eSafety Commissioner’s war on ‘misgendering’ tweet

Weeks before taking action over the Wakeley bishop stabbing Julie Inman Grant issued X with a take-down order over a tweet ‘misgendering’ an Australian trans activist, a post its author says was ‘not my nicest … but technically accurate’.

Canadian activist ‘Billboard Chris’ Elston, left, and eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant.

Weeks before Julie Inman Grant took action against X (previously Twitter) over footage of the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in western Sydney, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner curiously issued the social media giant with a take-down order over a tweet “misgendering” an Australian transgender activist.

As the author of the tweet, Canadian activist Chris Elston — better known as “Billboard Chris” sees it, it was “not my nicest tweet ever, but technically accurate,” and in the context of all the vile content available on the internet, rather benign.

Currently visiting Australia to campaign against what he views as the “irreversible harming” of gender dysphoric children through the use of puberty blockers, hormones and surgery, Mr Elston told The Australian he found the eSafety Commissioner’s action against X regarding both his tweet and footage of the stabbing as “absurd” and “politically motivated”.

The social media giant — owned by billionaire Elon Musk — is pursuing action against the eSafety Commissioner in the Federal Court, while Mr Elston, represented by the Free Speech Union of Australia, is appealing Ms Inman Grant’s decision via the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Mr Elston’s tweet, which is geo-blocked in Australia but remains visible to the rest of the world, related to Sydney-based World Health Organisation transgender health adviser and community health director at LGBTIQ+ organisation ACON, Teddy Cook.

Cook, who has not responded to a request for comment, was born with two X chromosomes, but has undergone surgery and hormone treatment and identifies as male.

Mr Elston’s tweet linked to a February Daily Mail article which made reference to Cook’s use of private social media accounts to post material relating to bestiality, public nudity, bondage parties and transgender orgies, as well as the transgender activist’s contribution to a 2022 paper in the International Journal of Transgender health, which found transgender people were more likely to enjoy sex while “using illicit drugs.”

“This woman (yes, she’s female), is part of a panel of 20 ‘experts’ hired by the @WHO to draft their policy on caring for ‘trans people.’ People who belong in psychiatric wards are writing the guidelines for people who belong in psychiatric wards,“ Mr Elston’s tweet read.

“(It was) not my nicest tweet ever, but technically accurate, and I don’t mean that to say all trans-identified people belong in psychiatric wards, especially kids,” Mr Elston said.

“These kids are lost and confused and they’re being lied to, but there are clearly psychiatric issues, and as per all the scientific evidence, the children who end up in these gender clinics are struggling with various mental health comorbidities.”

Transgender activist Teddy Cook. Picture: Instagram

Mr Elston said guidelines for gender dysphoric children should not be written by activists like Cook, but by people like the British physician Dr Hilary Cass, whose recent landmark review of that country’s policy found a “lack of high-quality evidence” for the use of puberty blockers and hormones in treating minors.

In late March, weeks after tweeting about Cook, the Vancouver-based former financial adviser, who has more than 400,000 followers on X, received a message from the social media giant, notifying him of a “removal notice” from the Australian eSafety Commissioner, requiring X to “remove cyber-abuse material targeted at an Australian adult”.

A delegate for the eSafety Commission indicated a complaint had been received from Cook, which the commission was upholding on the basis that the tweet “is likely to cause serious harm to the complainant … because the material misgenders the complainant” in a “deliberate” manner “likely intended to invalidate and mock the complainant’s gender identity”.

The commission also indicated that it viewed the tweet as “equating transgender identity with a psychiatric condition”, and ordered X to take it down, or face a fine of up to $782,500.

Mr Elston said his first reaction to the notice was to find it “hilarious”, before becoming concerned about what he believes are political motivations behind it.

Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Cook has previously featured alongside Ms Inman Grant in eSafety commission press releases, having been consulted by the government body in 2022 regarding resources it produced “to help the LGBTIQ+ community safely navigate the online world.”

Mr Elston said he regarded the relationship between the two as “certainly” representing a conflict of interest.

It is also not the first time the eSafety commission has taken action over tweets relating to similar issues, ordering in 2023 that X take down a tweet from Sydney mother and breastfeeding advocate Jasmine Sussex, which expressed the view that using hormones to induce breastfeeding in biological men is an “unethical medical experiment”.

“There was no profanity or anything like that in her tweet or mine. I think it’s absurd (to order they be taken down),” Mr Elston said.

“How do you have some unelected bureaucrat determining, unilaterally, what is acceptable speech or not? The line that we cross should be incitement to violence. Criticism, especially of a public official, should not be reason to take something down, and when you read the eSafety legislation itself, hurt feelings are not cause for taking down tweets.”

The office of the eSafety Commission is not commenting on its orders against X while the matter is before the courts.

Canadian activist "Billboard Chris" Elston outside Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto's office.

Mr Elston, who began campaigning in response to the backlash against British author JK Rowling for her views on transgender issues in 2020, and funds his travel via donations, said he had already booked his trip to Melbourne and Sydney “before all this drama,” but that the release of the Cass review highlighted the global implications of the issue.

“To say that the Cass review doesn’t affect or doesn’t have an impact or isn’t relatable to what’s going on here in Australia is totally ridiculous. Are children’s endocrine systems different in Australia?” he said.

“Is their psychology somehow different in Australia? Of course not.

“The positive message we should always be sending is that children are beautiful just as they are. They don’t need drugs and hormones to be their true selves. We should leave them alone and let them grow up … we shouldn’t be teaching them that there’s such a thing as being born wrong, because that’s also an ideology, and it’s very damaging psychologically.”

While in Melbourne, Elston has used a billboard stating “children cannot consent to puberty blockers” to spark conversations with passers by at Federation Square and the University of Melbourne, filming the interactions and posting them on social media.

He has also met with Libertarian Party MP David Limbrick and expelled Liberal MP Moira Deeming, denouncing Ms Deeming’s expulsion from the Liberal Party over her attendance at a “Let Women Speak” rally which was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis as “completely outrageous”.