Someone in Congress has been editing wikipedia to include Transphobic hate speech.

[Ratty]

Someone with an IP address sourcing to the House of Representatives just edited the Orange Is the New Black Wikipedia page with the telling summary of ?not a woman.?

That?s right, this Congressman edited out a sentence hailing the show for including ?the first ever women-in-prison narrative to be played by a real transgender woman.? What did he replace it with? Hate speech.

The Congressman called Cox a ?man pretending to be a woman,? and linked to an offensive article by National Review Online aptly titled ?Laverne Cox Is Not a Woman.?

The change has since been reversed and the IP address has been banned from editing Wikipedia for a month, but you can see the original edit he made in the link above.

The change was spotted by a Twitter bot which tweets out links any time a Congressional IP address edits Wikipedia.

Spread this like wildfire.

(articles on The A.V. Club, Yahoo, and NY Daily News)

http://fuckyeahlavernecox.tumblr.com/post/95410508144/transphobic-u-s-congressman-edits-wikipedia-to-include

The person making the edits claims to be a woman doing so under the orders of a congressman, and this is apparently the third time the congressional IP address has had to be blocked for such hate speech edits this summer.

http://mashable.com/2014/08/21/congressional-ip-address-linked-to-transphobic-wikipedia-edits/

This is incredibly disturbing as trans people are already the most vulnerable group in the LGBT spectrum. With rates of murder, suicide and general violence (to say nothing of near-constant verbal abuse in many cases) being way out of proportion, particularly against transwomen.

In the past year Religious Conservatives and Trans Exclusionary (Radical) Feminists have come together to harass a teenage transwoman http://www.autostraddle.com/anti-trans-radical-feminists-team-up-with-conservatives-to-harass-colorado-trans-teen-201433/ and last year a transwoman was beaten to death right outside a NYC Police Precinct http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/08/26/another-day-another-anti-lgbt-violent-attack-new-york-city and these were just a few of the higher profile cases.

Transgender people are already all too often pointedly left out of legal protections set up to protect lesbians gays and bisexuals from discrimination. Now it seems one of the people in charge of insuring the rights of this vulnerable group is repeatedly spreading hate speech against them online.

 

[Harpalyce]

Wow how absolutely boringly and frustratingly completely predictable of them.

Radfems are scum, and I deeply wish they would just admit they aren't feminists if they're only working in a "only cis-ters, not all sisters" mentality. And, well, Republicans, lol, they're republicans. I wish I could be a little more surprised at this but I'm not.

Maybe this is why it takes congress so long to do anything - they're too busy editing wikipedia with transphobic bullshit to actually get any work done...

 

[Thaluikhain]

Radfems are scum, and I deeply wish they would just admit they aren't feminists if they're only working in a "only cis-ters, not all sisters" mentality.

Radical feminism isn't united on that issue, you have lots of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, but then again, other radfems who aren't.

Maybe this is why it takes congress so long to do anything - they're too busy editing wikipedia with transphobic bullshit to actually get any work done...

Remember a few years ago, when a bunch of nation's governments were editing wiki to say bad things about each other.

And, used their work computers?

 

[Ratty]

Radfems are scum, and I deeply wish they would just admit they aren't feminists if they're only working in a "only cis-ters, not all sisters" mentality.

Radical feminism isn't united on that issue, you have lots of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists, but then again, other radfems who aren't.

Maybe this is why it takes congress so long to do anything - they're too busy editing wikipedia with transphobic bullshit to actually get any work done...

Remember a few years ago, when a bunch of nation's governments were editing wiki to say bad things about each other.

And, used their work computers?

