This was already posted yesterday and ended up being an absolute disaster of a thread, filled with many people expressing their conviction that transgender individuals are suffering from a delusion. I really hope dang is paying attention this time, because if this is the kind of discourse Hacker News and by extension, YCombinator considers to be reflective of the beliefs of the community, it says a lot about whether or not trans members are welcome here or at YC at all.
Yes. Anything about trans people on HN is always fucking terrible. Partly because people expect some kind of truthiness from the UK press, and they're unprepared to deal with the levels of misinformation coming from the UK about trans people at the moment.
EDIT: Have you heard of Tildes? It's considerably more friendly for trans people. Send me an email at dan dot bealecocks at gmail dot com and I'll send you an invite. Or email the invite link here: https://docs.tildes.net/contact
There’s a reason my recent HR training had an entire section on how not to put the company at risk by being open about one’s beliefs about trans people. Fact of the matter is transphobia is the norm and they’d rather us dead than working alongside them.
Stop shouting it from the rooftops and you'll be accepted however you present yourself. That's your option, but you refuse to take that one.
You're continually bashing your sexuality and gender identity politics into people's faces and then complaining that they don't like you. Nobody else does this.
If I work with you, I would prefer to not know about your deeply personal issues at all.
You would know my deeply personal issues only by how I dress. I don’t shout about shit at work, I do my job (better than most could), and still I get harassed.
I wish people did see it as a deeply personal issue and felt embarrassed about bringing it up, or trying to get their fingers into my healthcare as in the rest of this thread.
You cannot have it both ways - attempt to tell me to shut up when defending myself, while trying to tell me you know better than my doctor and me about my healthcare and gender.
> You would know my deeply personal issues only by how I dress.
That's an easy problem to fix. If dressing a particular way is causing harassment, start dressing differently.
I want to wear sweatpants to work, but nobody finds it acceptable. So you know what I do? I wear khakis now.
> I wish people did see it as a deeply personal issue and felt embarrassed about bringing it up, or trying to get their fingers into my healthcare as in the rest of this thread.
They absolutely wouldn't bring it up if they weren't prompted. Nobody goes around randomly making fun of people without cause because it's not fun to just make stuff up about people that's obviously not true. There has to be some hint of truth to it.
> You cannot have it both ways - attempt to tell me to shut up when defending myself, while trying to tell me you know better than my doctor and me about my healthcare and gender.
There would be nothing to defend against if nobody announced their personal issues by dressing a certain way and talking about it.
People in this thread are here voluntarily. If they don't like what's being said they can go to some other thread and stop talking about the thing that's causing them grief.
I dress the way I do because I am a woman. Sorry you don’t believe me. Do you wanna see my cunt to prove it?
I also have breasts, can’t exactly hide those without causing damage. Visibly disabled folk get harassed at work too, they can’t hide their very personal problem, nor should we be asking them to.
This isn’t relevant in the workplace. I am legally recognised as a woman. If you don’t accept that - politics isn’t acceptable in the workplace, remember?
If you're a woman then how would I "know [your] deeply personal issues only by how [you] dress"?
I have never seen anyone make fun of people who look like women for dressing like women.
Fat and unattractive people get made fun of and harassed the world over, starting in grade school. A cis woman who doesn't look like a woman is considered unattractive too as you mentioned below.
Honestly it just sounds like unattractive people problems to me. Perhaps we need a movement to protect fat and unattractive people too.
I have a jawline that doesn’t match what you’d expect, a receding hairline, and very occasionally I fail to shave absolutely perfectly. I have slightly broader shoulders than most women. All things some cis women have to deal with, I might add, which leads to stories like “cis woman assaulted when she tried to use the women’s bathroom”.
Point is - I am legally recognised as a woman. My legal name is a woman’s name. I have tits and a cunt. If you start asking me what my “real name” is, or suggesting to people that I might rape them if we share a bathroom, you’re the one bringing politics into work - I’m complying with the law. I want to be at work less than you do, I don’t have a choice, let me exist.
Being forced to wear men’s clothes, a binder, and be called Kevin would be literally torture - I would die before I did that. It is not at all the same thing as sweatpants or khakis. It’d be blood on your hands.
There’s already a movement to protect unattractive women (men generally do not suffer the same sort of gendered harassment, because women are generally not looking at their colleagues at work and being angry that they’re not fuckable) from harassment in workplaces. Has been for, what, the past 50 years. Laws around it too. My HR training covered them. Somehow guys don’t get the message.
