Censorship, Tyranny, and Science Suppression On Medium
Medium requires lies regarding the trans movement, and facts are “hate speech.”
This is a joint-effort article some writer friends and I created after finding ourselves outraged by Medium’s most recent censorship of a black lesbian writer for questioning the wisdom of allowing biological males to compete on women’s sports teams and discussing how this adversely affects women and lesbians.
Introduction
Medium.com is a content distribution platform for writers. In its heyday it was one of the very best and most intelligent places on the web for content on countless topics, including contributions by esteemed writers, celebrities and prominent politicians. Its program for paying writers drew readership and some made significant extra cash, a very few even supporting themselves as full-time writers.
That Medium is gone.
The quality of articles chosen for publication and recommended in emails has dropped to a depressingly low level; years ago reading Medium was a refreshing oasis of scholarly intelligence, now it will print terrible writing and hate-crazed trans activists have carte blanche to be as nasty as they please..
The Shadow Falls
But Medium’s real decay is its censorship surge. In recent years hundreds, likely thousands of paying members, (writers and readers), have been expelled from the platform and had articles deleted.
These people were not hostile, didn’t post threats or personal information, did not violate any reasonable Terms of Service. They didn’t pen hate. They didn’t spout bigotry. They never argued for the elimination of people they didn’t like.
They committed one common crime: they denied some aspect of gender ideology. Maybe they wrote that a man with a lipsticked duck-faced selfie who adopts a new name and pronouns is still male. Or that neutering children to “change their sex” is not ethical medicine. They may have spoken out against biological men competing in women’s sports. But however reasonable and debatable, or scientifically uncontroversial, they were statements contrary to gender ideology.
And the trans writers shrieked “transphobia!”
Medium banned these writers and deleted their work. When banned writers received email explanations, they vaguely referred to the community guidelines, claiming the contested content was “hate speech.” They never specified exactly what they found so hateful, leaving it to the writer to figure it out. Appeals went and continue to go unanswered. Many expelled writers have reported their experiences on other platforms leading more to depart in disgust. Several of them now post on Substack, where they can safely discuss Medium’s tyrannical censorship and engage in critical discussion of the “gender affirmation” fad, knowing they won’t get banned unless they engage in old-school Charlottesville-style hate speech. Also, Substack has already been attacked by trans-authoritarians and won.
We know there’s a need for some censorship, with court cases strictly defining free speech limits. The Internet is flooded with malicious trolls and spreaders of lies. At the height of the COVID pandemic, a tsunami of misinformation, rage and paranoia in opposition to even the most prudent precautions pushed absurd and even lethal alternatives to established medicine. Medium diligently filtered out the crazies and promoted mostly rational COVID-19 content while Twitter muttered about “free speech” until it was pressured by government officials and outraged intelligentsia to shut down or clearly identity misinformation and nonsense conspiracies for its millions of active members, many of them unable to distinguish ineffective or harmful treatments from medical science.
The Exception
But Medium is far less science-supportive on the matter of gender ideology, promoted primarily by the trans movement. Science, logic, rationality, evidence, and truth are enemies. Medium isn’t the only platform shutting down evidence-based contradiction of the lies, misinformation, and genuine hate speech of some of its trans writers. Fewer platforms are committed to open debate. Medium, arguably the most popular platform and with a very high domain ranking, has been particularly aggressive and intolerant toward anything short of absolute, uncritical acceptance of all matters of gender ideology.
Defining the Terms
We begin with the genuinely transgender, diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder (GID), historically recognized around age five, mostly male, and suffering genuine distress. This article isn’t about them.
We refer to the GID-undiagnosed and other groups such as disturbed teen girls, cross-dressers, the over-representation of those scoring higher on the autism spectrum (or those who self-diagnose), patients with pre-existing mental health comorbidities, and many claiming some preposterous intermediate sex like “nonbinary” or one of many dozens of sex du jour. It is these around whom Medium circles the wagons.
