them within 60 days. As such, the Board welcomes public comments proposing recommendations that are relevant to these cases.
تعليقات
Making misgendering a 'hate crime' is going to be problematic and make innocent mistakes a crime. Biological reality is hugely important and as a society we must acknowledge that we are a species that only have two sexes - male and female. This shouldn't need stating. No one can change their sex. There is no evidence that people are born in the wrong body. We are our bodies. By making misgendering a hate crime you are buying into the nonsense of gender ideology, which is very dangerous - especially to children and adolescents. Please think twice and explore all the information around this issue, especially from women's groups.
"Misgendering" does NOT qualify as "hate speech". It is most hateful to sex-realists, whose different opinions about gender identity ideology do not agree with proponents of it, and will subsequently be muzzled. If the worst thing that ever happens to a person is someone "shes" instead of "hes" that's pretty minor and should be left alone.
Misgendering is not hate speech. It is truth speech. Gender ideology is like a religion, it requires beliefs in things that can not be proven. It requires people to just believe and not ask questions. You would be forcing a religion onto others. Is this what you want to make history for? Policing peoples beliefs. Forcing one belief upon all people. It has become a witch hunt. I am afraid to allow you to publish my name with this comment.
To put it simply, correctly identifying someone’s sex is not “Hate Speech”, and I find it distressing in the extreme that Meta may choose to interpret simple truth-telling by women forced to defend themselves in these situations as hate speech crimes.
I am not at all interested in how these men who invade our spaces choose to 'identify', I am instead wholly concerned with trying to make sure that men who are still equipped with their male genitalia are permitted AT NO TIME in our private female areas.
We need to be able to talk about issues that affect men and women - clearly and by sex.
So many issues are related to sex and not gender. Whether its sexual assault, hormonal issues, violence statistics and more, the facts up until recently at least were gathered based based on sex. If you take away the ability to name someones sex you are making clarification on matters impossible.
A belief in sex over gender is a belief that has existed for thousands of years. Gender I believe was first named a few decades ago. I understand belief in peoples sex (not gender) is a protected belief, we should be able to express our views without censorship.
Whatever a persons gender identity is they still have a sex and will always retain that sex as its impossible to change sex.
To say misgendering is a hate crime is to discriminate against people who believe sex matters, and who then lose the ability to speak or write any truth as they see it.
I have an inability to understand gender, due to being neurodivergent, when sex is banned and gender is favoured I lose the ability to express myself.
As a woman I believe in the importance of women-only spaces, sexed woman not men who identify as women. Women fought long and hard for our own spaces. As a victim of sexual assault it matters to me that I have female only personal care, counselling and support for that. A man who identifies as a woman is not the same as a woman and I believe that I and others like me should have our feelings respected. The suicide and self-abuse rates of girls and women who have suffered abuse are high, we matter.
If you take away our right to say men identifying as women are men, how do we explain this - its about sex not gender or even genitals.
Personally I feel that calling misgendering a hate crime and disallowing it means I'm being silenced. A scary thing to be silencing women in 2024.
Meta misgenders all the time by referring to men as women. So woops! you are guilty of hate speech.
And now you are trying to silence US!
I am a left-leaning, socialist-minded adult human female (woman). Sex is in every cell of our bodies, not just our genitals and breasts. You probably know that biology gives women, on average, significantly less physical strength than men and means we may become pregnant. You know that this has entrenched manifold disadvantages specific to women and that we have had to fight tooth and nail over centuries for equal treatment under the law. Alongside we have fought at grass root and national levels for single-sex spaces to service needs specific to women, due to those manifold disadvantages. You realise that when you replace sex with identity or gender, those rights are erased?
We as women, historically and contemporaneously, are the most marginalised and abused class - Look at any set of statistics globally around human rights, murder, sexual assault, sexual abuse, rape, rape as a weapon of war, sex-trafficking, education, health outcomes, pay, poverty, research (default male), control of our bodies, reproductive rights, abortion rights, down to what we wear.. and show me otherwise statistically.
We have been erased in language, data, accurate health information, sports, awards, spaces, services, free speech, public gatherings, legacy media - the list goes on and we will not tolerate it.
Your notion of “inclusion” excludes women and girls and same-sex attracted people (lesbians and gays). Women are secondary to men’s “feelings” about themselves. That’s a pretty old story.
Every time you replace the word Sex with Gender or call a man a woman, you erode our rights further. But you know this by now. Your plan to punish us for stating reality will not be endured by women globally.
Women are cancelled, pilloried, threatened and their livelihoods destroyed for challenging the profoundly sexist idea that being a woman is a matter of appearance that can be achieved by men through clothing, makeup or cosmetic surgery. Women are not an aesthetic to be worn. We do not identify as women. We are women.
What is currently being termed “gender-based” oppression, such as female genital mutilation, female infanticide, and child marriage, is actually sex-based oppression perpetrated only because of the acute knowledge of what a female is. The Taliban knows. And here YOU are, in the oh-so-progressive-free world, about to threaten and silence women and girls.