Misogyny sucks, transmisogyny is a special breed of that, sadly.
Yeah, society has some weird fixations. Sex, sexuality and gender are very much taboo topics and anything that can not be put in nice little boxes is considered deviant and obviously bad.
Although I think that may be changing. Since we're slowly (maybe too slowly) transitioning into from a culture that has accepted that fact that reproduction does not have the primacy it once had, we can relax our collective fear of extincting for lack of children and focus our fear and panic where it actually belongs.
How does anyone at work know that another person is trans unless they're wearing that fact as a badge of some sort? If you look like one thing or another, people will accept you as that. The smart thing for trans people to do would be to keep it to themselves.
Heck, ugly and fat people have the same sorts of problems. Nobody wants to date them, they regularly get passed over for promotions if a beautiful person is competing and many get depressed to the point of contemplating suicide. [0]
This post’s comment section is rapidly turning into a train wreck, so allow me to help. The highest suicide rate in any cohort of transgender individuals is for those who are not undergoing treatment, which is typically a combination of some or all: hormone therapy, social transitioning, counseling, and surgical interventions.
As far as surgical “regret” is concerned, of all elective procedures, sexual reassignment surgery has the lowest regret rate of all.
Agree on your first comment - my intention was not to add any fuel to the fire, but I think it's unfortunate that this topic is so divisive and that's why I tried my very best to avoid any nuance of opinion in my honest inquiry.
That being said, how can you quantify your response regarding surgical regret in your answer formally?
In the vast majority of cases, gender reassignment surgery results in improved human wellbeing. Most surgeons who perform this surgery want their patients to have a mental health evaluation beforehand to help make sure it is the right choice.
So, once again, nasty politics seem to stem from the clash of totalizing vs nuanced beliefs. "Gender reassignment is a mental disorder" "There is no mental disorder associated with gender reassignment"
The issue with categorizing gender dysphoria as a mental illness is no different than categorizing homosexuality as a mental illness. The gender dysphoria is a problem derived from what is effectively a birth defect. If someone had a malformed limb and because this has clear impediments in their life in social and physical terms, they experience depression with their physical condition. We don’t say “oh, your body dysmorphia is a mental illness, you just need therapy”, as not only is that a shit take, but now prosthetics are more viable and advanced.
> The issue with categorizing gender dysphoria as a mental illness is no different than categorizing homosexuality as a mental illness.
There is a very big difference: a homosexual person is not depressed and inhibited in functioning per sē, and this is why gender identity incongruence absent any gender dysphoria is not classified as an illness.
It is also why depression caused by homosexuality is classified as a mental illness, it simply has no special name in this respect.
> The gender dysphoria is a problem derived from what is effectively a birth defect. If someone had a malformed limb and because this has clear impediments in their life in social and physical terms, they experience depression with their physical condition. We don’t say “oh, your body dysmorphia is a mental illness, you just need therapy”, as not only is that a shit take, but now prosthetics are more viable and advanced.
What does that have to do with anything?
The recommended medical treatment for gender dysphoria is not based on mental therapies, but physical surgeries and hormonal therapies, so I'm not quite sure what you are attempting to imply here.
The simple empirical finding finding has been that genital confirmation surgeries and hormonal therapies have been far more effective at reducing the symptoms of gender dysphoria than any mental talk therapy has ever had, just as with many of depression that are caused by chemical abnormalities in the brain, drugs that remove that abnormality have been found far more effective than talk therapy.
Talk therapy is not a very common remedy that psychiatrists resort to. — it works only for a very select few conditions.
> The recommended medical treatment for gender dysphoria is not based on mental therapies, but physical surgeries and hormonal therapies, so I'm not quite sure what you are attempting to imply here.
You would in fact be wrong, as therapy is absolutely a part of the comprehensive standard of care recommended by WPATH, and is required by practically every surgeon willing to perform any transgender related surgery.
> There is a very big difference: a homosexual person is not depressed and inhibited in functioning per sē, and this is why gender identity incongruence absent any gender dysphoria is not classified as an illness.
You’re quite close to recognizing the crucial distinction: gender dysphoria is a grouping of symptoms related to a gender incongruence, and thus itself is realistically just a poor evaluation of the condition of transgender individuals’ reality — of course they experience dysphoria, gender incongruence can do that. So we treat the problem, not a symptom. We realized that homosexuality wasn’t a mental illness because their suffering was a byproduct of society’s view of their innate sexuality, and reasonably removed the diagnosis. Likewise this will happen (and is happening) with gender dysphoria.
