On June 1, Jeremy Boreing, co-CEO of The Daily Wire, a popular American conservative media outlet, tweeted that Elon Musk’s Twitter canceled a deal to premiere the outlet’s hit documentary “What is a Woman?” due to two instances of “misgendering,” contradicting Musk’s messaging that Twitter is a free speech platform.
“Twitter canceled a deal with @realdailywire to premiere What is a Woman? for free on the platform because of two instances of ‘misgendering,’” Boreing tweeted, adding that, “With Twitter’s recent commitments to free speech, we thought it would be the perfect place to distribute the film and drive the conversation forward on one of the most important topics of our day.”
According to Boreing, Twitter was originally enthusiastic about airing the documentary, offering The Daily Wire an opportunity to purchase a package to host the film on a dedicated event page and said it would “promote the event to every Twitter user over the first 10 hours.”
The Daily Wire accepted the offer and signed an agreement.
However, following Twitter’s request to view the documentary in its entirety, reportedly to identify “triggers” users may experience and prepare a corporate response, the platform completely backtracked on its agreement.
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“After reviewing the film, though, Twitter let us know that not only could we no longer purchase the package they offered, they would no longer provide us any support and would actually limit the reach of the film and label it as ‘hateful conduct’ because of ‘misgendering,’” Boreing wrote.
At the center of the controversy are two scenes, one depicting an interview with a gentleman who gained notoriety after a video of him refusing to use someone’s preferred pronouns went viral, and another clip of a conversation with a Canadian father who used the pronoun “her” to describe his daughter who identifies as transgender.
At the time of writing, both scenes are available to be viewed on Twitter and have been shared thousands of times and viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
However, the tweet has been labeled, “Visibility limited: this Tweet may violate Twitter’s rules against Hateful Conduct.”
“We reminded Twitter they removed ‘misgendering’ from their policy, that the term ‘misgendering’ itself is misleading, and that enforcing such a policy places them on the side of the most radical elements in society — the side most opposed to their commitment to free speech,” the Daily Wire co-CEO tweeted. “Twitter clarified they only removed ‘misgendering’ from their policy because they didn’t need to be that specific, but that they still consider ‘misgendering’ abuse and harassment. They gave us the opportunity to edit the film to comply. We declined.”
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Controversy swirls
The controversy follows Musk naming NBC Universal executive and World Economic Forum official, Linda Yaccarino as the company’s new CEO.
It’s unclear if the decision to censor the film was Yaccarino’s decision.
Musk however, did tweet that the move was “a mistake by many people at Twitter,” adding that, “It is definitely allowed.”
Seth Dillion, of the wildly popular conservative satire site The Babylon Bee, and who has been partially credited for inspiring Musk to purchase the platform tweeted about a recent interview he conducted with Musk.
“In the interview we just released, Musk reaffirmed his commitment to free speech, saying there will be no compromise, even if it means lost revenue,” he wrote.
The Daily Wire still intends on streaming “What is a Woman?” at 8:00 p.m. ET Thursday on its Twitter page, and a Daily Wire Twitter space will start 30 minutes before the film begins.