Descripción del caso
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.
Comentarios
For women‘s rights issues.and women‘s safety - according to international human rights regulations like CEDAW - it is crucial to recognize and name a man as a man. It‘s also crucial for freedom of speech, of belief and of press. Women are oppressed, attacked and killed on the basis of sex. If you deny us to name the reality, you enforce male oppression and violence against women and women and girls lose their rights and safety. Please keep women and girls safe!
I think that a lot goes into this because we have to agree on language. If misgendering is going to be prohibited, please be clear that gender is a construct, and no matter what gender someone chooses, people remain one of two sexes: male or female. So if you seek to limit misgendering, calling someone by their sex is REALITY and you cannot and should not censor that.
We make distinction between the sexes for many reasons, most importantly to protect the safety of women and children and their rights. We need the right to call a male a male. We need to differentiate between the bodies of females and the bodies of males.
If a particular PERSON is being attacked or bullied, that's one thing, but -- again -- it is free speech and reality to talk about many issues surrounding transgenderism, including medical malpractice, mental illness, harm to children, dangerous trends, males in female spaces and sport, and crime and medical statistics that rely on sex to be accurate.
A blanket ban on anything that doesn't satisfy trans rights activists is not fair, not just and not logical or rational. General bullying can be punished under harassment policies. Simply stating one's birth sex is not harassment.
“Misgendering” is not a hate crime. Misgendering is not transphobic. Transphobia is the “irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against transgender people” (Merriam-Webster), which misgendering does not match the aforementioned definition. A male that has transitioned to a female is chromosomally male, meaning they are a man/male sexually and vice versa for females. Stating a fact is not hate speech. One can identify as a different gender, but one cannot change one’s sex. Saying such does not constitute discrimination.
Meta should not be allowed to limit speech in this way. There is nothing inherently hateful or prejudiced in pointing out the biological sex of an individual for any number of reasons. This is very different from pointed hate speech at trans individuals, which goes far beyond pointing out their biological sex - it is teasing, mocking, bullying, hateful comments that Meta should concern itself with. Calling people derogatory names, telling them to kill themselves, that they are going to hell for who they are, or any number of other things people can say about this group are very clearly hate speech - pointing out their biological sex when it is pertinent in conversational discourse is not.
Discussions on the subject of gender identity should never be moderated for hate speech. The hate speech button is too easily pushed when factual matters are concerned.
Humans cannot change sex. Women do not consent to the erasure of our language or colonization of our prisons, rape shelters or sports by males who claim a woman identity. We do not consent to the taking over of the language we use to describe the unique needs and experiences we have as women and girls.
Sex is real, material and fundamental to our rights. When you do not let us voice the truth, you silence women and deny our existence as biological beings. It is highly misogynistic and anti science.
Classifying facts as hate speech is utterly ridiculous. Just because a group of individuals cannot accept a reality does not mean that everyone else has to go along with it. Would you ban discussion on Astro physics because it upsets people who insist the world is flat?
hallenging the lie that "trans women are women" should never lead to restrictions on content or accounts. No human ever changed sex and we need to shift the debate to encompass the core issue the "trans community" wants everyone to ignore: sexual consent. No man is allowed to see me in a state of undress without my sexual consent and I do NOT provide such consent to any man, no matter what gender identity he may claim, when I am in a sinlge-SEX space for females. Girls who are minors CANNOT consent even if they wanted to, and no woman can give consent on behalf of any other woman or girl, as sexual consent is not transferable. You all need to think about the reasons men are excluded from female spaces, and why voyeurism is not just a crime, but a sex crime. The trans activists who fought successfully for self ID policies in many jurisdictions have effectively stripped women of our right to privacy & safety in single-sex spaces. Nobody should be forbidden from complaining about this, and doing so cannot be construed as "hatred" or "bigotry" as doing so is an egregious form of gaslighting and harmful to women and girls. The fundamental fact more people need to be aware of is that when men claim they've undergone a medical "transition" (a claim not supported by facts, as cosmetic surgery on genitals never changed anyone's sex), even after taking cross-sex hormones for years they continue to commit criminal offenses in the same patterns* as all other men. We need to think about the reasons we keep all men out of female spaces and understand this must be applied to men who claim to be trans as well, or there is no longer any such thing as a female space. Stripping women and girls of safe spaces we fought for decades to provide is a huge injustice. When you censor our legitimate outrage you contribute to this injustice. Free speech is our most fundamental human right. Let women speak!