> You would in fact be wrong, as therapy is absolutely a part of the comprehensive standard of care recommended by WPATH, and is required by practically every surgeon willing to perform any transgender related surgery.
Only in regards for informing and making ready for the effects of surgery, not talk therapy to alleviate symptoms.
> You’re quite close to recognizing the crucial distinction: gender dysphoria is a grouping of symptoms related to a gender incongruence, and thus itself is realistically just a poor evaluation of the condition of transgender individuals’ reality — of course they experience dysphoria, gender incongruence can do that.
Actually a very large number of gender identity incongruents does not experience gender dysphoria.
It is obviously hard to find any certain numbers on this, since those that do not tend to remain more silent, but a big research on the matter in the Netherlands by Kuyper in 2006[1] concluded that as little as 30% of those with gender incongurence experienced gender dysphoria.
> So we treat the problem, not a symptom. We realized that homosexuality wasn’t a mental illness because their suffering was a byproduct of society’s view of their innate sexuality, and reasonably removed the diagnosis. Likewise this will happen (and is happening) with gender dysphoria.
That is quite a strange line of thought.
Gender dysphoria is not caused by social stigma, but by a physical mismatch of the body and would exist regardless of social stigma so long as the body not be made to conform to the mind's mental image.
> We don’t say “oh, your body dysmorphia is a mental illness, you just need therapy”
In some cases, we do. It’s called Body integrity dysphoria, and although it is a slightly different situation than the one you presented, there are people who really, really wish to have limbs and other body parts amputated.
Guess what, most experts do not recommend going forward with it, despite it generally improving their mental condition.
Which has certainly been put forward in many cases as an example of double standards that are pervasive in medicine, and of how much cultural norms influence recommended choice of treatment.
Other such double standards are the severe hurdles one must go through to obtain puberty blockers, for their theoretical, possible adverse effects and the supposed idea that a child cannot give informed consent, ignoring that letting one's puberty progress naturally is also something one consents to, yet, children are given a variety of medicaments whose destructive, structural side effects are far less theoretical and far more severe every day to alleviate mental conditions that are fare less severe, and have a far lower risk of suicide than gender dysphoria.
The readiness by which specialists are willing to resort to various surgeries and treatments seems to have a very big cultural moral component to it, and is not purely determined by what is best for the patient by an objective measure.
But that is exactly my point. All over this thread you have people suggesting that this is a completely solved issue, the science is settled, and the experts agree. Therefore, shut up and think as you’re told.
Whether or not the claims are true is irrelevant. The fact that we’re now in a position where voicing the tiniest bit of dissent over this issue is enough to relegate you to the “clueless bigot” bin, or maybe even qualify as “hate speech”, is where the real problem lies. Imagine if we did that back when lobotomy was settled science and had expert consensus.
Nothing, no single human idea, is above criticism and pushback.
> But that is exactly my point. All over this thread you have people suggesting that this is a completely solved issue, the science is settled, and the experts agree. Therefore, shut up and think as you’re told.
Ah yes, I see what you mean, I am definitely not one to agree with that.
For one to say that a science as vague and muddy as psychiatry can be so “solved” is quite an audacious statement, — much of it is indeed semantics, classification, and social perception changing over time and how much the psychiatrist likes the patient on a personal level will no doubt play a significant influence in how much he will recommend that the latter transition or not.
> Whether or not the claims are true is irrelevant. The fact that we’re now in a position where voicing the tiniest bit of dissent over this issue is enough to relegate you to the “clueless bigot” bin, or maybe even qualify as “hate speech”, is where the real problem lies. Imagine if we did that back when lobotomy was settled science and had expert consensus.
I have not seen any such responses in this particular train of discussion, however.
Amazon would perhaps be so inclined, yes.
> Nothing, no single human idea, is above criticism and pushback.
I find that formally verified mathematical proofs are rather hard to disprove in practice.
If a man claim he has found an error in one of them, I would dismiss it out of hand, unless it come with a show of a bug in the proof assistant or hardware.
I think the two of us are essentially in agreement, then. I’ll just add a few thoughts.
> I have not seen any such responses in this particular train of discussion, however.
Thankfully, neither have I, but it’s a particularly sensitive issue for me as just today I found out that one of these “hate speech” laws was passed in the country I currently reside in, Scotland. I find this, and other recent attempts at authoritarianism, deeply troubling.
