WordPress censors GenderTrender; Gallus Mag responds

UPDATE

WordPress/Automattic, which hosts the 4thWaveNow website, has now sanitized the post below by redacting the name of the individual Gallus Mag describes in her statement. This is censorship. We are currently exploring our options and way forward. Please bear with us.

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4thWaveNow reached out to Gallus Mag of GenderTrender after WordPress dumped the site yesterday. In her most recent post, Gallus Mag  broke the full story of a Canadian MTF trans activist who has launched “human rights” complaints against a group of women’s salon workers who were unwilling to touch and wax male genitalia. GallusMag revealed other details about the activist’s prior social media activities, some of which pertained to underage girls.

GenderTrender’s importance as a groundbreaking investigative reporting outlet covering the excesses of transgender activism cannot be overstated. The site has also served as an incubator and launching pad for many other bloggers and writers; 4thWaveNow’s founder counts herself among them.

The loss of GenderTrender is a huge blow. It is also the latest casualty in a growing clash between, on one side, a loose coalition of feminists, parents, gay and lesbian people, detransitioners, free speech advocates, clinicians, and other supporters; and on the other side, a collection of extremist transgender advocates who will tolerate no dissent from anyone, from any quarter.

Gallus Mag’s statement follows.

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Statement:

by Gallus Mag of GenderTrender

WordPress.com pulled the plug on GenderTrender, TransgenderTropes101, RadfemReview, etc. on Friday November 16. I was notified via email by “Sal P.” of Automattic, the company that administers WordPress.com. He stated:

“Hello,

We received a report regarding the publication of private/personal information on your blogs. Specifically, the malicious publication of private details of a person’s gender identity.

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

To download your content and take it elsewhere, you can use the export tool below for a limited time:”

Presumably the “malicious publication of private details of a person’s gender identity” referred to [redacted], the subject of my final post on November 8. Since that post, [redacted] has been successful at using false DMCA requests to remove public information about himself from the internet (see Twitter and Facebook).

I wrote back to Automattic/Wordpress.com and informed them of my longstanding policy to never post information from private sources (such as private social media accounts or Facebook groups, etc.) and reiterated the blog’s longstanding support of the rights of everyone affected by gender to hold their own beliefs without facing harassment or discrimination. I asked them to reinstate the blogs, as they had been suspended in error.

I received a response today, November 17, from an individual named “Knox”, who stated:

“Hello,

According to our Privacy Policy, the malicious publication of private details related to gender identity includes publishing former names. You can see more information regarding this policy at:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/private-information/

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

To download your content and take it elsewhere, you can use the export tool below for a limited time:”

This clarified for me that Automattic/Wordpress now considers the publishing of former names a form of malicious publication, if that individual declares a “transgender identity”. I looked at the portion of the TOS linked to by “Knox” and noted that five days after my post on [redacted] human rights complaints against women who refused to wax his balls, Automattic/Wordpress.com enacted a new, unannounced, change to their Terms of Service that redefined “the malicious publication of private details” to include any reference to the legal or former name of any individual who declares a transgender identity.

There are over 36,000 blogs on Automattic/Wordpress.com that refer to the individual many know as Bruce Jenner. According to the new, unannounced TOS, these blogs are committing an act of malicious publication of Jenner’s private information and are subject to immediate removal from the platform without warning.

To be clear: As of November 13, 2018, the former life of any individual who now declares themselves transgender can never be referred to using materials which reveal the name they formerly used, even if it is their legal name, the name they used last week, or the name by which they are commonly known. For example, quoting news sources which identified serial killer “Donna Perry” by his former name Douglas Perry has become an act of “malicious publication” according to Automattic/Wordpress.com which will result in sudden removal of the blog (and any other unrelated blogs by the same author) from the platform, without prior notification or opportunity for appeal, even if that post was made prior to the unannounced changes to the TOS.

Will this new policy be widely enforced? Of course not. I believe this change to the WordPress TOS was hastily conceived as a guise to censor lesbian and feminist authors who are critical of “gender identity” ideology, specifically those who investigate or critique the actors behind various political or judicial campaigns to limit the rights of women. I believe this change is a direct result of GenderTrender’s exposure of [redacted], the figure behind 16 Canadian human rights complaints against women who declined to wax his balls, as an alleged sexual predator. I believe this unannounced change to the TOS, applied retroactively without prior warning or notification, is a ruse to justify the specific targeted censorship of certain popular long running lesbian and feminist blogs who critique the ingrained (and sometimes criminal!) misogyny of the transgender movement. I believe this is an organized, intentional initiative by WordPress.com to eliminate lesbian and feminist criticism and exposure of the epidemic harassment, predation, and sex-specific terrorism of male bodied people upon female bodied people, regardless of their personal “identity”.

As for “The future of GenderTrender”(and the other websites): contrary to the kind offer of “Sal P.” and “Knox” of Automattic, it is not possible to simply transfer the site to another host. Only a “live” blog can be transferred to another host. This is why it took 8 months for an archive to be created for RadfemHub (which was only online for a year) after the failure to renew the domain account by the wealthy patron it was entrusted to took it offline. By taking GenderTrender offline, Automattic/Wordpress.com has removed my access to my own work, specifically all media, images, screen caps and gifs published over 8 years in posts and comments. Their suggestion that I may export my content to another host is a fiction. Deleted blogs cannot be transferred. All media property posted on GenderTrender has been effectively stolen by Automattic/Wordpress.com. Piecing 8 years of blog content together manually from recovered or found sources would be cost and time prohibitive. I have requested that Automattic provide me with a transferrable export of GenderTrender and my other blogs and am breathlessly awaiting their reply. /s

I do have personal copies of the text of most of my original posts. Maybe I’ll put some of them somewhere at some point.

I would like to thank everyone who supported GenderTrender, with your readership, contributions, re-posts, and your beautiful beautiful comments. You taught me so much. What an incredible honor. I’m especially sad for the elimination of certain contributor posts, especially “FTM Detransitioning Experience: Quitting T and Getting Back to Life As A Woman” which was always one of my top rated posts and a source of great comfort and information for women looking to get off testosterone, many of whom shared vital perspectives in the comments. Also some of the guest posts from women recovering from partnership with autogynephiles (“trans widows”) with extensive critical information in comments from other survivors. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to effectively safeguard your important work and contributions against the censorial power of the misogynist men running Automattic/Wordpress.com who lack all ethics.

I believe what Automattic/Wordpress.com is doing to lesbian and feminist bloggers is criminal. I support a Congressional Inquiry into the selective censorship conducted by US based social media and blogging platforms. I support government regulation of such companies as public utilities, subject to constitutional law regarding freedom of speech.

Thank You.

Gallus Mag