On Sunday evening, Miriam Ben-Shalom, the first lesbian to be reinstated to the U.S. Army after being booted over her sexual orientation, told PJ Media she had been banned from Facebook for 30 days. Her crime? Saying that lesbians like her are not interested in intercourse with males who have male anatomy. She has been outspoken against transgender activists, who — among other things — insist that males who identify as women are really women, so lesbians must be romantically interested in them.
When PJ Media asked about the offending post, Ben-Shalom pointed to a photo with two t-shirts.
“It is a picture of 2 red t-shirts in ‘Your photos,'” she wrote in an email. “One says ‘D*kes Don’t Want D**k Get Over It’ and the other says, ‘Women Have V*g*n*s Get Over It.'” The vulgar photo may be seen here.
While the messages on the t-shirts are vulgar, they are anatomically correct. Ben-Shalom’s Facebook profile is private, so she alleged that the people who “reported” her to Facebook must have gotten in by “a hack.”
“I doubt that I will get out of Facebook jail, but I have asked for a review since all my page is private and for friends only and the picture was never posted publicly and was reported as a result of a hack,” Ben-Shalom told PJ Media.
The Facebook ban followed harassment directed at Ben-Shalom after she posted a message on the page for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)’s 2020 presidential campaign. The lesbian veteran had urged Warren not to endorse transgender activism, due to the harms that it brings about against women.
Comments on that post branded Ben-Shalom a “TERF,” a slur often associated with violence against women who disagree with transgender activism. They also accused her of “hatred, prejudice and bias.”
Kaeley Triller Harms, co-founder of Hands Across the Aisle Women’s Coalition, spoke out about Ben-Shalom’s suspension.
‘My friend Miriam Ben-Shalom is in FB jail for 30 days because transactivists reported a post she made declaring that lesbians do not prefer pen*ses,” she wrote.
“I hope that everyone fully understands the implications of this: If homophobia exists, surely this is it? They’ve declared that her sexual orientation is essentially hate speech,” Harms added. “What’s even more concerning to me is the fact that a woman is being punished for having the audacity to say, ‘no’ to men.”
“What in God’s green earth is the point of all the billions of dollars being spent to educate kids about the importance of consent if girls are ultimately going to be told that their ‘no’ only means ‘no’ until a man in a dress decides he’s entitled to negate it?” she asked, incisively. “Misogyny, thy name is transactivism. I’ve had enough. The answer is still ‘no’ even if it lands me in Facebook jail.”
Twitter is notorious for banning critics of transgender activism. Harms herself was blocked on Twitter for this, as were: a Ph.D. psychologist and expert in gender dysphoria; the Heritage Foundation’s media director; and feminist journalist Meghan Murphy.
Facebook did not return PJ Media’s request for comment on Ben-Shalom’s ban.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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