> formal proofs
In a way I agree, but in another, even mathematics isn’t on as sound footing as one might first imagine. For instance, we know of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (which says that NO system of mathematics can be both consistent and complete), and then there is the fact that none of us can agree on what mathematics even is, from a philosophical point of view.
Truly, I’m often astonished at both how much, and how little, we actually truly know as a species.
> The issue with categorizing gender dysphoria as a mental illness is no different than categorizing homosexuality as a mental illness.
What is the issue with that? From what I see, homosexuality doesn't harm anyone, so even if were scientifically an "illness", it's not worse than infertility. It is a private matter. Gender on the other hand is social. If gender dysphoria requires invasive medical treatments, constant hormonal therapy and extreme effort to not trigger bad reactions, then it seems like a real disability. So why not treat that then, and hope that people can accept themselves the way they are?
This seems like an absolutely reasonable and understanding position to me, but a lot of people are aggressively opposed to it. I guess that's what trans people feel like, when everyone thinks you are crazy for something that seems perfectly logical to oneself.
You’re right. Hormone therapy, surgical interventions, etc. — they all fail to meet the absolute goal of transition. But they’re good enough until we have something better. What is not better, is arguing that a discussion still needs to be had on whether or not we should consider transgender individuals as if they are deluded and mentally ill.
Don’t you think that a man claiming to be a woman or vice versa is a detachment from reality that is delusional? And if someone is threatening self harm because other people do not accept their personality or claimed gender, isn’t that a sign of being mentally ill? I don’t mean “mentally ill” as a pejorative, although I understand it can carry that connotation. But I feel the definition plainly and unemotionally applies to such circumstances.
I think trans people deserve safety and equal rights. But I am challenging the oft repeated claim that a “transwoman is a woman” or “transman is a man”. I can see the existence of a third gender, as has been the case in some cultures that have historically identified and acknowledged the existence of trans persons. But the push to reclassify existing genders as “cis”, or erase the existing genders, or conveniently switch between gender and sex when suitable, or erase female spaces like sports, all seem like forced views that are only being heard because of aggressive suppression of any dissenting thought.
> But I am challenging the oft repeated claim that a “transwoman is a woman” or “transman is a man”
I never understood how people are having that discussion. What gender a trans person is comes down to how you define gender and there's a clear divide between people defining it as more of a social thing and others defining it as a mostly biological thing.
Saying "trans women are women" is really just saying "I don't think chromosomes and genitals are the main thing that defines gender. So ultimately this comes down to a disagreement about a words definition, which is utterly pointless (unless you're specifically looking at it from a language perspective I guess, in which case it's probably quite an interesting debate).
One way or another, this has nothing to do with whether gender dysphoria is a delusion or not.
> What is not better, is arguing that a discussion still needs to be had on whether or not we should consider transgender individuals as if they are [...] mentally ill.
Because simply put it is arguing that people who are proven to be physically wired in a particular way are merely living a delusion. It is easy to not be fully aware of the state of research on this topic if it doesn’t affect you, but as a trans woman, I am extremely familiar with what I’m talking about.
Do people with other physical dysphorias not live in delusion? Such as when you feel like your arm doesn’t belong to your body and you want it cut off?
The answer that is politically incorrect, but completely obvious to anyone, is that of course those situations are analogous, and if you can reasonably say that one of these groups is deluded, you can say the same about the other one, too.
Except in one situation we employ physical therapy, and in the other mental therapy.
I’ve yet to receive a single explanation as to why this is, other than “experts know better”. No, that’s not good enough.
> I’ve yet to receive a single explanation as to why this is, other than “experts know better”. No, that’s not good enough.
That likely is because asking these questions of a general forum of people who are highly unlikely to be qualified to speak on the subject are highly unlikely to have an informed answer. But you’re conflating, confusing, and distorting two completely separate ideas here.
What you described is called Somatoparaphrenia, which is not a dysphoria at all, but classified explicitly as a delusion. And while we can certainly agree that physical intervention is not the right strategy, at the behest of the individual suffering from the disorder, they would also be physically impairing themselves were it to be carried out.
Transitioning does not produce such impairments, and in fact leads to a significantly improved quality of life, reduction or complete remission of depression, and overwhelmingly thus produces a better overall mental health in most cases.
And again, I’m speaking from _experience_ on that.
I was referring to Body integrity dysphoria (BID), which does seem to be related to Somatoparaphrenia. Let’s not get into semantics about which is a “dysphoria” and which is a “delusion”. My point stands: neither of those is treated by amputation, except in exceedingly rare circumstances.
