UPDATE 12/6/18: We never received a response from WordPress.com/Automattic in regard to our questions about how and why they censored Gallus Mag’s statement. Accordingly, we have ported our site to a different host, and restored the statement from Gallus Mag of GenderTrender to exactly how it was originally submitted to us.
Today Gallus Mag informed us that her statement, published in our previous post, has been retroactively edited. Specifically, someone at WordPress/Automattic redacted the name of the Canadian individual who–as Gallus Mag described in her statement–has brought a Human Rights Tribunal action against sixteen working class estheticians who did not want to wax the individual’s scrotum and testicles. This individual’s name was replaced by “[redacted]” in the four places it appeared in the original GenderTrender statement. This was a surprise to us, since we have done no editing to the statement, which we published, unchanged, exactly as sent to us by Gallus Mag.
Interestingly, the “deadnames” of Caitlyn Jenner (Bruce Jenner) and Donna Perry (Douglas Perry) were NOT redacted. This would seem to indicate that the new policy put in place by WordPress/Automattic only applies to the Canadian trans activist Gallus Mag named in her statement. This is very interesting, given that the individual’s human rights tribunal case is in Canada, and both 4thWaveNow and the (currently suspended) GenderTrender sites are located in the United States.
Below is how the post containing the GenderTrender statement now appears.
We are now considering our options, which include moving our site to a new platform. We intend to reproduce Gallus Mag’s statement again, in full, as soon as possible. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: 4thWaveNow reached out to WordPress support, asking for an explanation. In an email response from an employee named Clark with the title “Community Guardian,” he stated an email had been sent to us several days ago; we did locate the email in our spam folder after hearing from Clark. The most pertinent information [emphasis added by us here, in bold]:
We received a report regarding the publication of private/personal information on your blog. Specifically:
//4thwavenow.com/2018/11/17/wordpress-dumps-gendertrender-gallus-mag-responds/
(The malicious publication of private details related to gender identity, including former names.)
Publishing this type of content is forbidden by our Terms of Service, and we’ve hidden this content from public view.
Please desist from publishing content that violates our private information policy.
Of most interest (in bold above) is the assertion that the content was “hidden from public view.” Presumably, the method used to “hide” consisted of a WordPress employee entering our site, editing out the offending name, and manually replacing it with “[redacted]”.
We have written back to WordPress support, asking for further clarification:
Can you please explain how there was a “privacy violation”? The name you redacted was used PUBLICLY by the individual in question, across social media, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere, It is not a “former” name. It is the individual’s legal name.Also, this is the first I’ve heard that WordPress can go into a post and actually make manual edits to text. Is that what occurred here?Thanks for your attention.