During the May 24 edition of The Daily Wire podcast The Matt Walsh Show, host Matt Walsh compared best practice medical care for trans youth to “molestation and rape” and repeatedly slandered the doctors who provide such necessary care. Walsh shared the episode to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, despite those platforms’ hate speech policies that claim to prohibit such content.

In reality, best practice health care for trans youth is widely supported by medical professionals and yields long-term mental health benefits. Furthermore, young trans and gender-diverse children are not undergoing treatments or surgery until they are older -- rather, as social work professor Katherine Kuvalanka told The Washington Post, “the only interventions for young children is affirmation and acceptance for who they are.”

Moreover, research shows that affirming families and communities can be lifesaving for young trans people. According to Reuters, a 2016 study in the journal LGBT Health found: “For transgender or gender non-conforming individuals, as rejection from family members increases, so does their likelihood of suicide attempts or substance abuse.”

During a nearly 20-minute monologue on his podcast, Walsh called such necessary care “mutilation,” said that advocates of best practice care for trans kids are trying to “undermine the legal, scientific, and philosophical case against pedophilia,” and claimed that a “child who is put on hormones and who has their body being mutilated is being sexually violated in a way that is just as depraved or damaging as molestation or rape.” He also repeatedly cited anti-trans author Abigail Shrier’s flawed theories on “social contagion” of transgender identity in adolescents (she has also compared being trans to having anorexia and joining a cult).

Walsh also attacked doctors who serve trans youth, calling them “evil -- we’re talking about Nazi scientist-evil” and “pedophiles,” and he said performing affirming procedures has “plastic surgeons basically acting like Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” The podcast’s episode is even titled “The Evil Quacks Mutilating Our Children.”

Instead of supporting best practice medical care, Walsh seemingly advocated for the discredited and harmful practice of conversion therapy for trans kids, saying that “the goal of therapy should be quite literally the exact opposite” of affirming a child’s gender identity. 

Walsh’s podcast was shared on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, seemingly in violation of their hate speech policies

Facebook’s community standards define hate speech “as a direct attack against people on the basis of what we call protected characteristics,” including gender identity and expression. The platform prohibits “dehumanizing speech or imagery in the form of comparisons, generalizations, or unqualified behavioral statements,” including baselessly describing people as a “sexual predator” or as “violent and sexual criminals.” Additionally, Facebook banned posts that “advertise or promote” conversion therapy in 2020.

Similarly, YouTube’s hate speech policy states that the platform will “remove content promoting violence or hatred against individuals or groups” based on attributes including sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex or gender. It also bans “conspiracy theories saying individuals or groups are evil, corrupt, or malicious based on any of the attributes noted above.” YouTube cites examples of content that violates the policy, including videos that “allege the superiority of a group over those with any of the attributes noted above to justify violence, discrimination, segregation, or exclusion.” Notably, the platform has removed videos in the past for comparing being trans to having mental illness.

Likewise, Twitter’s hateful conduct policy states that users “may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of ... sexual orientation, gender, [or] gender identity.” The company also claims to be “committed to combating abuse motivated by hatred, prejudice or intolerance, particularly abuse that seeks to silence the voices of those who have been historically marginalized,” including “women, people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual individuals, marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.”

Despite these policies against hate speech targeting trans people, Walsh shared the May 24 episode of his podcast on all three platforms. He shared and pinned it to his Facebook page, part of the Daily Wire’s network of several anti-LGBTQ pundits with large Facebook platforms which is often used to misinform about trans people; uploaded it to YouTube, where it has earned almost 52,000 views in under 24 hours; and shared and pinned it on his Twitter account.

If Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are serious about their claims to care about their LGTBQ users, they should not tolerate Matt Walsh and the Daily Wire network’s continued use of their platforms to attack trans people and lie about them.