I wonder if, in the light of the WPATH files exposure of possibly the worst medical scandal against children in our history and the Cass Report, you might now reconsider. Obviously you have no concern for womens' rights, but I suspect you might be alarmed about the homophobic and medically abusive transing of our young gay and lesbian population, as exposed by the WPATH files. Or maybe not. Why not?
I have attached a link from Sex Matters which reveals what is actually happening to children and young people under "gender affirming care", just in case you still don't believe Cass.
https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/wpath-the-truth-about-gender-affirming-healthcare/
Women and lesbians are being redefined in law, in many countries, to include male people. We are being rewritten as a category. The definition of woman we are supposed to accept is no longer that we are adult, human and female but instead that we are “anyone who identifies as a woman”. It is the political erasure of sex, over-written by fallacious and unscientific gender cultish ideology, which has real consequences for women's and girls' rights and lives.
If you eradicate sex as a class how do you prove sex-discrimination in the work place? Or anywhere?
If you eradicate sex, you eradicate same-sex attraction. This is homophobia. This is why lesbians are being trolled off lesbian dating sites, as they are threatened and harassed by men with beards and penises who id as lesbians. It's called Breaking the Cotton Ceiling.
Does this not sound like a rape metaphor to you?
If you eradicate sex, how do we safeguard? We safeguard for the worst possible outcomes, not the best. You know the list - Womens' prisons, rape crisis centres, domestic refuges, womens and girls' changing rooms and toilets, hospital wards, womens' sports. Self-ID puts women and girls at serious risk, because male predators will have legal access to vulnerable women and girls. And don't say "this never happens" - I'll send you a list if you want.
How could any of us have foreseen how this debate would have degenerated into the worst assault on womens’ rights in recent years – “Kill Terfs”, “cervix-havers”, “bleeders”, “front holes”, men physically punching women in boxing rings, men guilty of violence against women I-d’ing as women and being transferred to womens’ prisons, women being interrogated by the police for expressing the view that sex matters.
The sheer women-hating language of it all is staggering.
And you are about to throw petrol on the fire.
So no, we will not bow down to the gender ideologues, including Meta. We will continue to name the male oppressors, attackers, usurpers, cheats and rapists and you won't stop us.
I understand that Meta proposes to move towards designating misgendering as hate speech.
This is an unjustifiable suppression of free speech and women's ability to comment on political matters that affect them. Discussion of the inclusion of male people in spaces, sports, opportunities, prisons etc designated for women and girls is an essential part of women's protection and promotion of their rights and freedoms. Clarity around the sex of an individual is a key part of the feminist movement. If one cannot define an oppressed class, one is unable to discuss its oppression.
Any measures that would prevent this category of discussion would introduce political bias into a strongly contested area and is not acceptable.
Utilicé la red social Instagram y mi cuenta fue suspendida por seis meses en 2023. En ella, compartía noticias sobre los efectos perjudiciales de la ideología de la identidad de género en los derechos de las mujeres y menores de edad, así como mis artículos publicados en mi blog. Mi trabajo consiste en analizar cómo esta ideología ha capturado al Estado argentino desde los años 2000, o incluso antes. Nunca me proporcionaron una explicación clara sobre la suspensión de mi cuenta, solo me indicaron que debía realizar un trámite online para apelar. Opté por no recuperar la cuenta ni los contactos asociados, ya que era evidente que Instagram no permite el análisis abierto de la ideología de género, ni en términos generales ni en relación con mi país, Argentina. Creo firmemente que restringir la libertad de expresión y el debate no es la solución a los problemas que afectan a las mujeres. Toda red social debería permitir que sus usuarios expresen libremente sus opiniones.
This is not hate speech.
Hate speech is not supported by physical facts.
Saying something you disagree with or don't like or offended by does not constitute hate speech.
Mr. Zuckerberg and co., please go outside. Touch grass for at least an hour a day for a few months, and return to earth and calm and sanity, please, in all seriousness.
Correctly sexing men and talking about women and girls' sex based rights, services and sports is not 'hate speech'.
How many ordinary people's accounts do you want to lose in order to appease some men's demands?
Using sex based language in a factual scientific framework is not hate speech. Deliberately excluding biological women from organising themselves, using their own language and excluding males from this is now hate speech, bullying or any other hateful context. Expecting women to accept a sub group of men as women is disrespectful, misogynist and hateful to women.
I addition this urther marginalises women in society. By denying biological reality we deny 50% of society a valid voice or place in that society. We deny the rights of vulnerable women to understand services or to identify as women.
I strongly object to the plans to make telling the truth on sex, as opposed to gender, into hate crime. Language matters in expressing the truth, and if we are forbidden from telling the truth about situations, we cannot fight those who want to take women's rights.
In Scotland, we have a Hate Crime Bill which tried to do just that, but was opposed and defeated by the majority of Scots who recognise that free speech is important. It remains on the books but is essentially unenforceable due to being ridiculous. That we have to struggle to just be able to tell the truth is incredible, particularly when we are compelled to accept that a vague concept of gender identity ideology is true, despite resting entirely on the feelings of its proponents. Women were reduced to body parts and functions, and the ability to say that males are male was essential in managing to defeat attempts in Scotland to allow gender Self-ID. When the truth is silenced, we are compelled to believe a lie.
