Twitter Blacklists Famed Gender Dysphoria Researcher Ray Blanchard

Twitter’s censors locked the account of Ray Blanchard, one of the world’s leading researchers on transgender people, until widespread criticism forced a reversal by the progressive social-media site.

“Twitter has unlocked my account and graciously apologized for their error,” Ray Blanchard tweeted after the pro-transgender censorship was lifted. “My sincere thanks to the people who expressed their concern during the past 24 hours.”

But Blanchard also noted: “I have come to realize that Twitter does not care whether a tweet is factually correct but only whether it is offensive to a favored group of Twitter users (in this case, trans/gender dysphorics).”

The reversal was applauded by groups which oppose the transgender ideology, even as they are also sympathetic to individuals who are upset — “dysphoric” — because they cannot change their sex.

Critics of Twitter and other social-media groups spotlighted the censorship.

“Ray Blanchard is the preeminent sexologist of his generation and a profound scientific mind,” said a tweet from Sohrab Ahmari, the op-ed editor at the New York Post. “Conservatives: Wake up. There is no neutral medium and no neutral market. This is naked politics-as-enmity, and some of you still cling to the-market-will-fix-it delusions.”

“Have Twitter and Facebook become so big they are now public forums?” said a tweet from James Cantor, a Canadian researcher. “At what point should their rules for participation be determined by democratic process of that public instead of internal, corporate decision-making?”

Blanchard’ s tweet was taken down amid the public’s growing concerns about the Democrats’ push to back the revolutionary transgender ideology.  The ideology seeks to suppress civic distinctions between men and women by redefining each person’s legal sex by their changeable “gender identity,” not by their biology.

By May 18, House Democrats are expected to vote almost unanimously for the Equality Act, which would require the Department of Justice to enforce the sex-is-gender-identity ideology whenever women try to exclude men from their sports leagues, civic clubs, bathrooms, civic awards, and status competitions.

Blanchard’s single censored Tweet — marked in bold below — was part of a series in which Blanchard explained his “thoughts on gender dysphoria and its management in a few sentences.” Twitter blocked it as supposed “hateful conduct”:

Blanchard directed Clinical Sexology Services in the Law and Mental Health Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada, from 1995 to 2010, and is now an adjunct professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He was the leading author of the mental health industry’s primary post-2004 guidebook, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”

He has written sympathetically about people who want to change their sex, while also acknowledging realities which are loudly denied by many advocates of the transgender ideology. His biography says:

His studies on the clinical management of gender identity disorders have shown that the psychosocial adjustment of transsexuals improves before surgery, as patients move into the cross-gender role, and that it improves further after surgery. These results led him to argue, in 2000, that sex reassignment surgery should be covered by public health insurance plans. His work on the typology of transsexualism has suggested that there are two main types of male-to-female transsexualism, each preceded or accompanied by a different erotic preference: Homosexual transsexuals are erotically aroused by men, and autogynephilic transsexuals are erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women.

But advocates for the transgender ideology oppose Blanchard’s understanding and medical treatment of people who want to change their sex.

The transgender movement is diverse, so its different factions have competing goals and priorities. It includes sexual liberationists, progressives, feminists who wish to blur distinctions between the two sexes, and people who glamorize the distinctions between the two sexes. It includes high-profile children, people who are trying to live as members of the opposite sex, troubled teenage girls trying to flee womanhood, and people trying to “detransition” back to their sex. It also includes men who demand sex from lesbians, masculine autogynephiles who say they are entitled to women’s rights, parents eager to support transgender claims, wealthy donors, politicians, political professionals, revenue-seeking drug companies, and medical service providers.

Many business groups also tacitly endorse the ideology as they market consumer goods to small and tiny niches in the economy:

Transgender advocates claim that two million Americans say they are transgender to a greater or lesser extent. But very few people who describe themselves as transgender undergo transition surgery of the genitals. Only about 4,118 Americans surgically altered their bodies in hospitals from 2000 to 2014 to appear like members of the opposite sex, according to a pro-transgender medical study. A Pentagon report commissioned by former Defense Secretary James Mattis said that “rates for genital surgery are exceedingly low- 2% of transgender men and 10% of transgender women.”

In general, the transgender ideology says a person’s sex is determined by their “gender identity,” not their biology. The ideology also insists that men and women are more or less identical, and it objects to the public’s view of the two sexes as simultaneously different, complementary, and equal. The transgender advocates want to impose their ideology on Americans by establishing “transgender rights” laws, which would require the Department of Justice to penalize individuals and groups who insist that women and girls are different — and have different priorities — than men and boys.

Polls show the transgender ideology is deeply unpopular, especially among women and parents. In 2017, former President Barack Obama told NPR that his promotion of the transgender ideology made it easier for Donald Trump to win the presidency.

Multiple polls show that most Americans wish to help and comfort people who think they are a member of the opposite sex, even as they also reject the transgender ideology’s claim that people’s legal sex is determined by their feeling of “gender identity,” not by biology. A U.K. survey shows a similar mix of sympathy for people who say they are transgender alongside lopsided opposition to the ideology.

Yet the gender ideology is rapidly gaining power, aided by huge donations from wealthy individuals and medical companies. In Ohio, for example, in February, a judge forced parents of a teenage girl to give up custody so she can begin a lifetime of drug treatments and surgery that will allow her to appear as a male.

The progressive push to bend Americans’ attitudes and their male-and-female civic society around the idea of “gender identity” has already attacked and cracked many of the popular social rules that help Americans manage the cooperation and competition among and between complementary, different, and equal men and women.

These pro-gender claims have an impact on different-sex bathrooms, shelters for battered women, sports leagues for girls, hiking groups for boys, K-12 curricula, university speech codes, religious freedoms, free speech, the social status of women, parents’ rights in childrearing, children’s safety, practices to help teenagers, health outcomes, women’s ideals of beauty, culture and civil society, scientific research, prison safety, civic ceremonies, school rules, men’s sense of masculinity, law enforcement, military culture, and children’s sexual privacy.