The PC police over at YouTube banned a video by The Daily Signal on transgenderism and gender identity over what it calls “hate speech”, even though it was absolutely not hate speech:
DAILY SIGNAL – “See, if you want to cut off a leg or an arm, you’re mentally ill, but if you want to cut off healthy breasts or a penis, you’re transgender.”
Those are the words of Dr. Michelle Cretella, a pediatrician with many years’ experience and the executive director of the American College of Pediatricians, in a Daily Signal video published in 2017.
It’s a sentence YouTube will not allow the doctor to say about children and gender identity issues.
The Daily Signal recently learned that our video of Cretella had been removed from YouTube. In its place, YouTube displayed this message: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s policy on hate speech.”
Over the past few months, The Daily Signal worked with YouTube to try to reach a resolution. Ultimately, we were told the only way we could get the video back on YouTube was to delete the previously mentioned sentence.
In other words, we had two choices: censor the doctor’s words or have no video on the world’s biggest video platform.
This should horrify every YouTube user—and anyone who values the importance of a public square featuring a variety of perspectives.
Cretella’s words are no doubt controversial. She is no stranger to criticism, and neither is The Daily Signal. We welcome debate.
But we don’t want to be censored.
Nobody wants to be censored, especially when they are falsely accused of something that did not occur. This is just another example of how ‘triggered’ our society has become. What I mean is that someone probably watched the video and then reported it to YouTube, who then took action against the video because of that line comparing transgenderism to mental illness. You can agree or disagree with the statement in the video, but objectively it’s not hate speech. As The Daily Signal admits, it is controversial. But again, not hate speech.
Youtube and other Big Social Media sites are becoming more and more like college campuses every day, where they pretend to support free speech and debate but are really more interest in making their platforms a big safe space for the easily triggered.
Watch the video above for more about this from The Daily Signal. Also, feel free to use this post as an open thread.