I fully support Meta's decision to NOT censor the comments made on either post. If you want to say we need an open and HONEST dialogue surrounding "transgender issues" then that's a good start. An even more HONEST stance would be that there are only two genders. This is an immutable fact. Contradicting this is NOT "science" by any stretch of the imagination. Trying to treat a software issue with a hardware "cure" is wrong on every level. In reality it becomes unconscionable. Getting "transgender" people, ESPECIALLY MINORS, the mental health services they need would be the best approach on ever level, yet we, as a nation, seem incapable of doing this. Boys and Men should NOT be allowed to participate in any WOMEN'S (definition: Adult Human Female!) spaces, whether it be bathrooms or sporting competitions. This goes against every Title IX equality measure that women fought the good fight to win. Let's please bring some common sense back to all of these discussions. It is needed now more than ever.
I thank the Meta Board for your conclusion that “misgendering” an individual - which is to say, referencing the fact of their sex, rather than any gender-identity term they may prefer - is not a hate crime.
To state what is factually accurate, and self-evident to the viewer, is a necessary function of freedom of speech, and of freedom of thought, for these to be meaningful concepts.
For any entity that has the power of censorship to police, deny, and punish statements of self-evident fact is to make these freedoms meaningless.
The issues related to gender ideology are contentious ones. I don’t intend to discuss them here. My intention is to stand up for the freedoms of individuals to speak the truth as they understand it to be.
sex and transgenderism are mutually exclusive concepts. you can either affirm the biological reality of a person's innate sex, or you can affirm their transgender identity. it is impossible to do both. correctly sexing trans people "is transphobic" while using their preferred pronouns and affirming their gender identity requires lying about reality.
reality is inherently transphobic because the trans identity intrinsically requires dysphoria caused by psychological incongruence with one's self image and one's physical being. trans identified individuals cannot change their sex and will always be the sex that was correctly observed at birth. let's not have transfolk conflated with intersex people. sex is not assigned at birth, it is observed. only for intersex people was that observation ultimately revealed to be incorrect. but transfolk are not intersex, even though some intersex folk get involved in the transgender ideology.
gender attraction and gender orientation are based on gender.
sexual attraction and sexual orientation are based on sex.
sex is transphobic
gender is homophobic and heterophobic.
genderism is inherently homophobic and heterophobic.
reality is inherently transphobic
let's define some simple terms im sure we can all agree on
a transwoman is a biological male who identifies as a woman
a transman is a biological female who identifies as a man
with me so far?
a homosexual is a same sex attracted person.
a female homosexual is commonly known as a lesbian.
a male homosexual is commonly known as a gay man.
simple stuff so far. let's keep going.
sexual orientation is predicated on the sex of the sexually attracted individuals not their gender identity compatibility. you can tell because they all have the root word sex.
straight men are fundamentally not attracted to transwomen, any man who claims to be, is actually bisexual. because thats how those words work.
a homosexual male is not going to accept a transman (a trans identified female) because ultimately 'he' is a she. any so called gay man who accepts a transman as a sexual partner is actually a bisexual male.
a heterosexual female is likewise not going to accept a transman as a heterosexual partner because their sex is ultimately female.
a transwoman who is attracted to men is a homosexual male. a transwoman who is attracted to women is a heterosexual male.
a transman who is attracted to men is a heterosexual female. a transman who is attracted to women is a homosexual female.
insisting that lesbian means something other than homosexual females is deeply homophobic
a transbian is a transwoman who is attracted to women
a lesbian is a homosexual female.
now paradoxically a heterosexual male who fucks a transman will be claimed by that transman as a homosexual male for having same gender identity sex.