The relationship of feminism and transwomen is a complicated one. Starting with 2nd wave feminism there was a lot of transphobia in feminism, and now TERFs (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists) exist as a dedicated hate group hiding behind and exploiting the respectable veil of feminism to spread their hate and misinformation. http://www.transadvocate.com/unpacking-transphobia-in-feminism_n_9964.htm

But trans people have been part of the feminist and LGBT movements since the beginning and thankfully by no means are all feminists (or all radical feminists) transphobic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfeminism

 

[Coppernerves]

Wow how absolutely boringly and frustratingly completely predictable of them.

Radfems are scum, and I deeply wish they would just admit they aren't feminists if they're only working in a "only cis-ters, not all sisters" mentality. And, well, Republicans, lol, they're republicans. I wish I could be a little more surprised at this but I'm not.

Maybe this is why it takes congress so long to do anything - they're too busy editing wikipedia with transphobic bullshit to actually get any work done...

Radfems are human beings, they may be misguided, but since they are sapient people with the intention to do good, calling them scum is both inaccurate and counter-productive to their re-education.

 

[Ratty]

Wow how absolutely boringly and frustratingly completely predictable of them.

Radfems are scum, and I deeply wish they would just admit they aren't feminists if they're only working in a "only cis-ters, not all sisters" mentality. And, well, Republicans, lol, they're republicans. I wish I could be a little more surprised at this but I'm not.

Maybe this is why it takes congress so long to do anything - they're too busy editing wikipedia with transphobic bullshit to actually get any work done...

Radfems are human beings, they may be misguided, offensive, and often aggressive, hurtful, destructive, or degenerate in the sense of preventing good works, but since they are sapient people with the intention to do good, calling them scum is both inaccurate and counter-productive to their re-education.

I'm sorry but any adults who go out of their way to torment and harass a teenager, who assuredly already gets enough of that from her classmates and probably even teachers/faculty, are scum. They can stop being scum, but while they're acting and thinking like that they're scum. The KKK are sapient people with the intention to do good, but trying to do good by spreading hatred and ignorance is a terrible thing to do, and unless you're mentally incapable of learning better it makes you a bad person while you do it.

Harpalyce's statement only looks like he's generalizing because I neglected to be more specific in my original post, so I just edited it.

I appreciate that name calling can only strengthen bigots resolve in most cases. But sometimes ugly, ignorant ideas and actions have to be described as they are.

 

[Harpalyce]

I appreciate the sentiment that it's hard to rehab people by calling them scum, but to be honest, TERFs have got to jump the hurdle of seeing trans people as, well, people. If they haven't gotten on board with that I doubt anything I can say is going to change that.

So I'd rather call a spade a spade. TERFs are scum, especially if you consider that the original acronym was Trans EXTERMINATING Radical Feminists. There you go. ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

 

[Thaluikhain]

I appreciate the sentiment that it's hard to rehab people by calling them scum, but to be honest, TERFs have got to jump the hurdle of seeing trans people as, well, people. If they haven't gotten on board with that I doubt anything I can say is going to change that.

Yeah...the idea that you should be nice to bigots and avoid saying anything that might upset them does nothing but silence people complaining about bigotry.

 

[Aris Khandr]

The most amazing part of this story, at least for me, is that there is a Twitter bot that updates everyone when someone from Congress updates Wikipedia. I wish the article had given us more information on that. I don't think I'd sign up for Twitter just to follow it, but I'd probably bookmark it and check it every few days. Seems like a good source of laughs/facepalms.

 

[Ratty]

The most amazing part of this story, at least for me, is that there is a Twitter bot that updates everyone when someone from Congress updates Wikipedia. I wish the article had given us more information on that. I don't think I'd sign up for Twitter just to follow it, but I'd probably bookmark it and check it every few days. Seems like a good source of laughs/facepalms.

Once you use twitter you find out there's a bot for pretty much everything. I once made a joke referencing Nietzsche's famous quote about staring into the void and got followed by 3 separate "Nietzche bots". There's a Nappa bot that replies with a "WHAT?! NINE THOUSAND?!" comment to anyone who says "Over 9000" on twitter https://twitter.com/DBZNappa