One of the world’s most popular podcast hosts, Joe Rogan, has commented on what might have previously been one of the more prominent cases of Twitter weighing in on “gender wars” by picking a side instead of providing a neutral platform.
First of all – could it be that those commonly known to operate under the SWJ umbrella not only do not know how to pick their battles – but that the whole “scene” is now too large and ultimately ironically “too diverse”?
There’s “orthodox” transgender activism that is militant towards what’s seen as TERFs (“trans-exclusionary radical feminists”). And so on.
But it would have been easy to guess whom Emily Gorcenski represented as she and UK-based rapper Zuby went at it the other day on Twitter.
Zuby was out on the social network, minding his own business, offering “advice to women on landing a great guy” – who cares? Well – Gorcenski did, very much so. She responded by saying that the type of woman Zuby was describing meant Gorcenski was “95% sure” she would have been sleeping with more women than he.
“OK dude” was how Zuby chose to check out of that particular conversation.
It seemed like a common-enough Twitter exchange, the kind that must be taking place thousands of times on the platform each day.
However, this one got Zuby temporarily banned from the social site, as the “Pronoun Enforcer” reported him to Twitter.
A clip from Rogan’s podcast shows the host saying that the rapper (“who doesn’t even swear”) got temporarily banned from Twitter a while ago for posting “OK dude” – a quip that was taken as a transphobic remark.
And as Rogan’s guest Adam Curry noted – it’s the UK. The police there may pay you a visit if you make what is perceived as a transphobic comment online.
Rogan then said Zuby wasn’t even aware he was responding to a trans woman when he made what turned out to be a Twitter-offending remark, to add:
“That’s madness. And then these people making light of the fact they were able to do that – because it’s a game. They have a rock, they see a window – they wanna throw that rock. And it worked – they got them kicked off temporarily.”
But, as Rogan noted – the incident sends “a weird signal” of self-censorship – and that’s “not healthy.”
Then, there’s the long-term business model.
As Curry seemed to suggest – Twitter’s endorsement and enforcement of “the cancel culture” might eventually end up “canceling” its own CEO, Jack Dorsey.
