Attack on free speech on Substack. Attempt to silence gender critical voices.
Opportunistic exploitation of a mistake to purge gender critical voices.
Subscriptions are free.
My backup site is https://gaypartisan.com/
All links are saved at the Internet Archive. https://web.archive.org/
The 2021 effort to purge Gender Critical voices from Substack
When the gender critical were being banned on X, then known as Twitter, the new platform Substack was getting condemned for not banning gender critical voices.
The following are some articles regarding this; my essay continues after these examples.
Medium, March 17, 2021, “Substack Is Not a Neutral Platform”: The newsletter platform is the latest tech company to turn a blind eye to anti-trans arguments.”
https://gen.medium.com/substack-is-not-a-neutral-platform-8fc5bdf8e5f2
Medium, August 4, 2024, “Substack is Still a Problem: The controversial newsletter company capped off a bad week by acquiring a company with multiple TERFs on its masthead. Surprise.”
https://judedoyle.medium.com/substack-is-still-a-problem-dec84cb84188
Medium banned me because I had some views critical of trans.
Substack, April 6, 2021, “I Am Leaving Substack,”
This writer is upset that Substack isn’t purging people.
Even worse, during the controversy over Substack’s “Pro” program, it’s become clear that Substack doesn’t take the role of content moderation seriously. I can understand wanting to take a relatively “hands off” approach to moderation, when these publications are supposed to be “our own”. However, there must be limits — which Substack itself acknowledges when it commits to following the law.
….
More personally, I can’t ignore that Substack is particularly benefiting from and encouraging a culture of anti-trans bigotry.
The attack on Substack about gender critical voices was in the New York Times behind a paywall.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/business/media/substack-newsletter-competition.html
TechCrunch, March 18, 2021, “Substack faces backlash over the writers it supports with big advances.”
Last week, the writer Jude Ellison Sady Doyle pointed to writers like Yglesias, Glenn Greenwald and Freddie deBoer (several of whom departed larger publications, supposedly turning to Substack for greater editorial independence) and suggested that the platform has become “famous for giving massive advances [ … ] to people who actively hate trans people and women, argue ceaselessly against our civil rights, and in many cases, have a public history of directly, viciously abusing trans people and/or cis women in their industry.”
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/18/substack-backlash
The boycott went nowhere, Substack flourished and continued to expand. It has continued to get financing. Elon Musk took over Twitter, renamed it X, and the banning of gender critical voices stopped on X.
However, that doesn’t mean the efforts to control speech on Substack ended. It had to find a new angle to suppress free speech.
The defense of free speech going back to the 18th century, has been that you have to tolerate really offensive voices to have free speech, and trust that reason wins over error.
If one opinion is banned, then people will seek to ban other opinions they don’t like. The place to start this banning will be the most offensive viewpoints.
Individual publications can exercise editorial judgement, but the government can’t arrest someone for their newsletter.
Before the Internet, it was extremely hard for dissident opinions to be heard.
The Internet has fundamentally changed the situation for the issues of free speech. People are not now communicating through private print publications and formal speaking engagements, they are on social media platforms which are effectively public squares, but privately owned.
The freedom of speech on these platforms is circumvented by the demand of editorial control by pressure groups applied to the platform owners demanding some of the blogs, newsletters, webpages be banned. The ideas of freedom of speech prior to the Internet and social media platforms didn’t anticipate these new means of expression.
Prior to the Internet and photocopiers, the best a dissident voice could do was to make a pasted-up layout on paper and have a printer print it, if you could find a printer that wouldn’t refuse to print it. Or you had to use a mimeograph machine, and then you might mail it out or hand it out at a meeting.
Photocopies made doing a newsletter easier, but you still typed up columns, glued them down on a sheet of paper, put white out on the edges of the cut-out articles so they wouldn’t show up when photocopied. (This is where the terms “cut” and “paste” came from.) You then drove to a photocopy place and made copies.Then you folded the newsletter and put them in an envelope, wetted the glue on the envelop flap, sealed them, addressed them, applied a wetted stamp, and then went to the post office. There was the cost of paper, photocopying, envelops, and stamps. It took time. Once mailed, it would take days to reach local readers, and a week or more to reach the national audience.
Even though there was freedom of speech, a dissident writer would struggle to find an audience and others who might be interested in the dissident writer’s opinion.
