Calling out the guards

Meta’s targeting of sex realist accounts reinforces the brute force of social media giants

In a world that has taken gender identity – in other words sex stereotypes – as a given, it is remarkable how many journalistic outlets and organisations have also fallen for a belief system based on ‘alternative facts’ against the reality of evolutionary biology, in the name of inclusion.

We have seen how the corporate world has been particularly prone to this, festooning their brands with progress flags while gender pay gaps remain in place and women’s single-sex spaces, such as lavatories, become obsolete.

Sex Matters is one of the very few charities existing to promote human rights on the basis of sex, its clarity in law and to develop policies to protect everyone’s rights in that arena.

On June 3^rd, Sex Matters’ Instagram account was suspended for a supposed violation of community guidelines - yet no details were given by the platform of the breach that was meant to have taken place.

The timing of this ban comes at a particularly sensitive time in the UK, given the impending general election and the campaign question of protecting single-sex spaces championed by Sex Matters.

"UK politicians have serious questions to answer on sex and gender in the runup to the general election on 4th July” said the CEO of Sex Matters, Maya Forstater in a statement. “Our Instagram community is now missing out on important advice about what to ask candidates and canvassers who turn up on their doorstep."

The charity has written to Instagram to appeal the decision, citing the fact that their own social media guidelines were developed under the guidance of the independent charity regulator of England & Wales, the Charity Commission, which found their social media use to be “exemplary”.

Other accounts that have been targeted include activists, artists and writers.

Angela Wild, an artist and lesbian feminist activist has a store selling merchandise such as ‘This Witch Doesn’t Burn’ t-shirts that have been worn by JK Rowling.

Her business Instagram account was suspended on May 27^th. Angela tried to set-up another one the day after but that, too, was immediately suspended. Then, a few days after, on May 31^st, her own personal account was also banned from the platform.

“It’s affecting my livelihood”, says Angela, “there are many of us and it all happened around the same time. It seems to be a targeted attack on women who think alike. I don’t know how this can be legal.”

Another artist, Birdy Rose, whose account “The Famous Artist Birdy Rose” is used for selling her artwork and merchandise, has also been targeted. Like Angela, Birdy has had posts and removed as well as a suspension for “not following community guidelines”, according to the message she received from Instagram.

Her account has since been reinstated but she is currently disabled from using its business feature.

“People like me are being demonised”, says Birdy, “what that means for anyone who knows what is a woman  - is that we’re being cast out and we’re not welcome. We’re not welcome to speak, we’re not welcome to share our views. A discussion is not allowed to be had.”

Writer Milli Hill, who has written books on birthing such as ‘Give Birth Like A Feminist’ and ‘The Positive Birth Book’ as well as a book on periods for pre-teen girls has also had her personal Instagram account suspended.

Her account was a collection of videos of her dog, selfies and occasional screengrabs of her Substack about the erasure of women from language. Yet it too has come under the radar of accounts that, Instagram says, flouts their community guidelines.

It’s important to note that these bans have come after a succession of court cases in the UK where women have won against companies and organisations that discriminated against them for holding and expressing sex-realist – or gender-critical – beliefs.

There has also been the publication of the Cass Review, which highlighted the lack of evidence backing what’s termed as gender-affirmative healthcare on children and adolescents.

The effect of these cases and the Cass Review has been a slow pressing of the brakes on the ideas that have been powering such treatments as well as the harassment of those holding mainstream views on evolutionary biology and women’s protections.

But the corporate world marches to its own beat. It has bet on gender identity replacing biological sex and – to a certain degree it seemed like an obvious call, given the changes to legislation around the world, ranging from Title IX in the US to the legalisation of Self ID in countries such as Spain and Germany. All these were possible with a press that failed to adequately question the effect this would have on the rights of women as well as same-sex attracted people.

In the mid-late 2010s, there began to be a serious look at how social media companies were affecting our democratic institutions.

At the centre of this scrutiny was Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm that was accused of improperly harvesting data from Facebook’s then 87 million users and using it for targeted political advertising.

The subsequent investigations and lawsuit showed how Facebook violated consumer privacy laws in a way that was, in the words of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, “a breach of trust”.

The scandal’s effect on Zuckerberg’s media organisation – now known as Meta and includes Instagram and WhatsApp – was not just bad publicity, it hit the company financially as it was forced to shell out $5 billion worth of fines and had more than $119 billion wiped off its market value, which included a $17 billion loss of Zuckerberg’s personal fortune.

The company has since rebounded, financially and it hired former UK Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg – now president of Meta’s Global Affairs – to polish the platform’s tarnished image as a tool of election interference.

Manipulation of issues in elections is nothing new. But the method of doing this has been superpowered by the advent of social media.

The emergence of gender identity eclipsing the reality of biological sex as a hot-button topic has been a challenging issue for social media platforms.

X – then Twitter, under the leadership of Jack Dorsey - had succeeded in silencing many voices across the political spectrum who spoke out about the binary nature of sex and the importance of sex-based rights for women and for same-sex attracted people.

Since the takeover of the company by billionaire, Elon Musk, a free speech absolutist, those accounts have since found their voice again. But his libertarianism has also contributed to the explosion of porn bots now so evident on the platform.

With Instagram’s reach being particularly focused on young adults, who may be voting for the first time in elections in the UK or the USA, the impo

rtance of debate and discussions on issues that affect half of the population are as materially important as they have ever been, given the particular challenges women face, socially and politically.

What they have underestimated is the while most of the public believe people, regardless of their self-identity, are entitled to their respect for their human rights, they overwhelmingly understand the differences between the sexes and that, in certain cases, protecting rights on the basis of sex is essential.

And, as Meta knows only too well, while public opinion can be manipulated, to a certain degree, reality bites, especially when it hits a company’s market value.