Peterson has said he would "rather die" than remove the post.
Jordan Peterson has been temporarily suspended from using Twitter after breaching the platform's hateful conduct policy with a post that used Elliot Page's former name.
The divisive author lost access to most of Twitter's features on Tuesday after sending a tweet that used the Umbrella Academy star's former name and made reference to the actor undergoing top surgery.
The tweet was in response to a New York Post article in which Page said he is proud to introduce a trans character to the new Netflix show he stars in.
Peterson told Canadian conservative publication
National Post: “I penned an irritated tweet in response to one of the latest happenings on the increasingly heated culture war front."
The newspaper went on to say that Peterson had said he would "rather die" than delete the tweet.
“There are no rules on Twitter except don’t do what we don’t like today,” he told the Post. “They are always applied post hoc by algorithms and idiots bent on maintaining their woke superiority.”
Peterson’s daughter, Mikhaila Peterson, posted screenshots of the message her father received from Twitter, noting that Twitter is "definitely a free speech platform". She tagged Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is in the process of buying the social media platform.
Twitter said Peterson's post violated its policy on hateful conduct, the screenshots showed.
Its
policy on hateful conduct prevents users from promoting "violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease”.
Twitter’s rationale for this policy is to limit the abuse targeted at minority groups, including “women, people of colour, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual individuals, marginalised and historically underrepresented communities,” so they may feel comfortable “expressing themselves” on the site.
Peterson may gain full access back to his profile 12 hours after he deletes the tweet, which he told the National Post he will not be doing:
“Twitters a rat-hole, in the final analysis, I have probably contributed to that, while trying to use, understand and master that horrible, toxic platform. If I can’t be let back on because I won’t apologise, I could care less.”
As of Friday, however, the tweet in question does appear to have been removed from the platform, replaced by a notification noting that it violated Twitter rules.