Gate keeping as to what opinions would be heard or not heard by the general public was very easy and effective.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the past would defend the free speech rights of Nazis and Klan members, knowing it was essential to protecting the free speech of liberals and leftists.
There was freedom of speech because it was harmless to the establishment.
Gate keeping collapses.
Now, a dissident writer can just go online and write up something and send it out by email to an existing base of subscriber immediately and get feed back and discussion. The readers could share the post or email with others with very little effort.
Gate keepers increasingly found that their gate keeping was less and less effective and further, their domains, their domains facing increasing scrutiny regarding their gate keeping. The gate keepers also started to have fewer subscribers.
Liberal/left saw a golden age of Internet democracy until Internet democracy actually happened, then they become horrified.
When the Internet first started many liberal/left/progressive persons saw the Internet as a great phenomenon for democracy and the expression of alternative opinions to bypass establishment gatekeepers.
Then they reacted with horror that people with different views, views of which they didn’t approve, also saw the Internet as a great democratic opportunity to express their views.
Banning begins, free speech abandoned.
Thus, banning began, and many dissenting opinions were judged to be unacceptable and the person would get banned from a platform.
These efforts on banning are based on an extremely anti-democratic idea besides the rejection of freedom of speech. It is the belief that the public is unable to think for themselves and lack judgement to the degree that they need to be prohibited from seeing dissenting opinions.
Banning is also the fear that the arguments for a viewpoint aren’t capable of defending that viewpoint, so the opposing viewpoint needs be banned and not debated. Banning is a declaration that the basis for an opinion is weak to the point that opposition needs to be banned.
A new tactic to go after Substack
The liberal/left doesn’t give up in trying to suppress Substack freedom of speech.
They started to campaign against Substack on the issues of Nazis.
The Atlantic, Jan. 12, 2024, “Substack Was a Ticking Time Bomb: The platform seeded its own content-moderation crisis.”
The article is about a campaign for Substack to censor writers based on the presence of Nazi newsletters and a condemnation of Substack’s free speech view.
The article is behind a paywall, so you can only see the beginning sections.
Other publications got in on the attack.
The Guardian, Jan. 3, 2024, “Substack faces user revolt over anti-censorship stance on neo-Nazis: Newsletter writers with thousands of subscribers threaten to leave platform, which says banning extremists makes things worse.”
All these threats came to nothing. Substack continued to grow.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/jan/03/substack-user-revolt-anti-censorship-stance-neo-nazis
However, Substack did buckle and did remove some newsletters and censors smelt blood.
CNN, Jan. 9, 2024, “Substack removes multiple newsletters including pro-Nazi content amid growing pressure.”
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/09/tech/substack-removes-newsletters-for-pro-nazi-content
Even though Substack made this move, those fervently hoping that Substack would ban other voices made little progress.
However, recently Substack, made a really bad mistake, and did a push notification to check out a Nazi blog with a swastika icon. The company “quickly apologized,” but the anti-free speech people saw their opportunity.
ArsTechnica, July 30, 2025, “Substack’s ‘Nazi problem’ won’t go away after push notification apology.”
The subtitle is:
Substack may be legitimizing neo-Nazis as "thought leaders," researcher warns.
Substack apologized, but the anti-free speech people weren’t satisfied.
Substack has long faced backlash for allowing users to share their "extreme views" on the platform, previously claiming that "censorship (including through demonetizing publications)" doesn't make "the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse,
The article discusses the research of Joshua Fisher-Birch, who is an analyst at the Counter Extremism Project, as to Nazis on the Internet on social media platforms.
Substack is portrayed as a menace and the push for censorship is intermingled with this fear mongering.
But perhaps even more appealing than Substack's lack of content moderation, Fisher-Birch noted that these groups see Substack as "a legitimizing tool for sharing content" specifically because the Substack brand—which is widely used by independent journalists, top influencers, cherished content creators, and niche experts—can help them "convey the image of a thought leader."
Substack is called a “bullhorn for right-wing extremists.” Fisher-Birch wants censorship.
Fisher-Birch recommended that Substack take the opportunity of its latest scandal to revisit its content guidelines "and forbid content that promotes hatred or discrimination based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or medical condition." [Boldface added.]
The article serves to conflate gender critical views with Nazis and terrorists.
Then there is a section titled, “Favorite alternative platforms for Substack ex-pats.”
