Blog: The Censorship Has Begun.

I always joked about this happening to my blog but didn’t actually think it could happen.

Yesterday, as I was checking my notifications after work, I came across an email from WordPress letting me know that my review of Magnus Chase: The Hammer of Thor had been removed essentially for being hate speech and violating the WordPress terms of service. The message read:

Hello,
 
We are reaching out regarding the following site on your WordPress.com account:
 
https://tanukicorner.com/2023/07/18/review-magnus-chase-and-the-gods-of-asgard-book-2-rick-riordan-hates-women-spoilers-part-2-3/
 
Please note that publishing content that promotes hatred—or dehumanization—of other people based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease is prohibited on WordPress.com.
 
This is a violation of our User Guidelines and Terms of Service. As a result, we’ve hidden this content from public view. Please do not re-publish this material, or your account will be suspended.
 
The warning notice placed on the post will automatically be removed when you delete the link to the content in question. If not, please contact us.
 
If you wish to continue publishing these types of materials, you might consider a self-hosted WordPress installation. To transfer your content to a more suitable WordPress host, you can follow this guide. However, keep in mind that other hosts may have similar policies.

Now, if you look up this post, it’s hidden so you can’t read it. Keep in mind that that is a post that has been up for three years and only had three hundred-something views. I wonder if Rick Riordan read it and got pissed.

That said, I have sent an appeal to WordPress requesting that they essentially censoring that post given that I never once promoted dehumanizing or hateful rhetoric towards anyone. The post in question was a book review of Magnus Chase: The Hammer of Thor and as such, most of it was complaining about how ham-fisted the representation was throughout the book and how poorly written the characters were (particularly the LGBTQ+ identifying ones). That’s not hateful or dehumanizing, that’s just stating how badly written the book is.

In that post, I also stated the biological fact that men are men, and women are women, no matter what they identify as. Once again, that’s not hateful or dehumanizing, but is scientific fact.

Further, I also heavily criticized a scene in the book in which Alex Fierro (the trans/gender-fluid character) runs to the lady’s restroom after announcing that he needs to pee, as it seeks to normalize not only the erasure of women’s spaces, but also allows for the normalization of something that has led to women’s safety being put in danger. To illustrate my point, I brought up the case in 2021 in Loudoun County, Virginia, in which a male student wearing a skirt entered the girl’s restroom and forcibly sodomized a female student. As though that wasn’t bad enough, he was also convicted of forcing another female student at a different school to perform fellatio on him. I also brought up the case of the Wi Spa, in which a trans-identifying man – who had also been on the sex offender list since 2006 – was let into the women’s section of the spa, where he was walking around naked in front of women and girls with a full erection.

Once again, this isn’t dehumanizing or hateful to point out. Unfortunately, there are people who take the trans/gender fluid/non-binary identity and use it to gain access to women’s spaces for nefarious purposes. For the safety of women, allowing men to use those spaces because they identify a certain way should not be normalized, especially in the context of a kid’s book.

In the meantime, we shall see what happens. I’ve already sent the appeal, and if WordPress has any shred of common sense, they’ll stop disabling that post. If not…I’ll just write a re-worded review of Magnus Chase: The Hammer of Thor.

Until next time,

M.J.