a heterosexual male who identifies as a woman is now magically a lesbian. these things are absurd and criticism of absurdities should not be prohibited. suggesting that a lesbian is anything other than a homosexual female is deeply homophobic and should not be encouraged.
transgenderism is a belief system with zero physiological tests able to prove or disprove if an individual "is trans" yet any and all attempts to correctly frame it as an ideology or belief gets shut down as transphobic because the only acceptable perspective is to embrace transgenderism as the one and only true valid interpretation of reality, the singular correct interpretation of reality. this is classic behavior of cults and religions, dissent is completely unacceptable and must be eliminated in all it's forms. this is why there is such a powerful lobby infiltrating all orders of society. the common folk do not believe in transgenderism any more than they believe in flat earth. having these beliefs is fine, forcing everyone else to affirm them is not. being protected from discrimination does not make one immune from criticism.
the right to disagree is of utmost importance.
articles 18 and 19 of the UDHR sum it up wonderfully
Article 18
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
unfortunately some ideologies like medieval christanity, modern islam and transgenderism are wholly unable to accept alternate perspectives and will viciously attack and destroy anything that opposes them.
changing sex is literally impossible and i'm not going to hold my tongue in the face of pedophiles teaching children to cut off their genitals.
keep all XY humans out of XX spaces. (unless they're intersex and have vulvas)
human rights are human rights. all lives matter on this fragile organic spaceship we call home.
Those posts should stay up on Facebook. Freedom of opinion and freedom of expression comes first. Personal feelings come second.
I am writing on behalf of The Dru Project -- a nonprofit that honors the legacy of Pulse Shooting victim Drew Leinonen. We support LGBTQ+ youth across the country with grants, scholarships, and curricula for their groups at school. It is because of the population that we work with and within, that we want to state how disappointed we are in Meta for deciding to stand down to hate and allowing two pieces of anti-transgender content stay live on the platforms it owns.
Anti-trans rhetoric is bad for everyone -- not just transgender people. That kind of hatred and narrow purview of gender identity trickles up and down between the government, social media, and everything/everyone in between. Due to these anti-trans views, people who are not even transgender are being harassed for not fitting within the "binary" of gender that has been posed as the "standard."
We have seen this in anywhere from bathrooms to sports.
If one of the biggest influences of opinion -- social media -- can't understand that freedom of speech is not without freedom of consequence, we are in dire trouble.
It is our hope that Meta revisits the decision on what is deemed hate speech or hate posting and removes what is clearly harassment in the content that is in question. I am more than happy to expound on this opinion, to give statistics on how hatred moves from the screen to real life and vice versa, and to discuss the pattern of hate crimes that stem from this kind of content.
Please reconsider.
Thank you,
Sara Grossman
Board President
The Dru Project
Gender identity is a nebulous concept. It is entirely self-defined. There is no way to verify it in a person, it means different things to different people.
Bodies are real. Biology is real. Sex is real. The sexual binary evolved approximately one billion years ago, according to the fossil record. The idea that there is a spectrum, or that many people are intersex, is false. There is a tiny percentage of people who have disorders/differences of sexual development, but they are all variants of the two sexes, not in between. No one can change sex, though one can alter one's appearance with surgeries and hormones.
Women are indubitably victimized on the basis of their sex--female genital mutilation, honor killings, rapes, etc., happen because women are real, not on the basis of their gender identity. Gender identity undermines women's ability to advocate for themselves, to preserve safe spaces from male predators, to have a fair playing field in sports. Pretending sex isn't real takes away the ability to develop female-specific medical treatment! Saying any of this should not be a crime. J.K. Rowling said:
Dress however you please.
Call yourself whatever you like.
Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you.
Live your best life in peace and security.
But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?
Misgendering should'nt be consider a hate speech.
I strongly disagree with the suggestion that these cases contain any kind of Hate Speech, Bullying or Harassment. This is mainly about people who speak facts and we should not censor it because then its a violation of free speech. Going through any "gender treatment" is not gonna make anybody different gender. Chromosomes and different biological structures will always be there, no matter what they do.
