On May 1st, the United Kingdom’s parliament held a Human Rights Committee meeting that unexpectedly caused waves within the anime and gaming community.
A Scottish National Party MP, when discussing what’s acceptable on Twitter, mentioned the American professional esports player SonicFox, and a tweet he posted about fighting TERFs while playing a fighting game. After discussing why similar content to SonicFox’s post might be unacceptable, the MP brought up an image of Zombieland Saga’s Lily holding up a gun with the quote “Shut the fuck up, TERF.” The post had been tweeted at a British journalist.
At first, Twitter ruled that the image featuring Zombieland Saga’s Lily was not abusive or against Twitter’s TOS.
https://twitter.com/helenlewis/status/1122812276640309254
The Scottish National Party MP later went on to talk about how the hand in the image is a real hand holding a gun that has been edited into the illustration. She stated that such tweets are “sinister” and that similar tweets are infrequently dealt with by Twitter’s staff. She stated that “TERF” is a gendered term like “bitch” and “cunt”.
SonicFox responded on his Twitter feed, though mentioning Mortal Kombat might very well bring up old arguments we’ve all heard before.
LMAO UK parliament talked about my terf tweets today that were taken down earlier! @joannaccherry apparently thinks teleporting fullscreen from a sand trap and chopping Sonya or doing the fatality as intended in Mortal Kombat is hateful conduct to women lol
— SonicFox (@SonicFox) May 1, 2019
If you’re interested in watching the full Human Rights Committee meeting, you can watch it here.
