• Users that include the word “cisgender” in a post will now be shown a warning that their post contains hateful language.
• Posts containing the word are suppressed and could earn users a ban.
• Importantly, only X considers the term cisgender a slur.

Nothing about X/Twitter makes sense anymore. The platform has reportedly moved forward with Elon Musk’s wishes to make the term “cisgender” a slur earning anybody who uses it a potential ban.

The billionaire has been making moves to ban the term from his platform since 2023 but this week users found that efforts to suppress use of the word cisgender had ramped up.

Typing the word cisgender into a post may now trigger a full-screen warning that reads, “This post contains language that may be considered a slur by X and could be used in a harmful manner in violation of our rules”. This is similar to the warnings that popped up during the pandemic warning of the dangers of spreading medical misinformation.

The trouble is that cisgender is only a slur on X. The term, as defined by Oxford Languages means “denoting or relating to a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex registered for them at birth; not transgender.” Essentially, Musk has banned recognising that a person’s gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth.

I tested this out on both the X Android app and the X website. I never received the full screen warning for using cisgender before posting. I then followed this up with a more colourful post and after posting that the reach of our post was limited because it “may violate X’s rules against Hateful Conduct”.

X sent me an email shortly after this post.

“Your post was detected by our systems and has had its visibility limited for violating the X rules. Specifically: We have determined your post violated our rules against Hateful Conduct.
You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease,” X wrote.

I have also been told that my post can’t be replied to by other users.

What makes this all the more bizarre is that using other slurs against people of colour, Jewish people and transgender people, which are recognised as slurs, don’t prompt the same warning according to a report from TechCrunch.

It’s also worth mentioning that X just won the right to keep a video of a stabbing on X. Things are going so well in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, author J.K Rowling spent the weekend rallying her transphobic followers against Lucy Clark, the first transgender football manager in the English women’s football league. The author regularly mentions transgender individuals which inspires her audience to run harassment campaigns on those people. We very much doubt Rowling is being slapped on the wrist for her actions.

But Rowling is not the only person spreading hatred on X without consequence. Several studies have found that hate speech has flourished on the platform since Musk took ownership of it. Each of these studies has been criticised by Musk, with him even going so far as to sue one publisher. Unfortunately for Musk, a judge found that the study was free speech and ruled against X.

Whether I will be banned from X remains to be seen but I’m secretly hoping I am. At least then I’d be forced to avoid X and that might be the best thing Musk will ever do for me.