In an predictable turn of events, prominent health and wellness accessory developer Fitbit, Inc. has unofficially been chosen as the latest subject of the LGBT community’s collective scorn.
The organization is under fire this week on social media for, of all things, a supposed lack of gender “inclusivity” within the software for its popular fitness trackers — which were recently revealed to be incapable of tracking the illusive male menstrual period.
Controversy seems to have initially spun up around the company Saturday, when a transgender Twitter user going by the name of “Lilo the Autistic Queer” publicly called out Fitbit customer support for placing an app feature meant to track users’ menstrual cycles under the “Female Health” umbrella.
“Hey @FitbitSupport I love the ‘Female Health’ tracker in your app.” Lilo wrote. “However, I’m not female & I menstruate.”
“Many trans & intersex people are in this position and feel alienated from menstrual health access. Could you please change the name to the neutral term ‘Menstrual Health’?” Lilo asked.
“I don’t want to have to misgender myself and my body in order to access menstrual health tools.”
Hey @FitbitSupport I love the "Female Health" tracker in your app. However, I'm not female & I menstruate. Many trans & intersex people are in this position and feel alienated from menstrual health access. Could you please change the name to the neutral term "Menstrual Health"?
If people could retweet this to try to get @fitbit to see it, that would be helpful. It's a tiny change they could make that will make a huge difference to a lot of people.
I don't want to have to misgender myself and my body in order to access menstrual health tools.
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Here is what the tool looks like, with the one issue circled.
It lets me track my period, tells me when my next period is likely to happen, let's me track symptoms (including on non-period days), keeps track of trends, and tracks fertility.
Not everyone who menstruates is female. Not everyone who is female menstruates. Let's shift our language.
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What followed was roughly three days of round-the-clock updates from the transgender activist, which began with a screen shot of the menstrual cycle tracker’s interface, complete with “the one issue circled” for clarity — that “one issue” again being the fact that an application meant to track a biological female’s window of fertility happened to be labeled “Female Health.”
Met with numerous responses, however — some from the company itself and others from apparent supportive employees on their personal accounts — the trans activist only seemed to grow more frustrated as the hours turned into days. Many people seemed to agree with her, too, as the activist’s initial tweet garnered over 500 retweets.
And while admittedly cryptic technical responses were met with snide remarks or outright disappointment, things truly took a turn for the aggressive when the company made its most accommodating response: one which included a link to an official company forum on which users could vote for new features and changes.
Oh ffs @fitbit whether or not your product is inclusive to trans people shouldn't be something you put up for a "vote"
Like, either you support our existence or you don't. twitter.com/FitbitSupport/…
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Fitbit seems to be reasserting that they do not believe men can have periods. twitter.com/FitbitSupport/…
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“Oh [for f—‘s sake] @fitbit,” Lilo wrote back, “whether or not your product is inclusive to trans people shouldn’t be something you put up for a ‘vote.'”
Lilo and her not-so-merry band of outraged activists would not see their Twitter storm materialize into change, however, as the company would eventually respond once more to the mob, affirming that changes to the female health tool were “currently not in [the] product roadmap.”
“By default, female health tracking is hidden for users who have identified themselves as male in their Fitbit profile,” the company wrote. “We’ll take note of your feedback as we strive to improve the quality of our products and services.”
I guess you really do catch more flies with honey.
Of course, regardless of the candor (or lack thereof) displayed by the new left’s growing wave of transgender activists, Fitbit should certainly stick to its guns — or at the very least, the biological facts of life.
No matter how loud figures like Lilo scream and shout into the raging winds of reality, men cannot have periods.
The fact that the modern West’s increased academic and philosophical valuation of subjective experience — and immense devaluation of objective truth — has become so pervasive that our culture cannot definitively say that men are not women and women are not men is deeply concerning.
All the more interesting, however, is the fact that this frame of mind has been ushered in by the same individuals who claim President Donald Trump’s excessive employment of hyperbole has established a post-truth society.
And though I may be willing to meet them halfway in saying this president’s rhetoric has certainly contributed to the expansion of the post-truth society, the “transgender rights movement” is all the proof one needs to reveal it was the cultural left who created such a society in the first place.
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