My perfect day usually involves binge-watching Kalvin Garrah videos. Well, I went to do just that less than a week ago and found this lovely notice from YouTube:
YouTube has a history of unfairly targeting transgender (and other LGBT and political) creators by demonetizing them and hiding their videos. Chase Ross, Stef Sanjati, Theryn Meyer, Blaire White, and anyone who puts "trans" or "transgender" in their video titles. These are just some of many YouTube "trigger" words that will get videos and channels instantly demonetized and that means that the creator will have to request a review. Not only that, these creators have been the victims of false flagging campaigns in which people with opposing views will gather together and flag certain creators' videos for hate speech.
YouTube's definition of hate speech is as follows:
Hate speech refers to content that promotes violence against or has the primary purpose of inciting hatred against individuals or groups based on certain attributes, such as:
race or ethnic origin
religion
disability
gender
age
veteran status
sexual orientation/gender identity
There is a fine line between what is and what is not considered to be hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation-state, but if the primary purpose of the content is to incite hatred against a group of people solely based on their ethnicity, or if the content promotes violence based on any of these core attributes, like religion, it violates our policy.
In other words, YouTube isn't even abiding by its own policies when it comes to dealing with hate speech. I have never seen any of these creators incite hatred or violence against anyone; at worst, they poke fun at other peoples' lifestyles and opinions. Meanwhile, so-called "non-dysporic" trans people have not reported being demonetized or having their channel unfairly terminated (at least none that I know of because I actively avoid them) while some pretty benign videos about LGBT topics (especially transgender topics) have been targeted.
But why was it Kalvin Garrah who got terminated? I've seen way more controversial content come from other creators than this and they've never been terminated. The things that come to mind are his collaboration with Arielle Scarcella and his other more politically-oriented videos (which are far and few between compared with his pure trans education videos). People like Kalvin and other creators like him are why I staunchly support the LGBT community despite the way I was educated. Why should LGBT people be flagged for thinking in a way that goes against a certain narrow idea of how YouTube wants them to be perceived?
Ultimately, the message that these actions send is that LGBT people should not talk about issues that specifically affect them or voice their opinions on political or social issues. It means that YouTube itself and false flagging mobs are actively targeting and silencing these creators to push a certain idea of what the LGBT community stands for. The image they are pushing for is one where the deeper issues of LGBT go untouched unless those issues are used to promote the idea that you have to respect pineappleself pronouns while harming actual (dysphoric trans) people in the process.
UPDATE: Kalvin's channel got back up shortly after termination.
