The cult of intersectionality just stepped into the crossroad of combustion following WordPress’ vendetta against radical feminists.
According to the Women’s Liberation Front website, on November 16th, 2018 WordPress’ parent company, Automattic, issued letters to the owners of the feminist blog GenderIdentityWatch.com, informing them that the blog was being shut down.
The letter was in response from “abuse reports” indicating that the blog violated WordPress’ unannounced change in its terms of service.
The letter, from Sal P., stated…
“We received a report regarding the publication of private/personal information on your blogs. Specifically, the malicious publication of private details related to gender identity, including former names.
“Publishing this type of content is forbidden by our Terms of Service, and as such your account has been suspended.
“If you would like to continue publishing this type of information, you are free to export your content and move it to a more appropriate WordPress host.”
If you attempt to visit GenderIdentitywatch.com, it takes you to a suspension page.
According to the post on Women’s Liberation Front, WordPress has been prohibiting the owners from accessing the blogs, media content, and files in order to transfer them to a new host, since the only way to do that is if the site is active, but since the site is suspended it’s not possible.
As noted by the Women’s Liberation Front, there would be no way to access the archives due to being locked out the account, and that this act felt more like a sociopolitically motivated move from WordPress to act against its opposition…
“By the next day, it had become clear to all of us that, in spite of offering to allow us to download our content, WordPress had no intention of allowing us any access to our media files. The interfaces they directed us to work only if the blog is still live, and don’t allow the transfer of media files from suspended sites. Perhaps this is an oversight, but it isn’t our oversight, and it shouldn’t prevent WordPress from keeping their word to us. […]
”No evidence has been provided that so much as a single post on any of these feminist sites contained any incitement to violence or other criminal activity, or in any way constituted speech not protected under First Amendment rights. Neither had WordPress formerly represented itself as a platform with a political agenda, nor one where the opinions of its employees would be imposed arbitrarily and without notice on longstanding customers.”
They noted that they are taking legal action to regain access to the content on the site, especially since they were given no warning about the site violating WordPress’ new terms of service.
They weren’t the only ones, though.
4Thwavenow.com also has an article up explaining how WordPress targeted the feminist blog, GenderTrender.
They, too, shared an e-mail from Automattic, the parent company of Wordress, which indicated that the site was reported for “abuse”, and therefore had to be suspended without warning. It was an identical letter to the one sent to the owners of GenderIdentityWatch.com.
However, in the 4thwavenow post, it was indicated that the subject of one of the posts on GenderTrender was about a trans individual who had been using DMCA takedowns to prevent sites from publishing any details about them.
The owner of GenderTrender attempted to get the site reinstated after contacting the support staff at Automattic and WordPress, but they were sent a letter that clearly pointed out that deadnaming – which is the act of using the name of a trans person before they transitioned – is now against the rules for WordPress blogs. The letter stated…
“According to our Privacy Policy, the malicious publication of private details related to gender identity includes publishing former names.”
They also link to the privacy information page, which clearly states that deadnaming is now subject for account suspensions.
However, WordPress and Automattic could be in a bit of a legal pickle, as reported by Adland.tv.
Apparently WordPress didn’t update the terms of service to add the line about deadnaming until November 21st, 2018. An archive from November 17th, 2018 shows that the terms of service had not been updated even after WordPress had sent out the letters to the site owners about the terms of service prohibiting deadnaming.
In other words, the blogs were suspended for violating rules that weren’t added to the terms of service until after they were suspended.
It looks like there are cracks appearing within the chapel of the Intersectional Inquisition, especially between the TERF and the trans communities.
(Thanks for the news tip Lyle)