In this article, we call “transgender” those with legitimate GID, while “trans” refers to the authoritarian ideologues to whom Medium requires unquestioned homage.
Science: Persona Non Grata
Where Medium supported science for inhibiting viral pandemic misinformation, it now labels science as hate and bigotry when applied to all matters trans. Medium members must uncritically accept the pseudoscientific trans wrongthink, even unto its most absurd positions and falsehoods:
Trans women really are women, trans men really are men
All “gender identities” must be respected, however preposterous; a man may declare himself a woman and it is so; believe it or be banned
Failure to use incongruent pronouns is genocidal hatred
Anything short of full acceptance of gender claims deliberately provokes trans teen suicide
Neutering children is kindness, obstruction of pediatric sterilization is hate
Trans Activist Tyranny
A single hair-triggered “transphobia” charge often results in even a respected writer losing his account. Even claiming “men cannot bear children” is enough for an immediate, unappealable, and irreversible expulsion.
Oh, the hypocrisy of expelling people for polite mentions of established science compared to coddling openly eliminationist trans activist writers.
If you are given a recommendation of an article on any gender identity topic and you check the box that says ”send me less like this,” you will be expelled.
Medium trans activists are some of its nastiest writers. No amount of hateful ferocity will earn them censure; one header image even showed the writer giving the middle finger to the reader. Not only does this go unremarked, but such articles are emailed as recommended reading.
These activists expose no other presence. Where member profiles typically list hobbies, interests, publications, career information, favorite celebrities … trans activists’ profiles are recitations of their “queer” credentials in streams of gender gibberish.
Content platforms and social media are not alone in kowtowing to trans intolerance and tyranny. Some employers require “preferred pronouns” in email signatures and name tags; Academics and even biologists can be terminated for even the mildest deviations from gender ideology orthodoxy in their published work; the Democratic Party seems to have gone trans-happy. Even Fox News is too timid to refer to William “Lia” Thomas or Dylan Mulvaney as “he.”
Gender ideology’s orthodoxy is more stringent than MAGA’s with an ever-evolving list of Tumblr-generated labels rendering the previous ones anathema, and woe to anyone using verbiage from last week’s list. There’s no middle ground; those who resist male rapists in women’s prisons are transphobic; if you don’t want 6’4” male athletes in women’s sports competitions you’re a TERF; and if you’re foolish enough to state that male-bodied individuals can’t bear children, you are, at best, not being “inclusive.” Otherwise, you’re “encouraging” hate along with trans murder and suicides.
People believe all kinds of easily-refuted nonsense; horse helminthicide as a COVID cure, Trump’s victory. But that’s just laziness and conformity. To believe the claims of gender ideology requires active psychotic denial of daily and obvious evidence. This is a real crisis.
Our Stories
Chris F:
I had published over a hundred articles on Medium almost all about software development, making a nice $1,000-1,500 a month from the partnership program. Just once I wrote a response to an article by a trans advocate noting that a trans woman is a man; the next day a red box informed me my account was “under investigation,” where it remains three years later. I received a generic email from “Roger (he/him)” stating I had violated terms of agreement by using “hate speech.” My actual writing was never quoted. I was already owed $800 for that month which I never received, and emails appealing the expulsion went unanswered.
Nicole C:
Medium took down two of my articles, the second of which challenged the trans narrative, and the third, which I predicted to all I met for the ten days I wrote it, defending Dave Chappelle’s alleged "transphobia" jokes, would be the one that got me banned. And it was.
Medium fancies itself a champion for the "marginalized", but its most recent trans-critical casualty is a black lesbian named Monica Harris, whose complaint about Medium taking down her article caught the attention of Fox News, the UK Daily Mail and a few other websites happy to bash a popular, high-domain content platform for more over-the-top woke censorship. Harris’ article noted that allowing the trans movement free, uncontrolled reign harmed women and lesbians, particularly female athletes, and the Medium support staff took it down and warned her if it happened again her account would be removed.
