LGBTQ advocates criticized Elon Musk on Thursday after the Twitter owner said he would allow users to freely misgender people on the social media site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a tweet on the first day of Pride Month, Musk said he personally uses the pronouns that someone \u2013 including a transgender person \u2013 prefers because it\u2019s good manners, but that he wouldn\u2019t enforce that policy on Twitter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Musk made the comment in a reply to a complaint<\/a> from Jeremy Boreing, the co-CEO of the conservative site The Daily Wire. Boreing, who was seeking to distribute a video opposed to trans rights but said Twitter had canceled a distribution deal, said he considered it a free speech issue to not be able to use pronouns that are different from the ones a trans person uses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is definitely allowed,\u201d Musk told<\/a> Boreing. \u201cWhether or not you agree with using someone\u2019s preferred pronouns, not doing so is at most rude and certainly breaks no laws.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Musk said Twitter employees who told Boreing otherwise had made a mistake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In culture war battles online and off, using pronouns other than what someone prefers is a common way to bully trans people. Twitter banned the practice as part of its rule against degrading behavior or other hateful content until April, when the company\u2019s new management under Musk quietly changed the rule<\/a> without an official announcement. The rule had been in place since 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Musk\u2019s latest statement drew a rebuke from LGBTQ organizations, which said the new policy opened a door for anti-trans harassment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTwitter was once a place where many marginalized people including LGBTQ people found community, and it\u2019s become hostile,\u201d Laurel Powell, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, said in a phone interview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing isn\u2019t really about censorship or discrimination of ideas. It\u2019s about the kind of company Twitter wants to be and the kind of world they want to shape,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said Musk\u2019s tweet was disappointing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis will only increase hate speech that has harmed our community within social media spaces,\u201d he said in a statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Heng-Lehtinen said lives may be at risk, citing a 2020 survey<\/a> from The Trevor Project, an organization focused on suicide prevention. Transgender and nonbinary youth who said that all or most people in their lives respect their pronouns attempted suicide at half the rate of those who did not have their pronouns respected, according to the survey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Musk has a history of staking out anti-trans positions. In tweets, he has mocked<\/a> trans people and accused<\/a> trans rights advocates of contradicting themselves. Last month, he participated in a Twitter event to launch the Republican presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has signed several bills<\/a> restricting LGBTQ rights. A year ago, one of Musk\u2019s children filed<\/a> a petition to change her name and have her gender officially recognized as female, saying she didn\u2019t want to be related to Musk in any way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Musk elaborated on his current thinking in his Thursday tweet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI should note that I do personally use someone\u2019s preferred pronouns, just as I use someone\u2019s preferred name, simply from the standpoint of good manners,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHowever, for the same reason, I object to rude behavior, ostracism or threats of violence if the wrong pronoun or name is used,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n GLAAD, the LGBTQ media advocacy organization, said the earlier Twitter rule existed to protect people from harassment and to reassure advertisers who don\u2019t wish their ads to be featured adjacent to bullying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cElon Musk continues to double down on making his already struggling site less safe for users, and even less appealing for advertisers,\u201d the organization said in a statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n