August 16, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Even as social media giants like Twitter take an increasingly-draconian approach to dissent from transgender ideology, a prominent Canadian free-speech activist is asking why the gender-confused themselves remain free to violate those same websites’ policies with impunity.

Lindsay Shepherd is a campus free speech fellow at Canada’s Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), who rose to prominence in 2017 as a teaching assistant at Wilfrid Laurier University, where faculty attacked her as Nazi-like for playing a video clip of University of Toronto psychology professor and cultural commentator Jordan Peterson in class.

On Thursday, The Federalist published an op-ed by Shepherd in which she recounts crossing online paths with radical trans activist Jonathan “Jessica” Yaniv, and argues that the experience demonstrates Twitter’s ideological hypocrisy.

Yaniv, a man who claims to be a woman, is currently in the news for a string of “human rights” complaints against Vancouver beauticians who offer bikini waxes to actual women but have refused to wax his male genitals. Yaniv has also sought to organize topless-optional swimming parties for children as young as 12 without their parents, and reportedly has a record of asking sexually-charged questions online about stripping in locker rooms with girls as young as age 10.

“In July 2019, Yaniv tweeted that I have a ‘loose vagina’ from having a baby, but that he has a ‘tight pussy,’” Shepherd wrote. “I replied that if Yaniv would like to sound like a woman, this is not the way to do it, as he was speaking like a male who hasn’t had a functional romantic relationship with a woman.”

“Yaniv then replied by mocking a reproductive abnormality I have called a septate uterus, a condition that increases the risk of miscarriage,” she continued. “I responded, ‘at least I have a uterus, you ugly fat man.’ I was permanently banned from Twitter the next day for ‘hateful conduct.’”

In February, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey cited the company’s crackdown on “misgendering” or “deadnaming” (addressing someone by his original legal name that matches his biology) users as an example of “protecting” them, a policy that most infamously led to the banning of Canadian feminist writer Meghan Murphy for tweets such as “women aren’t men” and “how are transwomen not men?”

“Although I did violate Twitter’s terms of service by misgendering, it’s not such a simple matter of rule-breaking: should people using social media platforms be forced to act as if biological sex is meaningless, and anyone with dissenting views must either keep her mouth shut or have her account closed?” Shepherd argues. “Do we really accept that Yaniv is allowed to make whatever sexist, anti-woman, anti-heterosexual comments he wants, but gets to keep his Twitter account with no repercussions?”

Not only is Yaniv’s civility tolerated, she addeds, but so is his alleged doxxing (leaking of personal information such as addresses and phone numbers) of American “trans” YouTube personality Blaire White.

“Some may say it’s just a Twitter account, but Twitter is the current public square, where journalists, public figures, authors, writers, and everyone in between can discuss issues and happenings,” Shepherd argued. “Individuals like Murphy, (Miranda) Yardley, and (Jenn) Smith are offering us criticisms of the trans activist movement: Are we really alright with the idea of transgender males entering — and often winning — women’s sport competitions?”

Conservatives argue that for all Twitter’s claims to want only to elevate the conversation, its war on “hate” seems distinctly one-sided. Earlier this month, the company let stand a tweet in which ex-CNN personality Reza Aslan called White House adviser Kellyanne Conway “‘the depraved evil’ we need to eradicate.” Last summer, the company came under fire for excluding numerous prominent Republicans from its drop-down search menu, without doing the same to their Democrat counterparts.

Conservative distrust of Twitter is further fueled by a long series of bans and suspensions (including of LifeSiteNews) affecting non-violent, non-obscene content from right-of-center perspectives. Twitter insiders have admitted to intentionally targeting conservative accounts and topics.