Monica is black, female, and lesbian - three widely recognized marginalized groups - but she offended the most "marginalized people ever" (just ask them): Biological men claiming to be women.
She canceled herself on Medium before the he/him she/her they/them woke police did.
You can read a summary of my Medium experience including my three too-hot-for-Medium censored articles on my blog post.
Christofer Nigro:
For my part, I’ve been a political writer on Medium for a few years now. During that time, it appeared I had found a place conducive to allowing a multiplicity of opinions if you provided supporting evidence, and it seemed the administration took no sides in the infamous Culture Wars that so many other forums use as a partisan excuse for censoring certain viewpoints. That all changed when I had a disagreement with a prominent author on Medium regarding “gender affirmation.”.
I politely expressed my opposition to elements of the Extreme Left promoting a form of cultural bias and social engineering of youths that manifests in two disturbing ways. One is an attempt to essentially create synthetic LGBTs in an attempt to break down the natural phenomenon of numerical heterosexual majority. The other is a campaign to destroy the acknowledgement of the scientific reality that there are two distinct sexes, replacing that with an entirely cultural conception that sex exists on a “spectrum” and that gender identity should be treated as akin to a literal biological fact.
Then I was sent a form letter by the Medium administration informing me my comments were suspended because opposition to this trend is considered “hateful” to trans people and that the “trans” identity is considered a set of “protected characteristics.” In other words, you are not allowed to criticize a specific social agenda on Medium anymore since Extreme Left activists now comprise the administration. And there are plenty of reader activists who can’t wait to report anyone who speaks against the agenda.
Anonymous Medium Subscriber:
I still write and publish on Medium. That’s why I’m too fearful to disclose my real-life identity in this article. That, in and of itself, should demonstrate the “chilling effect” these nebulous practices of Medium have on many of its current writers.
I’ve never been banned from the platform, nor have any of my articles been taken down by administrators. But that nagging dread remains, where I always feel I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. With everything I write, I try to make my arguments as diplomatic and airtight as possible without compromising my outspoken personality. I’m mindful of acknowledging and accommodating my opponents’ counterpoints.
If I ever get flagged for promoting “hate,” I stand by my assertion that the very least Medium can do is specify for me EXACTLY what I said that was so “hateful” before they permanently kick me off of their platform. If they’re going to censor or curb speech from an author, then shouldn’t that individual writer at least be given the opportunity to select alternate word choices?
The Urgency of Debate
At the time of this writing the walls are crumbling around the excesses of trans ideology:
The indoctrination of young children that their biological sex is a matter of choice
The profitability of the burgeoning gender industry and medical irresponsibility of rushing severely disturbed teens into hormones and surgery
The push for diagnosis and medical intervention at ever younger ages
The explicit dismissal of GID as a prerequisite for being trans; this is an open admission that the cult is full of fakes
Several lawsuits are in progress by people who were talked into gender transition with little or no advice on what long term effects would be
A parent successfully sued her child’s school district for encouraging her child’s social transitioning without informing her and in fact encouraged secrecy
Several International women’s sports organizations have limited participation to actual women; William Thomas won’t be competing with them anymore.
There’s a lot to debate here; debate is healthy and, before the TRA takeover, Medium would have been a great place to hold it. Now that debate would just get people expelled. Numerous substacks are holding these debates with a lot of thought-provoking writing. And as the gender cult moves inexorably toward embracing pedophilia as just another “gender identity”, controversy is heating up.
Does Medium Allow Hate Speech?
If we get old-school about the definition, Medium isn’t any more guilty than the rest of us. By its own standards, though, it allows what might be considered fringe hate speech, as long as the targeted group is "marginalized" (although, as we’ve seen with Monica Harris, even someone who ticks several marginalization boxes cannot eclipse the presumed supreme marginalization of those who consider themselves "trans").
