An Open Letter to Twitter’s Board of Directors

[Posted to Medium 3rd June 2019].

Dear Board of Directors,

I’m a Senior Lecturer in Political Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, Australia. My account — @aytchellesse — was the most recent in a long line of permanent suspensions for gender critical women, usually for very trivial things like referring to biological sex, or giving dictionary definitions of “lesbian” or “woman”.

As part of my experience on Twitter, I am regularly subjected to misogynistic hateful speech, which I sometimes report. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a report upheld. And yet I can name dozens of women who have been suspended for much less, deemed as “transphobia” by whoever you have deciding these cases.

This is a serious offence against democracy and free speech, given that you have become the monopoly global democratic platform.

Please reinstate my account along with all the other gender critical women who have been de-platformed. Please add “sex” as a protected characteristic under your hateful speech policy, not just “gender” which you seem to interpret as “gender identity” only.

You can find the list of suspended women here.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Holly Lawford-Smith