The same way transgender people are arguing about their rights - the society needs to acknowledge that every person has rights also. This means that appealing one persons right should not violate other people rights. BIOLOGICAL WOMEN HAVE RIGHT FOR PRIVACY - specialy in places like showers, toilets or gym lockers during changing. There should not be any man there, including transgender people and we should not MAKE WOMEN undress in front of them.
Same goes with RIGHT FOR SAFETY IN SPORTS - whether transgender people like it or not, chromosomes matter. And a biologival man playing in women sports means DANGER to them.
So at the end. People actually dont want to hurt transgender peple. They are calling for not not trumping over biological womens rights.
Free speech is a human right. Men entering women's spaces just because they want it is not a human right. Meta should reverse it's policy on "hate speech", which is arbitrary defined. Hate speech means the speech they hate. As Salman Rushdie rightly says: "What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist."
On a contentious issue such as gender identity it is vital that Meta maintains standards of freedom of speech.
To the majority of people someone's biological sex is a reality that affects their lives. If it is not allowed to refer to someone's biological sex then that is forcing people into either being silent on this issue or else having to say something that they do not believe, which obviously contravenes their right to freedom of belief. That is basically a tyranny of a minority.
Many things which are discussed in the public sphere may offend or upset some people; this is not adequate reason not to discuss things. Comments and posts should only be disallowed if they call for actual violence or direct discrimination against a person or group. Disagreeing about a person's gender identity, especially when there are issues in relation to a clash with biological sex, is not an adequate excuse for silencing.
If gender identity is placed above biological sex in cases where the physical attributes of going through male puberty has an effect on biological women's rights then that is sex discrimination. In these cases it is vital that the issue is discussed in order to reach a reasonable compromise.
In the particular posts/comments referred to the subject is sport. Separate male and female categories have long been established due to the recognition that someone who has gone through male puberty has athletic advantage over someone who has gone through female puberty. Therefore it is perfectly reasonable for someone to comment about how allowing people born male to compete against people born female is unfair.
The very idea of gender identity is contested, and it cannot be imposed upon people who don't believe in it. Criticism of gender ideology is labelled as hate speech by its proponents as a way to stifle debate and silence critics.
The trans lobby wields enormous power despite claims of being vulnerable. It is often treated as a sacred caste, above reproach. No group deserves such an elevated position in society.
Of course, no one should have to face discrimination either. But saying men cannot be women isn't discrimination; it is a fact. Do you really want to be known for banning the truth?
This is a free speech issue.
In both cases, the author of the post is questioning either use of a bathroom or participation in a sport by a transgender person.
They are questioning. That's it. If questioning is hate speech and therefore ripe for censorship, then we're in a very dark place.
There is no consensus currently as to whether men who identify as women should be allowed to use women's/girls' bathrooms or participate in women's/girls' sports. Whether or not identifying as a girl or woman allows one all the privileges of a girl or woman is not a settled question. Policies are made in this area, and then questioned.
To declare that these posts should be censored is a claim of consensus that does not yet exist. It is a way to silence the questioning. It is authoritarian and a violation of the First Amendment. Don't do it.
This is a global problem now, with arrests on the street in the UK for people who've made posts to Facebook that are considered "dangerous" or "hateful." Brazil has shuttered X and, in another odd move that only hurts its own people, Starlink. Pavel Durov was arrested in France because he owns Telegram, an encrypted messaging app. The excuse for his arrest is that his app is used by criminals. In a normal world, law enforcement would be going after the criminals, not Mr. Durov. The EU wrote to Elon Musk, requesting that he censor Donald Trump during their conversation on X. Musk wrote an expletive in response, which was cheered by millions on X.
The big question here is, must a platform allow the government to police its content? Or, in this case, must a platform police its own content, caving to a minority opinion, before the government does? I say no to both. The damage done to the First Amendment and therefore to our society does not warrant such policing, simply to guarantee that 2 individuals do not have hurt feelings. The board of Meta should get out of the hurt feelings policing business. If true harms are done or threatened, law enforcement should handle it.
Whatever pressures you're feeling from whatever governmental agencies, lobbyists, and nonprofits, you must resist.