Being an a**hole on Twitter is the easiest thing one can do. How hard is it to hide behind a screen and be a keyboard warrior? And this gives rise (and a voice) to many people who are the very embodiment of what is wrong with the society we live in today. On Tuesday, Elliot Page’s deadname became a trending on Twitter which violated the site’s own rules on hateful behaviour. For at least 45 minutes, the Umbrella Academy actor’s deadname (the name he used before coming out as trans) was a part of the site’s trending category.
Users of Twitter are barred from targeting others with repeated insults, tropes, or other content that is intended to dehumanise, degrade, or propagate negative or damaging stereotypes about a protected category,” according to Twitter’s hateful conduct policy. A Twitter spokeswoman, Trenton Kennedy said the trending topic had been removed. Kennedy repeated the site’s restrictions in a statement saying that allowing Page’s surname to the trend was an error. She further added that Elliot’s dead name should not have been allowed to exist in Trends, and it has been removed and is no longer permitted to appear in the section. Kennedy explained the Twitter teams are always examining internal systems to prevent such incidents from happening.
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Sources say that the reason Elliot Page’s deadname was trending in the first place was Jordan Peterson who is a right-wing online personality and former psychology professor who is known for fighting against social justice problems. He gained popularity for declaring he would refuse to use the pronouns requested by a trans or nonbinary student, causing the initial trending of Page’s deadname. On June 22, Peterson’s Twitter account was suspended after he wrote about Page, using his deadname and she/her pronouns, and claimed they had their “breasts removed by a criminal physician.”
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In a video in which Peterson repeatedly misgendered and deadnamed Page, he stated that his ban will continue until he erases the vile tweet in question, and claimed that he would rather die than do that. Following Peterson’s suspension, there was an increase in anti-trans Twitter harassment directed at Page, which resulted in his deadname becoming a trending topic. According to tweets at the time, his deadname was also trending in December as a result of similar harassment.