> Transitioning does not produce such impairments, and in fact leads to a significantly improved quality of life, reduction or complete remission of depression, and overwhelmingly thus produces a better overall mental health in most cases.
> And again, I’m speaking from _experience_ on that.
I’d argue that your personal experience is irrelevant, precisely because there’s no way to establish that it’s not delusional. Could you even tell the difference between a genuine improvement of the underlying condition, and simply feeding someone’s delusions to the point where we’ve changed both them (physically), and society (to make them feel less disparaged)?
Amputation often makes individuals with BID feel better too, yet it is extremely controversial, even among experts.
My belief that the only difference is politics has not yet been shaken.
Edit: since it seems like I’m unable to reply further, let me just add this. No, I don’t believe the above poster is delusional, I’m asking whether there is a way to even establish such a thing, and if not, where the ethical difference vis a vis treatment for BID lies. Again, the poster completely sidestepped these questions.
My experience is extremely relevant, as transgender individuals are an extremely small portion of the population (1/300th of the population) and those reported experiences are key to building viable info sets required to better improve treatment strategies. And I can say definitively, transitioning has significantly improved the quality of my life. Minus having to deal with conversations like this where I’m forced to defend my position to a stranger who is convinced I’m delusional (and while I’m not required to, it is unacceptable to see this position go uncontested and therefore I am compelled to refute it), my daily life has gone from extreme depression and social isolation to being a social butterfly and exceedingly positive. At this point, most people who have met me in person have done so after transition, and so it’s not something people know unless I tell them.
Note the figure above. 1 in 300 (while small) can be a lot more people in your life than you think, but if you are the type to share opinions like that in public rather than solely in pseudonymity, they know better than to mention it to you.
I don’t know anything about schizophrenia, so I can’t answer that for you. But I believe strongly that the classification, diagnosis and treatment for it is a question for the medical professionals working in that area and the people with the condition to sort out.
Except now we are discussing treatment for children too, not just consenting adults. The moment our children are involved, most of us will not allow this to be brushed off with appeals to authority.
Not to mention that authorities are regularly wrong, e.g. lobotomies.
I have never seen anyone advocate irreversible treatment for children. The only thing I have ever heard of is delaying the onset of puberty so that if they decide to go ahead when they are adults then they will have the best outcome, and if not they can cancel it at any time.
Delaying the onset of puberty appears to have long-term effects. More importantly, this is very early and the science is still coming in, and therefore such treatment is effectively criminally negligent; our children should not be walking experiments.
And yes, we as a society shall discuss precisely that, whether activists and elites with fashionable ideas like it or not. Which brings us back to the biggest bookstore on the planet...
I really hope it doesn’t. I miss the office. Workplace environments prevent myself from socially isolating beyond weekends at best — I know I’m not alone in that.
I look forward to the office because I’ll always live 15 minutes away. I’ll either take my bicycle or a motorcycle. (Both of which can be fun - wheelies on either are great!)
The in person meetings were more frequent for me because I could just stop by a persons desk to see how they were doing. I can’t do that online and the culture is much more closed down. Forget about going offsite to get lunch and really hear how things are. No weekly basketball games with various people from other departments to see what’s brewing.
There are plenty of benefits to the office and I would like them to still exist. And they won’t as soon as you go remote because they rely on everyone being in one area. If you go remote, chances of seeing anyone in person will fall off a cliff compared to office life.
I’ve made some of my best friends through work and I plan to continue doing that.
If you live in a small enough place where everyone is 10-15min from the office then you can easily organize the after hour events post covid.
But let’s not force people to spend hundreds of hours in their cars, risking their lives and the lives of strangers just so we can have the convenience to interrupt their deep work in person.
I highly recommend seeking relationships outside of work. Jobs don’t love you (back).
I have friends outside of work. I’m just saying work is also a great way to make friends for certain types of people.
Not everyone lives near the office. That’s the point I’m making. I chose to live near the office (some of my coworkers chose to live further away - it is a choice, they all can afford living near the office like I have). If we start going down remote, my coworkers will move away to other states because the cost of living in the Bay Area is too high for them. Also, many of them prefer to be near old families or friends. So, their likelihood of staying near work is relatively low.
Even during covid, about half the company has moved away from the bay. Many going back to another country or moving to another coast, etc. They’ll only come back if they absolutely have to.
