(full disclosure– I am writing this moments after catching a 30-day ban for defending my right not to be called “dude, man, or bro” against cisgender people in the comment sections of Facebook.)

Facebook has continuously used there community standards as an excuse to baning the accounts of transgender people when they speak up for themselves..

Here’s their “policy” on hate speech.

12. Hate Speech

We do not allow hate speech on Facebook because it creates an environment of intimidation and exclusion and in some cases may promote real-world violence.

We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability.

We protect against attacks on the basis of age when age is paired with another protected characteristic, and also provide certain protections for immigration status.

We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation. We separate attacks into three tiers of severity, as described below.

Sometimes people share content containing someone else’s hate speech for the purpose of raising awareness or educating others. In some cases, words or terms that might otherwise violate our standards are used self-referentially or in an empowering way.

People sometimes express contempt in the context of a romantic break-up.

Other times, they use gender-exclusive language to control membership in a health or positive support group, such as a breastfeeding group for women only.

In all of these cases, we allow the content but expect people to clearly indicate their intent, which helps us better understand why they shared it. Where the intention is unclear, we may remove the content.

We allow humor and social commentary related to these topics. In addition, we believe that people are more responsible when they share this kind of commentary using their authentic identity.

……..

I would like to take a moment right now to highlight part of their definition of HATE SPEECH..

“We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability.”

This is where I’d like to call bullshit ..

since I first came out as transgender I have probably been through at least 10 different Facebook accounts already because people keep reporting me and getting me kicked off of Facebook because of my gender/gender identity.

I cannot even count how many times I’ve been told to kill myself on Facebook in public comment sections. I’ve reported these people. And Facebook always, every single fucking time, send me back a help desk ticket saying that their speech is protected speech.

Even though it is clearly stated in their own terms of service that hate speech is not allowed so, they only ever seem to enforce this against trans people and never in our favor.

if Facebook actually gave a fuck about transgender people, and our mental health, they would not go out of their way to restrict our accounts or they honest from their servers altogether when all we’re trying to do is defend ourselves against the cishet normative.

If you say, “men are trash” on Facebook you will most definitely get in trouble.

But if you tell a trans woman to kill herself you have speech protections from Facebook.

You can try to call bullshit on this all day but the fact of the matter is, I would still be on my original Facebook account if I never spoke up for myself and never defended myself against cisgender dudebros when they tell me to go kill myself.

Today, I was reported for hate speech to Facebook because I told cisgender people that they need to do better, and stop referring to trans people as bro, dude, man when they ask you to.

It has been scientifically proven time and time again that when a transgender woman has dysphoric issues around these words that, continuing to call her these things is actually doing damage to her mental health.

but evidently saying, on Facebook,

“Cisgender people who refuse to stop calling trans women man, bro, dude are pieces of fucking shit”

Has been deemed hate speech buy Facebook by way of their banning transgender accounts.

so if you are thinking to yourself, well, Facebook has and acting it out the rhythm to help them take care of matters of hate speech and maybe the algorithm caught you by mistake..

And that’s a perfectly rational and logical thing to believe.

Except that there was absolutely no way to refute anything.

I never even got a notification that my comments were under review or in question.

No warning

No way to refute anything

No, “I disagree, submit for review” button.

Nothing….

Which is really odd because anytime I’ve ever had problems with Facebook there has almost always been a button where I could submit for review. Except for when they kick me off for defending myself for being trans. These are the only times I’ve ever had Facebook not give me a submit for review button.

I find it weird that, in the middle of pride month, it is that easy for them to ban in lgbtq member without any regards to their right to face the accuser or at least have a submit for review button. Or anything.

hate speech groups are alive and well on Facebook. They are everywhere. I don’t have time to get into all of that, but if you were wanting to know more about the undercover hate groups that Facebook says are completely not against any of their terms of service for community standards then I recommend you read this article..

Because after I read that I had to actually take a few moments to wrap my head around what I had just read.

You can try to find these groups and report them all you want, but Facebook will protect their rights to free speech every fucking day.

But if you tell a cisgender person there a piece of shit for refusing to acknowledge you properly then you can catch a 30-day ban for hate speech.

It’s painfully obvious that the people who review this stuff for Facebook are cisgender males with their feelers hurt because they don’t like transgender people standing up for themselves.

I’m not asking for special treatment. I’m asking for equal treatment for everyone.

If I can’t call a cisgender person a piece of shit after they call me dude 37 times after I’ve told them not to. Then these scumbag cops that share islamophobic memes on Facebook need to have their account shut down for 30 days to for the heat speech that they share.

It’s only right, it’s only fair, and it is part of their terms of service and community standards.

if Facebook isn’t going to enforce their community standards to every account equally, then they shouldn’t try to enforce them at all. because they obviously have some scumbags on their review team who think that it’s okay okay to only enforce these community standards against minorities in the community and people that identify as lgbtqia+

This is all I have to say about that right now, I might add more to this later.

~Lys~