Correctly identifying someone's sex is not hate speech. Gender Identity is not a belief shared by everyone and is such a nebulous concept that makes it incredibly difficult to create safe, effective laws on that basis. Women's rights are affected; by allowing men to say they are women and giving them access to single sex spaces and sports means that some women will self exclude or miss out on places due to the inclusion of the male sex. Feminism is for females and should centre all females regardless of their age, sex, ethnicity, religion etc and I stand by each and every one - women are not, and should not be made to become a subset of our own sex.
Stating somebodies biological gender is not hate speech. Even if a person identifies as a certain gender, they must still know the reality of their biology and it can’t be wished away even if everyone around them is forced to ignore that biological reality for the sake of political correctness. Biological women should have just as much rights as trans gender people. Stating biological gender in sports is not hate speech. Calling something hate speech doesn’t change reality. Trans gender people deserve to have freedom to express themselves, have choice and to be respected, but so do the rest of the population. That’s what equality is.
Humans are wired to recognise biological sex, it's innate and hard-wired. It is also factually accurate - we can never know what someone's self-identity is and even when we do, that is personal to that individual and we are under no obligation to agree with or even acknowledge someone's personal sense of self.
It is entirely reasonable for females to feel discomfort when males enter their spaces, particularly when they are vulnerable for example in bathrooms or changing rooms. It is not bullying and harassment to correctly sex someone.
How can we debate issues of safety, privacy and dignity, and of gender identity itself, if we cannot speak about sex or correctly identify the sex of a person?
Trans-identifying males are still males regardless of how they present, and if this policy is enacted, we will all be forced to accept the opposite - that trans-identifying males are female. This is an ideology and I do not consent to my freedom of speech - to tell the objective truth - being removed in this way.
Transgender people already have the same rights as everyone else, based on their correct biological sex.
Women must be allowed to describe males with male bodies as males - anything other than this is forced speech.
How can Meta be certain that a person's declared gender identity is true?
How can Meta be sure that a report of bullying and harassment is genuine? Not a malicious slur, or an attempt to shut down a person/group with opposing, but equally valid, views?
How will you balance the rights of women on your platforms with those of trans-identified males? How will you ensure all groups are treated equally?
Transgender people already have the same rights and freedom of expression. With this proposed policy on Hate Speech and Bullying and Harassment you are removing the freedom of expression from those opposed to this ideology, those questioning it, those who would like to learn more, those trans-identifying people who do not claim to have changed sex, detransitioners, and anyone who recognises biological sex.
Please do not prevent people from referring to a person's correct sex. Do not punish or censor people for speaking the truth about human sex categories and the fact that they cannot be changed.
Transgender identities are not widely accepted by the general population. For many people, 'gender identity' is a belief, not a biological reality. It is not misgendering someone if we can see that someone is obviously male or female, even if they identify as the opposite gender. The case mentioned, where someone who can be recognised as male enters a female bathroom, is an example of the way that anyone can now claim to be the opposite gender and therefore have access to protected spaces such as women's bathrooms. The same applies to a male competing in female sports. Gender identity and ideology are currently being debated and contested in a number of countries around the world, and as such prove that this is not a settled matter - it is still being widely debated. Therefore, banning 'misgendering' actually exceeds current human rights laws in many countries, and also denies people their legal right to free speech and their right to refuse to believe in a doctrine that has only taken hold in very recent years.
I am a woman with a young daughter. The legacy we are leaving our children, where the truth cannot be spoken terrifies me. Truth is important. Denying people the right to speak the truth is tyranny. Trans identified men are not women. It’s not cruel to say this - indulging a fantasy benefits noone
In the UK gender critical views are protected. In the USA free speech is protected. Gender Ideology is a belief. Biological sex is a fact. Users of Facebook should be allowed to state biological facts. This includes correctly stating the sex of someone who identifies as 'trans' especially where it impacts public life such as in areas where sex is protected (as in the UK Equality Act) such as separate sex facilities and sports. We need to be able to speak freely about these issues.
The VERY least you can do, is fix your mistake.
You should never have censored women in the first place.
#LetWomenSpeak
You allowed an entire generation to be exposed to a one-sided Master Narrative that allowed autogynephiles to roam free, steal women's rights, language, and spaces, and flash in public, while the misogynists cry: "Where are the feminists?"
BANNED BY YOU. CENSORED BY YOU.
But it isn't really a question from the misogynists.
It's more of a "Suffer, bïtches. You deserve to be raped."
I reported many rape and death threats on your platforms; my breast cancer posts were banned. My erotic art was banned.
But anime men threatening to rape and murder women: ALL COOL, BRO!
By silencing women, you have allowed children to believe they can be born in the wrong body, and you have censored women exposing the Mengele Butchers hunting children, the mentally ill, autistic, and gay.
You allowed these men and their hatred for women to flourish, while depriving women of a voice with which to defend ourselves.
terfisaslur.com
By all means, correct course NOW.