NEW: Top Republican Jim Banks finally speaks out regarding Twitter transgender censorship
Story on the Washington Examiner website here: Jim Banks finally speaks out regarding Twitter transgender censorship
A top Republican who was censored and temporarily suspended by Twitter for controversial statements about a transgender government official said the platform dealt with him in a contradictory manner and unfairly targeted him as a conservative.
Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana had his official Twitter account temporarily suspended for a few weeks in October for allegedly misgendering Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, who is a transgender woman.
According to a screenshot posted of the censored tweet, Banks said, “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man,” a reference to Levine, whom the Biden administration touted as the nation’s first openly transgender and first female four-star officer in the uniformed services late last year.
Levine, who was born and identified as a male until age 54, transitioned in 2011.
“I don’t think I would’ve been censored if it wasn't a conservative Republican congressman,” said Banks in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
“I mean, the facts show that thousands of other people who tweeted exactly the same thing weren’t censored, and I wouldn’t be either if it was two or three years ago. I think this is a sign of the times,” he added.
Twitter said Banks's comment violated its hateful conduct policy, which prohibits the “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” The platform temporarily locked Banks's account, saying he would regain access if he deleted the tweet.
After a lengthy appeals process with Twitter, which he lost, Banks was forced to delete the tweet in question in order to get access to his Twitter account again, the congressman’s office confirmed.
Banks said he agreed that transgender people are a marginalized community who have faced certain hardships and need some societal protections, but he said that his tweet was not hateful or harmful to the transgender community, but rather was merely stating a fact.
He added that he had no problem with transgender people identifying with their chosen gender outside of their biological sex. Instead, he took issue with the government and others claiming that Levine, a biological male, was the first female to achieve the rank of a four-star officer.
“She has taken achievement away from biological females who Levine has a physical advantage over because she is a biological male. I mean, these are matters of fairness. It's a public debate that we're having in this country today,” Banks said.
“As the father of three girls, I find it to be absurd and offensive to young women who are ambitious and want to break glass ceilings to have a title taken away from them by a biological male calling herself the first female admiral in the Public Health Corps,” he added.
Banks said that he had not discussed the issue with Levine or the Biden administration directly because they were not open to having a conversation with him on the subject.
Banks, the chairman of the influential Republican Study Committee in Congress, said the debate over such "first female" achievements is similar to the public debate that the country is having over transgender girls who want to compete in sports with biological girls but have a physical advantage over them.
Banks said he was particularly angry at the way Twitter responded to his tweet and the contradictory nature of the conversations he had with the platform thereafter.
Banks had a series of phone calls and emails with Twitter regarding its censorship of his tweet, which he said "most of which made no sense at all."
The conversations with Twitter, which were part of the appeals process to regain his account, were “hypocritical and contradictory,” Banks said, because the platform repeatedly claimed to value having political debates about transgender issues on its website but also had no problems with censoring him on the subject.
“Twitter says it wants to have political debates, but it’s afraid to hurt certain people's feelings, and it wants debates on their own terms within certain boundaries that they dictate. That isn’t free speech,” said Banks.