Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) tweeted obscene and hateful statements about a Biden administration official, attacking the official’s transgender identity. And Twitter is refusing to delete the tweets even though they violate the platform’s ban on hateful conduct.
“We must do everything to we can to prevent Dr. [deadname] Levine’s pre-teen #WeenieChop,” Greene wrote in one tweet with a clip of Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Levine talking about gender-affirming care.
There’s a lot to unpack in that one sentence that shows why people are finding it particularly offensive, even coming from a Congressmember whose time in office has been one career-ending gaffe after another.
First, Greene deadnamed Levine, a form of harassment that is meant to delegitimize a trans person’s identity. And Greene didn’t just use Levine’s deadname, she used a diminutive of Levine’s deadname that is also a term for male genitalia to really drive home the point that she does not respect Levine’s identity.
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Second, Greene reduced trans identity to just genital surgery for trans women and did so using vulgar and immature language in her hashtag. Gender affirming health care is about more than bottom surgery, transitioning is about more than gender affirming health care, and being transgender is about more than transitioning, but people like Greene tend to focus exclusively on trans people’s genitalia because it’s degrading.
Last, Greene effectively said that gender affirming surgery is being performed on minors, or at least that Levine wants it to be performed on minors. There is nothing in the video that suggests that. In reality – not Greene’s reality with space lasers owned by rich Jewish people causing forest fires – minors don’t get gender affirming surgery.
Greene’s next tweet wasn’t any better: “Now that I think about it. As Dr. [deadname] Levine advocates for ‘gender affirming care’ for minors, has [she] undergone the #WeenieChop? Or is [she] just pushing this on children?”
She used the same deadname/male genitalia double entendre as in the first tweet, discussed a Biden administration official’s genitalia for seemingly no other purpose than to be degrading, used the incorrect pronouns, and again said that Levine was trying to “push” children to undergo gender affirming surgery when she said nothing of the sort.
Twitter put a warning label on both tweets that says that they “violated the Twitter Rules about hateful conduct.” Twitter isn’t taking them down though because “Twitter has determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.” That is referring to how Twitter believes that people have a right to know that an elected official is spewing hate online; i.e., “the significant public interest in knowing and being able to discuss their actions and statements” means that Twitter believes that Greene’s tweets should stay online.
Greene responded with another tweet: “Twitter says this tweet violated rules about hateful conduct. I can’t imagine anything more hateful than promoting ‘gender reassignment’ surgeries for children.” It’s unclear who she thought she was quoting when she put quote marks around “gender reassignment”; Levine didn’t use those words and no one other than Greene was talking about surgery in the entire discussion.
Twitter also put a warning on that tweet about “hateful conduct” but left it up.
The LGBTQ organization GLAAD disagreed with Twitter’s policy.
“This account has repeatedly and intentionally violated Twitter’s Hateful Conduct guidelines against targeted deadnaming and misgendering of transgender people,” a spokesperson for GLAAD told Axios. “It’s clear that some politicians see pushing malicious, anti-trans content on social media as part of their election strategy, even with the full knowledge that such content is violative.”
Levine is not commenting on the matter.