The Substack ex-pats that they discuss are A.R. Moxon, Gillian Brockell, and Imani Gandy. Arstechnica omits mentioning that these three are pro-trans and hostile to gender critical persons and that Moxon left Substack because Substack won’t ban persons with gender critical views.
Joshua Fisher-Birch.
In this report by the Counter Extremism Project, Jan. 16, 2024, “Extremist Content Online: Extreme-Right and Neo-Nazi Content Located On TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter/X,” we find tucked in it, policing on gender critical views.
Note that gender critical views are lumped in with neo-Nazi and antisemitic groups.
Of the eight accounts reported directly to Instagram, only one was removed within the same time frame. Accounts that were not removed from Instagram included those affiliated with Active Clubs as well as profiles that posted antisemitic and anti-transgender content. [Boldface added.]
Though in reading Counter Extremism Project, it seems that he monitors people who wish to be violent against trans people. So it isn’t clear what his agenda is. However, certainly he should have been aware of the agenda of the ArsTechnica. Also, maybe that is how you get the termination of free speech, you focus on Nazis and make sure you don’t mention the rest to be useful in banning free speech.
Though the Arstechnica article focuses on Nazis, these people leaving Substack and who are interviewed are very much focused on trans issues.
Gillian Brockell.
Gillian Brockell recently deleted her Substack newsletter, but Google still had a cache of it. This is why I am submitting links to the Internet Archive when I find things.
This is her Bluesky account.
https://bsky.app/profile/gbrockell.bsky.social
She pushed this historical falsification stealing Gay history from Gay people.
Washington Post, June 12, 2019, “The transgender women at Stonewall were pushed out of the gay rights movement. Now they are getting a statue in New York.”
Imani Gandy
Imani Gandy, is upset that kids can’t get their breasts removed for the so-called “gender affirming care.”
Rewirenewsgroup, June 26, 2025, “Supreme Court to Trans Kids: Sorry Not Sorry, But You’re SOL.”
https://rewirenewsgroup.com/2025/06/26/supreme-court-to-trans-kids-sorry-not-sorry-but-youre-sol/
A.R. Moxon
With A.R. Moxon’s writings you can see how the issue of Nazis is used to go after Substack because they have gender critical writers.
First, A.R. Moxon has this Jan. 24, 2024 Substack post as to why he is leaving.
He doesn’t mention trans, instead focusing on Nazis. It isn’t until his later summary post of 2024 that you find out anti-trans voices on Substack was the big motivating factor.
https://www.the-reframe.com/hello-i-must-be-going/
A.R. Moxon has a 2024 round up article on his posts and summarizes the why he is leaving post as follows.
In January, I wrote Hello I Must Be Going. This was about my decision to move The Reframe off Substack, which is a platform I quite liked and upon which I had enjoyed quite a bit of success. I decided to do this because their leadership, who had already been pretty enthusiastic about promoting anti-trans voices on their platform, also starting monetizing Nazis, and for reasons I lay out, this was too much for me, so I said goodbye to all that, and thankfully all of you came along. [B oldface added.]
Nazis are “also” a reason he is leaving. The gender critical views is what he discuss as a primary reason.
A.R. Moxon’s Bluesky account.
https://bsky.app/profile/juliusgoat.bsky.social
In this Bluesky post, A.R. Moxon asserts that having gender critical views somehow involves fascism.
A.R. Moxon limits who can read his X posts. Having gender critical views are somehow genocidal. Google cache however had some of it.
This is where a gender critical woman is somehow linked to fascism.
In this post A.R. Moxon attacks Nancy Mace’s gender critical question. Seem if you ask this question you are some how involved with fascism.
This is a post of A.R. Moxon a couple days ago, he asserts that the serial killers of the past are now the type of people to become Tech Billionaires. Arstechnica thought this person was a credible voice.
Substack needs to not censor.
Substack needs to do better operating, however, this mistake, which Substack apologized for. This mistake is opportunistically being used to silence freedom of speech on Substack by thse who are opposed to gender critical voices.
Substack needs to understand if you give an inch, they are going to demand more and more and every Substack writer who doesn’t align with a shrill narrow opinion will face demands for their banning.
If Substack gives in, for newsletters, Substack will become like a holiday in Cambodia. A lot of them will be exterminated.
Well, if Substack thinks it can silence our voices, it's got another thing coming.
Concerning. I hope free speech/truth-tellers prevails in the end.