Medium has made it clear any criticism of "trans" people is considered "hate speech", but it doesn’t, to our knowledge, apply that same standard elsewhere. Our intrepid Anonymous Medium Subscriber uncovered the typical racist and sexist opinions we all remember - applied against white people and males, who are often targeted, respectively, as "white supremacists" and “the Patriarchy.”
We find the typical far-left ideological tropes: black people can’t be racist, and men should stop whining about "misandry" because it either doesn’t exist or isn’t nearly as pervasive as misogyny, with articles like Why Can’t White Men Shut Up? and Latino Is Not A Race (written by a black woman). There are the redundant woke diktats like Anti-Black Racism Is Whatever Black People Say It Is, stating that white people don’t get to have an opinion on it. Contrast this with Don’t Be A Bystander: 5 Ways White People Can Push Back Against Racism (in other words, shut up and do what you’re told). Yet still, “antiracism” and the other social justice movements are allowed debate: One article that drew black ire was An Open Letter To African-Americans Who Think I’m A White Supremacist Advocator.
Medium allows debate on these issues, including bigotry expressed against white people and males. We applaud their willingness to still allow unpopular opinions on the platform, but they don’t apply their “hate speech” standards uniformly. Why do their trans writers get a "safe space" in which no trans-critical content must ever be permitted, with an agenda to eliminate "transphobia" on Medium so sacred they must ban anyone who requests "fewer articles like this?"
If nothing else, as Anonymous Medium Subscriber stated in our collaborative emails, “How do they [the Medium support staff] expect Medium writers, as a community, to genuinely refrain from engaging in ‘hate speech’ if they’re unwilling to tell authors specifically what are the “hateful” things they’ve written, upon censoring/suspending/banning users?
Hate speech, as Anonymous Medium Subscriber notes, is whatever Medium determines it is, in a given moment, at any given curator’s random whims.
“For me, fundamentally, the mistake was thinking that journalism was where Medium was going to shine,” Medium’s CEO Tony Stubblebine, who replaced departing founder and CEO Ev Williams in 2022, stated in an interview. “We have the source material that feeds journalism. In a lot of ways that’s unique and special. And Medium exists to do something unique. It’s not supposed to reinvent the wheel.”
There’s nothing unique or original about censoring unpopular opinions; it’s been quite the rage in dictatorial cultures like Nazi Germany, Communist countries and many of today’s social media and content platforms. But it’s highly inaccurate to claim your platform “has the source material to feed journalism” when it prohibits critical discussion of what it has deemed “untouchable” topics, and actively promotes pseudoscientific disinformation on its pet issue.
Yes, Mr. Stubblebine, we know leading science magazines promote trans activist pseudoscience. The wave of change is coming from Europe; let’s see how Medium reacts when public opinion turns against trans activism’s lies.
The Authors
This article includes contributions by four different contributors.. Chris Fox is responsible for the enclosing text and organization, with contributions from Nicole Chardenet, Christofer Nigro, and Anonymous Medium Subscriber, so named because she wishes to remain anonymous. She’s on Medium and if connected with any dispute of gender ideology, will certainly be banned and her writing removed from view.
My own articles about rising censorship:
Banned! What The Left’s & Right’s Censors Don’t Want You To See
Which Online Platforms Don’t Censor Content Creators?
Canadian LGBTQ Groups Politely Protest Free Thought At Libraries
These “activists” are posers. Posers look like they could be trans people but they are not. In reality they are David Bowie saying he’s bisexual and playing Ziggy Stardust. Films have been made about this part of gay culture that goes all the way back to Wilde and Woolf. The danger is that this iteration has grown political teeth at the expense of culture. What to do about it? I feel that joining Gays Against Groomers is as much an activist poser trap. I can have an opinion, and I can not silence those I disagree with, but beyond that I’m as beholden to this censorship as anyone else. Perhaps more so because people expect me to be a “good trans.”
I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.