A pair of female Republican senators are demanding documents from TikTok after the social media company censored champions of women’s sports and designated their posts “hate speech.”
On Wednesday, Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Joni Ernst of Iowa sent a letter to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew outlining the company’s double standards related to the promotion of “woke advertisements” such as ads “promoting transgender surgery for minors.”
“The sponsored content shows a teenage girl who recently had a double mastectomy, exposing her surgery in graphic detail,” senators explained. “TikTok allowing this advertisement to run on minors’ feeds is the height of hypocrisy from a platform that suppresses conservative speech while profiting from leftist propaganda.”
Just two months earlier, a post from former college swimmer Riley Gaines was removed from TikTok because it allegedly violated “hate speech” requirements. The video published by Gaines featured the swimmer-turned-author-commentator silently eating cereal while watching an individual explain her transgender identity with a diversity word salad.
“The video was then reinstated on Sunday after Fox News Digital reached out for a comment,” the network reported. “TikTok did not respond to questions about why the video was originally removed.”
Sens. Blackburn and Ernst cited the episode of censorship in their Wednesday letter to TikTok and also asked the company to explain why a Denver-based athletics brand that supports women’s sports was banned from advertising this summer. Jennifer Sey, the founder of XX-XY Athletics, published the ad on X that supposedly resulted in her company losing its ability to advertise on TikTok.
“In your notification to the company informing them of the ban, TikTok labeled the content offensive and, later, hate speech,” senators wrote. “The advertisement deemed hateful by TikTok was simply a celebration of female achievement — using a real-life example — and encouraged young women to ‘be honest and be brave.’”
“Supporting young women should never be offensive, and it is telling that TikTok would consider a celebration of our girls in sports as worthy of being banned,” lawmakers added. “There is nothing controversial or hateful about the fact that men and women have biological differences, and any argument to the contrary is simply an attack on our nation’s women and girls.”
Americans, meanwhile, remain overwhelmingly opposed to biological men competing in women’s sports. According to a Gallup poll last year, 69 percent of the 1,011 adults surveyed said athletes should only be allowed to compete on teams that match their “birth gender,” up from 62 percent just two years prior. Even 64 percent of survey-takers who reported knowing a transgender person said sports leagues should be segregated based on sex.
Another survey from The Washington Post last year also found that more than 6 in 10 of the 1,338 U.S. adults interviewed believe biological men should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports.
Read the full letter from Blackburn and Ernst below:
10.9.24_Letter to TikTok Re… by The Federalist
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan's email newsletter here.