I think saying that living away from the office is a choice is an incredibly privileged worldview.
I live only 40 min away from the office but will rent forever and never own property. Yes that’s a “choice” — a forced one given my preference to avoid an insanely long commute in one of the largest cities in the U.S.
If I could I’d work remotely and buy a house, possibly in a different city and maybe even country.
Permanent wfh would be the real amazing choice that opens so many possibilities.
When most of my coworkers either work for FAANG or have in the past and many have a net wealth into the millions, it’s a choice to live away from the office.
Even then, you have a choice. You can live with roommates or downsize your apartment to live closer to work. That’s just how it works. It’s still a choice. It’s not like there’s 0 available options for software engineers in most any major city in the US when it comes to living near work.
Permanent WFH means you’ll never see your coworkers in person. You will not live anywhere near each other. Again, if you have no interest in seeing the people you work with then fine. But for those of us who like to create bonds with our peers, who want to know everything going on in a company, and want to climb the ladder fast... it’s gonna suck. You won’t get that in a remote company unless it has a truly radical culture.
> Permanent WFH means you’ll never see your coworkers in person.
Why not? Making millions you could literally move to each of your coworkers’ city for a week, every week, and become besties. Or, fly all of them and their families to a retreat in Bali every quarter.
I miss parts of the office. But I sure as hell don’t miss commuting, staying until the of end of the day because I feel like I need to, and being forced to wear pants.
What might your (social) life look like without work? It's good to diversify opportunities to socialize. Better to avoid putting all eggs in one basket.
I’m with you in regards to missing the office. I posted this before but I wonder how many of the newly WFH are merely in the honeymoon phase of remote work.
The thing with "flexibility" is that it may mean that you can come into the office but a lot of your co-workers won't be there. (Of course that is already the case with people who work on very geographically-distributed teams.)
I think it can be done right. My situation before I went fully remote a few years ago was a pretty flexible policy where you could wfh 2 days a week. I think you could extend this to 3 days a week or maybe even just have a mandatory 2 days at the office.
The effect is you spend most of your time at home but still get to go into the office. Think everyone is in office T W TH or T W F or something. I miss that setup and have since returned to that job and I hope I can go back in this year.
Yea I personally think a lot of the WFH hype is just people wanting to do it because times are stressful and its still new. I have a feeling after the pandemic is over and times seem more "normal", many people will want to return to work because it can provide a decent social setting throughout the day.
> Workplace environments prevent myself from socially isolating beyond weekends at best — I know I’m not alone in that.
Can't you choose to go out and socialise if you want to outside work? (After COVID.)
If we get rid of working from an office, then people who don't want to go out don't have to, and people who want to can still do anyway socially. Doesn't that sound like the best solution? Lets everyone choose what they want nothing forced.
When I commuted to work, I was already in the centre of a huge city with lots of social opportunities after work (with friends who are nearby in other jobs). If I wanted to socialise daily it's likely I'd be doing something akin to a work commute anyway. That's partly why I enjoyed going out to work in the first place.
There will always be jobs with offices. There just may be fewer of them, which is a good thing, because it means there are more jobs that allow for flexibility of location, which benefits those who are disadvantaged in where they happen to choose to live.
Even the situations that you argue are clearcut are not. Say for example two teams in separate locations were working together, solely through email. One had a lead, who effectively lead both teams. One day they all met together in the same location for a team building event, and the other team discovered that lead was black. Suddenly when working together the lead was met with scrutiny, hostility, and even aggression. But because they never said the explicit gotcha words, there is no clearcut situation. And while that lead can raise attention to the problem with management, their only hope is an empathetic manager — which is rarely the case, especially without shared experiences of that kind of problem. Inevitably, that employee quits, because they find themselves stuck in performance reviews that are subpar, courtesy of having uncooperative coworkers (or worse, they poison the well behind this employee’s back), with no real hope for rectifying the situation.
That wasn’t what was in question, it was whether or not Twitter censored them, which they did. See the sibling comment to your post here for additional info from Twitter even on the topic. Even though they reversed the censorship, they _did_ do it.
That doesn’t make what they did okay — if anything it shows exactly how much power and influence they wielded in suppressing a news story at a critical point in informing people during an election cycle. That cannot be understated.
GSuite can't just "lock you out" if you're paying, that's why there is a contractual relationship. There are all sorts of third party business relationships (e.g. banks, HR systems, counterparties, other SaaS products, etc.) that all companies depend on running smoothly, I don't see why GSuite is any different.
